For Hog Wild Toys, there’s no such thing as too ridiculous. From its classic Poppers and Stickys to its expanding presence in the games category with a party game that asks “How many unicorn horns long is this table?” the company is always striving to make play fun and silly for kids and families. The Toy Book chatted with Hog Wild’s new vice president of sales and marketing, Steve Markey, about the company’s products for this year, continuing to navigate the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, and more.
The Toy Book: This year, Hog Wild is expanding its Handy Grabs brand with at least two new products: Handy Chops and Nibblerz. Can you tell me why you think this brand is resonating with consumers and a bit about how you developed these new products?
Steve Markey: At Hog Wild Toys, we have always had a reputation for taking recognizable, commonplace items and infusing them with our own brand of fun, quirky, and often irreverent innovation. Handy Chops and Nibblerz are just two examples of how we can make an everyday item put a smile on everyone’s face.
TB: Hog Wild is also continuing its expansion into games with T.A.P.E.S. What can you tell us about the game, its target audience, and why you think it will appeal to consumers?
SM: Who wouldn’t love a game where one of the potential questions could be “how tall is the refrigerator, measured in hamsters?”
This game came about in part as a result of the massive growth in home improvement projects during the pandemic, where kids would see their parents constantly measuring lengths of wood and other materials. Kids wanted to get involved, but measuring twice and cutting once gets boring pretty quickly, so we asked ourselves, “How do we make this more fun?” And so the T.A.P.E.S. game was born: 16 different units of measurement, including weiner dogs, gummy bears, soda cans, and squirrels. And every game is different because you can measure pretty much anything inside and outside the house.
It also appeals to the STEM/STEAM market, teaching kids all about relativity and sizing. Interesting, but true fact: People tend to be better at guesstimating sizes in hamsters than in centimeters!
TB: Hog Wild is all about encouraging fun and silliness, and perhaps nothing captures that quite like Fickle the Pickle. Can you describe this new product and why it is a good fit for Hog Wild?
SM: Fickle Pickle is our twist on another classic toy. We took the classic fortune-teller concept and Hog Wild-ified it! Ask it a question, shake it with a “Waka Waka” sound, and receive one of 20 spicy answers, such as “Dill With It!” As we like to say, “We embrace the absurd and reject the conventional,” and Fickle Pickle is a perfect example of this!
TB: The company also offers an expansive collection of poppers and squishes, along with an expanding lineup of outdoor toys. Are there any updates you’d like to share about those toy categories?
SM: Our Poppers and Stickys have become, for lack of a better word, heritage brands within the toy landscape. We constantly strive to come up with innovative designs to keep the line fresh and exciting, and anyone who has had the pleasure of flinging unicorn poo and making it stick to a wall is going to wonder what we’ll come up with next.
A big focus right now, and an area where we’re seeing great success, is with our Holiday Poppers and Stickys. We have Easter Stickys in the form of an Easter Bunny and an egg, as well as a Chocolate Bunny Popper — perfect for the Easter basket! And for Christmas stocking stuffers, we have snowman, penguin, and reindeer Stickys, as well as our brand new Gingerbread Man and Nutcracker Poppers!
TB: What are some of Hog Wild’s goals for this new year?
SM: A couple of our main goals for 2022 are to return our heritage roots of quirky, irreverent humor to build our Poppers and Handy Grabs lines to new consumers. In addition, we’d like to continue to expand our game offerings, so our new T.A.P.E.S. game is a perfect extension to this line with Pizza Party Throwdown already in the market.
TB: You are also personally new to your role as vice president of sales and marketing at Hog Wild. What are some of the things you are most looking forward to in this role and at this company?
SM: The main thing I’m looking forward to is seeing all my favorite retailers, sales reps, and manufacturers again — all wonderful people in this industry — and being able to introduce them to the many offerings from Hog Wild.
TB: We are now heading into our third year of the COVID-19 pandemic and — as exemplified by the cancelation of this year’s Toy Fair New York — it continues to directly impact the toy industry. What are some of the ways that Hog Wild has had to pivot in response, and what advice would you give to other toy manufacturers/distributors who are navigating these times?
SM: Like many others in the industry, we have learned to embrace technology, building virtual showrooms and trade show booths for people to visit anytime they want, and figured out every video conferencing system in the world.
Product development doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and I think we’ve done a really good job of keeping our team together and communicating on a constant basis. When you’re in an office, so much comes out of random conversations as you’re passing someone’s desk or grabbing a cup of coffee, and keeping that spirit of creativity and spontaneity has been key to creating the line-up of products we have in the hopper for this coming year and beyond.
TB: Is there anything else you would like to add?
SM: The thing I love most about the toy industry is that we all encourage each other to succeed and offer help, moral support, advice, and encouragement wherever we can.
The only way we can succeed is if our retailers succeed, and retailers can’t succeed without a broad range of great products that perform well in stores, and as an industry, I think we do a great job of lifting each other up.
