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Talking Snap Ships with Playmonster’s Tim Kilpin and Wind Sun Sky’s Catherine Winder
Welcome to The Power Kid Podcast, the premier and longest running podcast focused on the modern toy and entertainment industry. Power Kid is an award-winning design and development firm, and we are a proud member of the Adventure Media & Events Podcast Network family. Adventure Media is the publisher of your favorite industry publications, including The Toy Book, The Toy Insider, and The Pop Insider.
I am your host, Phil Albritton, and I bring you great conversations with talented people making amazing products for kids. Toys, books, games, TV, movies, I bring them to you here every episode. Welcome aboard.
Hello, hello, hello, Power Kids, and welcome to another Power Kid Podcast. Guys, every week it is my honor and privilege to come on here to share these amazing conversations with you, with amazing people making great things for kids. I have an all-star show for you today.
On the line with me is Tim Kilpin and Catherine Winder. Let me introduce you to both of them. Tim has been an industry leader for over 35 years.
He set brand strategies and creative direction for Monster High, Hot Wheels, Disney Princess Barbie, and many more. He’s held senior executive roles at Mattel, Disney, and Activision Blizzard. He is now the proud president of PlayMonster.
Catherine Winder is the CEO of Skybound North Entertainment and the CEO of Wind Sun Sky Entertainment. She was executive producer at Lucasfilm Animation. Working alongside George Lucas, she was responsible for developing and producing the first animated Star Wars movie and the beloved television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
She was also responsible for overseeing the production of the Oscar-nominated film Ice Age and producing the Angry Birds Movie. She has literally written the book on animation. She’s the co-author of Producing Animation, which is the industry standard handbook.
Guys, welcome to the show. Thank you.
So good to talk to both of you. Thank you for taking your time. We’re really going to focus in on this new release of Play Monster’s product Snap Ships.
Very exciting, very innovative on shelves right now. As I always do, I go back in time and I ask, how did you get involved in the industry? So Tim, we’ll start with you.
How did you get involved in the toy industry?
It goes back a ways. I actually started on the creative side of things. Many years ago at Mattel, I was package copywriter and I was coming up with names and stories and copy lines for characters from Masters of the Universe, if you’re familiar with that brand from many years ago.
So, I started out creatively and then moved into marketing and was lucky enough to work on wonderful brands all through my time. Hot Wheels and Woody the Pooh and Mickey Mouse and Barbie, and ultimately things that we launched at Mattel like Monster High. So I’ve spent my whole career working on great brands, doing marketing, design, sales, licensing, a little bit of everything.
When you started with the creative side, at what point did you step out of that? Was that a slow progression? Was there one role that really threw you into more of a management aspect of your career?
No. It was really just all of a sudden working on Masters of the Universe way back when, and we had folks there who said, you really seem to get this and like this, and would you like to be involved in helping to find where this goes next from a strategic standpoint? So I jumped at the chance and never looked back.
I’m a big believer that no matter where you land in the toy industry, you have to have that spark of creativity or at least an interest in the creative things that you’re producing, whether it’s logistics or management, but especially the art department. Do you agree with that?
Absolutely. This is an industry that really, it reinvents itself every year. If you think about the fact that there are always new brands, new products that are coming out.
So you have to stay creative, you have to stay focused, you have to keep thinking about what is it that’s going to excite kids, what’s going to get them moving and excited and involved. You really have to challenge your creativity on a daily basis.
Catherine, what about you?
How did you get started in animation?
And then I’d like to hear about your more recent escapades in the toy industry.
Well, I kind of fell into animation. I was traveling around the world and landed in Tokyo with the intention of learning the language and teaching. And about a year in, I saw an ad for Java Disney.
They just purchased a Japanese animation studio at a time when they were pushing and growing their animation business out into Asia. And we’re in search of talent and cost savings. And I always knew I wanted to be a producer one day.
And so when I saw that ad at Disney, I jumped at the opportunity. But the interview was completely in Japanese. And I’d only been in the country for about a year.
So, I understood perhaps about 20, 25% of what they said. But somehow they felt I could do it and hired me. And I think it helped that I was Canadian.
At the time, they were looking to find a way forward and create a bridge between the two cultures at being the Americans and the Japanese, who both came at animation production, communication, logistics very differently. And having a Canadian who was neutral, who could bridge the two groups was their goal. So looking back, I laugh, because I really had no idea what I signed on for.
But ultimately, it was a pivotal career moment in that I learned all about making cartoons from both the American and the Asian perspective. I traveled all over Asia on behalf of the Japanese, and ultimately fell in love with the industry.
Really both sides of the culture, both sides of animation. What’s the most striking difference between animation in the United States and Japanese animation?
Well, there’s quite a few differences. And when I first started, it was the actual production of and how they came about things. And in the case of the Japanese, they actually had a core group in house, but then they would subcontract all over Asia because, and internally in Japan, they’re small little cottage industries where people are working from home.
In America, there are much larger teams that all worked under one roof. And so the communication styles were obviously had to be very different because when you’re working in house, you’re able to communicate changes creatively much more on the fly. Whereas in Asia, you have to be much more formalized about your approach and style of managing a team.
And so your road led you eventually to the office of George Lucas and helping to launch the Clone Wars animated show with a movie first. I’d love to hear that experience and I think that’s going to bring the conversation into snapships and what you’re doing now. Tell us about that.
I’d be remiss to not have you talk about your work with George Lucas.
Well, who knew? It was a road of many different pasts that got me to George Lucas. I started out in feature films, pivoted over to television and shorts.
And ultimately, my experience in doing all of that took me around the world. And at the time that I met George and the team at Lucasfilm, they were setting up a studio in Singapore to do visual effects and animation. And his vision was to adapt Star Wars into The Clone Wars, an animated show.
And it was an incredible experience, as you can imagine. As his producer, every Friday, I got firsthand behind the scenes views into how he made Star Wars and how it became the universal timeless franchise it is today. I put together a creative team for him.
And that included Dave Filoni, who’s gone on to do amazing things, as you know, with The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars franchise and all Star Wars. He really understands it. And it was a time when George was very involved.
He met with us and really trained us up in how he saw Star Wars being adapted into the animated space. It was a very important show to him. And ultimately, we learned a few key guiding principles from him around making a universal timeless franchise.
That being the need for great, relatable characters that people care about and connect with. Also, the importance of dynamic visuals that can cut through and enthrall and amaze audiences. And that was one of the things that he really, on The Clone Wars, he said, I want something, I want a visual look and aesthetic style that no one has ever seen before.
We need to really show the world how special this can be. And then of course, what’s really important we bring to Snapships are these dynamic, fun action sequence that keep you on the edge of your seat. That’s it.
Yeah. So we’re circling the topic. Spaceships.
Spaceships.
Tim, why spaceships? Why are we so intrigued with spaceships, with outer space, with plots and stories that happen in space? I’d love to hear your perspective on this line and you could choose to do anything, right?
We could create any product. We found this great inventor product in snapships. What makes it special?
Well, the thing that was really interesting to us about this, and as you mentioned, it was a couple of inventors, a video game designers actually, who came up with this. I think they were intrigued by the idea that you could find ways to tell great stories and do really wonderful things with these products, and create a new approach to a building system that would be truly modular, but would also give you this opportunity to build these great ships. Of course, the appeal of spaceships, appealing to the inner explorer in all of us.
There’s a long history, as Catherine has just mentioned, as it relates to Star Wars, a long history of telling really great stories. You know, it’s set against this particular backdrop. And so the inventors of the concept plugged into that.
They brought their own thought process about what that might mean in terms of the actual play of the product. And for us, it just kind of put all those great elements together. It put the storytelling element together, the ship element, the space element, and the building element.
And all those added up to a really great concept that we felt was very much, you know, an opportunity for kids to buy into a new universe.
Yeah. Well, I know when I’m sitting down with my kids and we’re building with any other type of block, that’s where my head goes first. If there are wings in that pile of blocks, I’m going to build a spaceship, right?
That’s just where my head goes. And I wonder if that was some of the impetus behind Snap Ships. I love the aspect that these will hold together tightly.
You can fly them around the room. My five-year-old can toss it onto the couch, fly it around the room. It won’t come apart.
Small pieces won’t come off, which is just a great kind of nuance to the product development in this particular brand. Tell me about some of the other nuances that you built into the brand itself.
Well, I think there were a couple of things to go along with that. You know, you’re absolutely right. One of the key things was there are wonderful, great building systems out there, and we’re not taking anything away from that.
But truly, one of the things that kids do want to do once they’ve built something is to really play with it. And sometimes for some building systems, that’s actually a little bit harder to do. And so we wanted in this particular case to be sure that the product, once you built it, it stayed together.
Now, of course, you can take it apart and rebuild it and build bigger and better and different kinds of ships. But if you wanted to play with it, you could play with it. And so we built not only that into it, that element, but we also built battling elements into it.
Our call to action is built to battle. And so with that in mind, the products are designed in such a way that they can battle each other, they can shoot projectiles, they can shoot weapons. And kids we know love to do that.
They love to play that way. It’s a very tried and true kind of a play pattern. And so that’s been built into this as well.
But then we also built in a lot of different sort of, romance and drama behind all the different elements, all the different pieces of the engines and the wings and the battling components and even a cockpit so that there’s a place to put the pilot. So all of that’s built into what we think makes these products great.
All with the intent to tell a story. And Catherine, I’ll turn to you. There’s an animated element that’s coming alongside Snap Ships.
Snap Ships
Tell us what we can expect there. What characters are we going to be endeared to? What kind of story did you want to tell?
I’d love to hear your experience. The first time you saw Snap Ships, did it instantly make sense for animation?
Absolutely. I was down in Beloit at the PlayMonster headquarters last summer. And Tim and Bob and the team pulled out the Snap Ships.
And I was immediately drawn to them. It was so exciting to see, to Tim’s point, a ship that you could play with actively and not have it fall apart. And the ships were so beautiful that I could imagine it in animation and space immediately.
And the fact that it had these pilots in the cockpits that we could build personalities around was a really exciting opportunity to adapt into animation.
And a part of that animation too will appear in the app, which Tim, I love this about the product. You can scan the ship in and then your ship can digitally launch missiles and shoot lasers. And there’s this augmented reality aspect to the product.
Catherine, were you involved in some of that app development, the animation there? Did that correspond to what we’ll be doing in the animated series? How are those connected?
Well, it’s a cohesive ecosystem, an universe that we’re building around the Snapships toy. And we work really closely with everybody involved. It’s starting with developing the series, the characters and that whole universe.
But then we collaborated with the creators for the app to make sure that visually, the aesthetics match, the characterizations of our key main characters were the same. And everybody worked together to bring this universe to life, which is extremely exciting. And especially the fact that you can now actually go out and use the AR app right at the moment as you wait for the show to come to life starting in a couple of weeks.
Tim, some of the biggest toy brands in the past three or four decades included an animation element, a storytelling element that was a hook for the kids. I’m thinking about properties like Transformers and GI Joe and My Little Pony. All of these that had that entertainment element.
We’ve seen a little bit of a decline in that in recent years as we’ve been more trend focused, I think. Because this type of animation, this type of storytelling on the scale that you’re proposing it is such a massive investment. And this is the biggest launch in PlayMonster history.
Is that correct?
Oh, yeah, it is. Absolutely.
Why this one?
Why this particular product? Why this particular story?
What gives this legs to make it into something that’s going to be long lasting and relevant for years to come?
Well, as I said, it started with seeing the product concept, and we actually saw this at a Maker Faire a few years back. And the product itself was so compelling to us, we thought this had the potential to be something that could be a broader kind of an opportunity, a multi-year kind of brand. But we did our homework first, and we did some consumer testing.
We went out and talked to kids and to parents, and got their first impressions about the product and what the product did, and the response to that was so positive that that’s what really gave us the impetus to say, okay, we’ve got an opportunity to build something bigger here. And then get, you know, not only work with the creators who were doing the work on the app, and make sure that the app delivered all of the, you know, the componentry in terms of how to build the ships and how different builds you could put together around them, the augmented reality component of it. But then when we, you know, sat down with Catherine and her team and shared with them kind of where we were going to be going with this, you know, they had such an immediate spark to it that, you know, we knew right away there was an opportunity to tell great stories here, to build up a universe, to build it out in terms of characters, to put personality behind the people who are the pilots in the cockpit, to create a real conflict, to, you know, to set this in a universe where there was really something really massive at stake in terms of telling the story.
And so like all good stories, there is conflict. There are good guys, there are bad guys. There’s, you know, there’s moments of victory and there’s moments of challenge.
And all of that’s been built into this in terms of what Catherine and her team are doing to bring that story to life. And to your point, you know, there have been a lot of other brands and products lines that have done this before. But, you know, usually when these elements line up, when the play is great and when the story is great, then you’ve got an opportunity to build something that could last for years.
And that is why PlayMonster has really kind of gone all out and put a lot of effort behind this, both in terms of the product development, the advertising, the app, the animation, the YouTube channel where all of this animation will actually be, you know, debuting. In our first episode, Catherine, correct me if I’m wrong, I think we’re talking about being on the YouTube channel August 21st, right?
That’s right.
So we’re right around the corner. It all comes together.
I’m interested, Tim, take us behind the scenes a little bit. When you were testing the product early on, when you put it in front of kids for the first time, what was their reaction? Were there things that you needed to tweak?
What did you learn from those experiences and apply to make a better product?
Well, first of all, I’ve done a lot of research over my years in the industry, a lot of focus groups, a lot of testing, and there’s kind of a magic moment that happens. Now, granted, when you’re talking to kids, very often there’s a lot that they will like, and you get really good feedback. But the response to Snapships was kind of at another level.
And we were talking to kids who, they’re a little bit older, and so they’ve seen a lot, and they’ve played with a lot, and they’ve done a lot of different things. And this struck them as completely new, completely unique and different. They loved what they could create with it.
They loved how easy it was. They loved that they could play with it. They compared it, of course, to other things that they play with today, and it was a very favorable comparison.
So that all gave us a really good sense that we were on to something. They challenged us to think about all the different ways you could build and then the ways you could battle. And so we had sort of gotten that figured out, but we had a lot more we could refine based upon their response.
But then the other thing that was really important is we talked to parents and we wanted to get a sense of, you know, I mean, you know, you’ve already invested a lot in a lot of building systems and you invested in a lot of other toys that are around the house. You know, is this something that rises to the level of something that your kid is going to be excited about? And parents, you know, uniformly said, absolutely, this is the kind of thing we want them to be playing with.
It’s creative, it challenges them, they get to think through how to build it. You know, the building process is fun, but it’s engaging, but then, you know, the fact that they can, you know, plug into different storytelling around what they finally built, that was pretty powerful too. So all of that kind of, as I said, it kind of led us to realize, okay, there’s a bigger idea here, and now we need to take it to that next level, and that’s what we did.
She did. Catherine, I’m interested in your experience. You got to take the pilots out of the cockpits and look at them and imagine who they were, what their stories were, what their backstories were.
And I’m interested if you could give us a peek into the animation that’s been developed. Are we going to get a hero’s journey? Your experience with George Lucas makes me ask that question.
Is there going to be an element of Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey? Take it away, I’d love to hear it.
A Hero’s Journey
Well, it’s definitely a hero’s journey. We’ve got a few heroes, but it’s focused in this season around Click, our main hero, who’s a young pilot in his 20s, who’s out in the outer rim, not able to really fulfill his dream of being a pilot, and he gets an opportunity. But I’m not going to give it away what happens.
But ultimately, from the beginning, our team, as Tim said, really sparked to the toys and the potential. And what we did was we pulled out the toys and we shared some of the testing and watched kids playing with it. And our team brainstormed and collaborated on how we can best do this.
And by the way, our team is filled with creators and creative artists who have worked in many cases on various parts of the universe, the Star Wars universe and franchise in various areas, such as writing and visual effects and art, as well as a team filled with toy collectors and toy aficionados. So this property was a dream come true for everybody at the studio. So ultimately what we did was we worked with Tim and the PlayMonster team to come up with the characters we wanted to focus on.
That being Click, who is a young pilot, who’s a daredevil, and of course his commander Dex, Dila, a young female pilot who’s very good at what she does, Two Bells, who’s a Groot-like character made of stone and he’s huge and he’s funny, and he’s also an amazing pilot. And their scientist, Atam, who’s at the main base and he works with them to find ways to fight the complex, which is the group of characters that are going after humanity. And it’s ultimately up to the Forge and these pilots to save it.
Amazing. Sounds phenomenal. I can’t wait to dive in, can’t wait for my kids to see this.
I’ll ask this question and you can both answer. What does it mean to be a more content driven franchise development play company? Tim, from your perspective, on the toy side, really focusing on content and developing a franchise for longevity.
And then Catherine, your experience with toys, and no doubt you’ve touched the toy world several times in your past, but really doing a deep dive now into a specific toy line. What does that mean to you? What does that mean for PlayMonster?
Well, I think the thing that’s exciting to us about this is that it gives you the opportunity to create something that has the potential to last longer, to tell bigger stories, to contain bigger ideas, to inspire kids, to play and to dream, and to kind of get deeper into a world that they may engage with. If you’re lucky, they may engage with it for years, many years, and even may carry it into their adulthood. I mean, if you really want to dream big, and that’s like how we like to think about it.
Certainly Star Wars did exactly that. I mean, kids who grew up playing with it and grew up loving the stories still can find themselves enjoying that world today. And that’s a very powerful thing.
So, it’s one thing to have a favorite toy. And people grow up and have wonderful experiences with toys. But to have an experience that transcends that, that really means something to you in terms of a story and a set of characters and universe that you identify with, that’s big.
That’s a really important kind of a calling. And so, we get excited about the idea that we’re here to not just create great play experiences, but to give kids the opportunity to have great story experiences alongside that. So, it means we have to think about all the pieces and how they come together.
Catherine talked about a comprehensive ecosystem and that’s really what this is. It has to kind of work together. The pieces have to talk to each other, that all the things need to add up and make some sense.
The universe has to make sense. Because our audience is really smart and really wants to make sure that all that stuff does kind of come together and make some sense. So, that’s it’s and it’s just very rewarding work.
When it works, it’s really rewarding.
And I couldn’t agree with Tim more. It is a huge opportunity to give kids the chance to imagine, tell stories, inspire them. The universe we’ve created with Snapshifts is vast.
There is a lot more opportunity to tell stories with the characters that we’re setting up in this first season and beyond. It’s a rich, deep universe with a ton of story potential. What’s exciting about the stories we’re telling in the first season is that it’s serialized.
We’ve got eight acts that each end with a cliffhanger. Kids can imagine and tell stories as they wait for the next act to come along and figure out how it’s all going to turn out. There’s a lot there for kids and parents and even adults to really dive into.
Stoke the creativity, push the play, and let kids make up their own stories. No, that’s perfect. Guys, I’m excited about this.
This is a big, big launch. This great amalgam between story and product. How can people reach out, buy product, and get involved?
Well, the products are available today. If you go to Amazon, you’ll find them. If you go to Target stores today, you’ll find them.
And we’d love for everybody to do that and start to get ready to build a battle. And then, Catherine, you want to talk about when they’ll start to see the episodes?
The episodes start to drop on our YouTube channel on August 21st, and you’ll be able to see them weekly as we go.
Amazing. What a great one-two punch. Really look forward to this, guys.
Listeners, go out, buy Snap Ships. These are fantastic products. Can’t recommend them more.
Thank you both, Tim, Catherine, for coming on, for sharing your stories, for sharing this product, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Great. Thanks, Phil. Appreciate it.
Yeah. Thanks, Phil. I’m really excited about this one.
Can’t wait for you to see it.
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Our partners, large and small, rely on us for invention, concept development, packaging, branding, prototyping, and much more. You can find me on my LinkedIn page. Check out the website at powerkiddesign.com, or email me directly, Phil at powerkiddesign.com.
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And remember, you are creative because you were created. God bless, and I will see you next episode.
