Ignite your Childs Imagination & Creativity with Special Guest Drew Vernon and the TONIEBOX

Hey parents, welcome back to the No Problem Parenting podcast where we choose to deal with and overcome behavior problems in our home. Hi, I'm Jackie Finneman, 30-year paraprofessional turned counselor turned parent coach, and I'm here to help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be. I believe we can strengthen our relationship with our kids even in the midst of behavior problems. Are your preschoolers and elementary age kids just constantly asking for screen time?

Are you wishing there was another product or device out there that would excite your kids just as much or even more than their iPad or video game? Well, you're in luck. Today, I'm speaking with Drew Vernon, Marketing Director at Tony's, an alternative to Alexa for parents looking for audio storytelling without the big brother link. Tony's sells its brightly colored Tony box smart speakers encouraging listeners ages three and older to play imaginatively. To date the company has sold 1.7 million Tony boxes and it's just been released in the United States this past fall. Now Drew is more than just a marketing guy he's a former child and a dad and his passion for his family and his children are the reason why he's at Tony's. He's going to introduce us to this product that offers an alternative to screen time.

We're going to talk about why removing the screen is critical to our kids' creative development process and how we can use the power of storytelling to empower our kids to be creators, authors, and performers. So get ready to deal with and overcome another parenting challenge in today's episode of the show. And stay tuned to learn how you can enter to win a free Tony box. That's right. We're going to be giving one of these away on August 5th, 2021. So be sure to get entered right away for your chance to win. So welcome to the show, Drew. I am thrilled to be speaking with you today and learning more about the Tonys. But before we get into all that and you share the product with our listeners, how about you give us a little background about you and what led you to your current role at Tonys? Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me, Jackie. It's great to be here. So I went to school for marketing and I started out working for some of the big beauty brands like CoverGirl, Olay while I was at P&G and I was learning a lot about marketing but I just I wasn't having any fun and I wanted to do something that I was more naturally curious about. So I ended up going to Lego for a few years and managed their preschool business and it was during that time that I really kind of fell in love with the childhood experience and improving the childhood experience.

I was able to do some fun programs. I did a doctor's program where I partnered with doctors to promote parents playing with their children for 15 minutes a day. And it was at that point that, you know, I really saw this new kind of calling for me. And that's really carried on into coming to Tony's, which is a screen-free smart speaker for kids that, you know, I am helping out with the US launch that happened last fall.

And now I'm managing the marketing. Tony's is the name of the company and also the name of our figures, Tony figures. The box is called the Tony box. So I might be using those interchangeably.

But it's a German company that was started in 2015 by a couple of dads who met on the board of a preschool together. And they noticed that their children's teacher was using CD players in the classroom to play different songs and stories. And they thought, OK, well, CDs have been around forever, you know, 30 plus years. and the technology is kind of outdated at this point.

They scratch, they break. And most importantly, kids, especially young kids can't operate them alone or independently. And so what they did is they created a speaker that's wrapped with squeezable foam and like a layer of foam and then a durable fabric. And what this does is this creates kind of an update to the CD player where instead of CDs, you're using little action figures called Tonys that have a chip inside of them when you put it on the box, it'll play whatever it's programmed to play. So different songs and stories. That is so cool. And of course, my listeners can't see this, but it's literally like a cube. It's like a little square box with these little action figures or little, little Tonys that go on top of the action of the box. Yeah, it's really designed for kids. So it is screen free. But the all the functionality is designed to be very tactile so that a child as young as three can operate it independently. So even though your listeners won't be able to see it, I'm just going to demo it for you. So it has a couple of ears on the top. You pinch one of the ears just to wake up the box. As you said, it's about a five inch cube. It's going to make a little wake up noise. And then right now I've got Peter Rabbit here with me. I'm going to put him on the box and it's just going to start to play a little intro. And if you want to chapter select or track select, you just give it a whack on the side of the box and it'll play the next chapter.

So very tactile. You can also fast forward it by tilting it at a 45 degree angle, and then you can pause it by taking the Tony off of the box. So very simple functionality for young kids to be able to do with, you know, tiny little hands. Yeah, no kidding. It is so creative. I absolutely love this. And of course, in the show notes, we're going to put links so that people can go on and watch some videos and get head right over to your website to learn more about them and to actually see them in action. So why let's get into this reducing screen time. And of course, parents nowadays, this is a big challenge because we're, you know, we're putting the iPads in front of the littles and just to help give them something to do. And they're educational as well. But why is removing the screen critical to the creative development process? Yeah, that's a great question. Very topical with COVID. I think we're easing off of COVID a little bit, but you know,

when we first kind of came to market, you know, screen time was through the roof. I think it still is just because now we've developed some habits. So, you know, pre COVID the recommendation, well, actually still the recommendation from a lot of the parenting and early education groups is no more than an hour of screen time a day and no screen time for kids under two. And I feel like with COVID that just kind of went out the window and I can only speak for myself, but the parental guilt that I used to have in letting my kids go over an hour kind of went out the window because I was working from home, my wife was working, you know, everything was disrupted. And so we put the iPads and the TVs and we put our kids in front of a screen and maybe we put on an educational show and that can help us like rationalize it. But at the end of the day, you're still putting your child in front of a screen. And I'm not an expert at this. And so I don't have all the research to know like what the blue light does. And all I know is what I can tell you as a dad, which is my kids turn into zombies and you know it affects their behavior when you turn off the tv it's always a meltdown and so there's that aspect to it but for me it goes one step further which is when you put a screen in front of a child you're giving them a visual representation of whatever you want to give them and that's fine and we can all enjoy stories but what it does is it inhibits the

creative responsibility of the viewer to create that in their own mind and that's why i love audio so much because it takes away one of the pieces of stimulus that requires that creative effort to go on to the listener. And it flexes that muscle and it turns your kids into more creative people because they're part of the story and they're taking an active role in visualizing that in their own mind. Yeah, for sure. Using their imagination to, and to kind of visualize what is happening in the story without seeing it on a screen. How can we use the power of storytelling to empower children to be creators and authors and performers to use that imagination?

Yes, I love this question. So with Tonys, we have actually two types of Tonys. The one I showed, the Peter Rabbit one, all of our Disney princesses, our storybook characters, those are called content Tonys. And those are preloaded with different songs and stories.

We also have creative Tonys and those come blank and they're programmable with up to 90 minutes of your own content. So children can write their own songs, their own stories. Grandparents also love them because they can record bedtime stories or personalized messages from anywhere in the world and upload it onto the figure within a matter of seconds. But I really see this as two sides of the continuum where our content Tonys are a passive listening experience. The creative Tonys get you into the creation experience. And so both sides are important with getting a reference point, hearing a story, learning about the heroes who overcome obstacles to get to a treasure, and learning how to do that in your own way so that you can be the writer and the author of your own story so that you can learn how to overcome challenges that come up in your own life and you can do it in a creative way. This is truly amazing to me. I mean, I am super excited about this and I did not know the part about being able to create your own story and read your own story. And I do think it's so great that grandparents, aunts and uncles, you know, friends back and forth,

little kids back and forth can share their stories with each other. I think that's just, and especially in this world of COVID right now, even though things are starting to open up, there's still a lot of distance. What are the ways dynamic content encourages kids to practice mindfulness? We've been talking lots about mindfulness. So I'm really curious about, about some of those ways that, that the Tonys can help. Yeah, I think that's a great question.

I think the first step is getting away from the screen, because if you're staring at a screen, it's hard to be mindful because you're getting blasted, whatever the message is. And so we actually just partnered with GoNoodle, which is really well known in the education world for action content, mindfulness content. they came to us because all of their content was screen-based. And so they saw the Tony box as a natural extension of their brand for their mindfulness content.

So we created a mindfulness Tony with GoNoodle where kids come in from recess, they're all wound up and you need a reset activity. You put the GoNoodle Tony onto the Tony box and you can take a child through a three or five minute exercise. And that can be said for any type of audio content that you want to put on. But taking away one of the points of stimulus, you know, getting a child in a comfortable position, close their eyes, walking them through a mindfulness activity really helps the set and setting in order to have kind of a meaningful experience.

Wow, so great. That is just amazing. I just absolutely love it. I can see how teachers would really benefit from having these in their classrooms.

So how do we bridge the gap between the rigid step-by-step instruction and unstructured learning? How do we bridge that gap? So prior to coming to Tony's, I worked for Lego. And I use this analogy because I think it's fitting.

You know, Lego sells a lot of great products. I love Lego. I was a fan of Lego long before I worked for them. But fundamentally, they have two types of products.

The first is a box where it's a rocket ship or a castle or whatever. and you open it up, you dump out the pieces and you have step-by-step instructions. Step one, do this. Step two, do this.

And you follow hundreds of steps and you get the thing that you wanted to get at the end. And that's great. That's one type of play. They also have the big buckets where you dump them out and you build whatever you want and just kind of like free form play.

And in my experience and my experience working for the company is most kids will make a little tiny plane or a little house and they'll be proud of it. But there's not really an impetus to improving and only like the really dedicated builders will become like master builders. The gap I feel like between the structured experience and the freeform experience is the lack of boundaries or guidelines and I call it the guided masterpiece because I firmly believe that you need to have a creative prompt.

You need to have boundaries to your imagination to help you become better at the thing that you're trying to do. So as I bring this back to Tonys, I come back to the content Tonys and the creative Tonys. The content Tonys already have the story for you. The creative Tonys are a blank slate.

What you need to bridge that is you need to take an active role in giving your children a creative prompt. So as an example, I did this with my kids the other day. And instead of just saying, hey, go record a song or a story, if they do that, they'll probably make some weird sounds and they'll be done in five minutes and they'll be poking each other again. And what I told them is I said, hey, I want you to go write a poem about worms.

It has to be four verses and it has to rhyme. So I gave just a few parameters. So what they did is they ran off into the corner and for 45 minutes, they were writing out the verses to the worm song. And before they even touched the Tony box, they had already spent 45 minutes.

Then they came back. They were super excited to record it onto the Tony. And now they play it all the time and they've got it in their bedroom. And it's like a nice little keepsake of the day that dad wanted some peace and quiet and gave them a creative prompt to go write a song about worms.

That is so great. So, yeah, like you said, it's not just the act of using it. It's all the leading up to it when they're creating their own poem, their own story, their own song. So tell us a little bit about how the pieces with the creative Tonys, how do they come or what do they look like?

Are there different pieces? And then do you rerecord over them? Is there the ability to save them? Yeah, exactly. So the Creative Tonys come blank, programmable with up to 90 minutes of your own content. I think you can do up to 99 tracks. So for an older millennial like myself, the best kind of reference is just like a blank CD. Like this is a blank CD. It's a little figure. It's got an RFID chip.

You can record through any recording app or through the Tony's app, just a simple record function. And then once you save it, it'll upload through the cloud, and it'll come on to the figure within a matter of a few seconds. When you put a Tony onto the Tony box, the first time, it'll actually download that content from the cloud onto the box itself. And that's important because you do need to be Wi Fi connected for that first time you place it on the box.

And that goes for the content Tony's or the creative Tony's. After that, after that first initial download, then it becomes a disconnectable experience. So if you want to take your Tony box in the car. If you want to take it to a friend's house, that's totally fine. It's got a seven hour battery life. It's great on airplanes. You know, you put the headphone jack in and give your kids a pair of headphones on an airplane flight. No screen, total engagement and quiet, you know, for as long as the, you know, duration of the content.

That is genius. I absolutely love that. That's so great. And one of my listeners today is going to get a free Tony box and tell us a little bit more about that.

Yeah, so really, we're just trying to promote awareness that's super popular in Europe right now. It's actually the fastest growing toy brand in Europe. We just got to the US for the holiday season last fall. And so we just want to share with one of your listeners, send them out a free box, and hopefully they'll tell you what they think about it. And hopefully they'll love it.

we do have an educator program called Tony's for Teachers, where we share different activities and things that you can do with Tony's in regards to circle time, or recording things in the classroom. And then we also have a very active Facebook group that's not from Tony's, but from just everyday parents. And it's called Tony Box USA. And I like to plug this just because the possibilities with Tony's really are endless. And we can give a few ideas as a company on how to use it, but I really like to see parents sharing with other parents outside of, you know, what I'm doing because there's so much you can do. People will do pen pal programs with their, their kids' friends.

They'll do treasure hunts where every clue leads to the next creative Tony, you know, that will give you the next audio clue. There's just a million different things that you can do with it. You know, people use it for homeschool, you know, people use it all the time for so many different things. And tell us about this new campaign that you're launching. Yeah. So, you know, one of the first things I thought of when I came onto the brand is who would represent this brand really well. And the first person that popped into my mind was LeVar Burton. You might remember him from Star Trek or from Reading Rainbow. He was on PBS for, I think, over 26 years, has, you know, well-established love of storytelling and of childhood literacy. So he's actually coming on as our spokesperson, as our brand ambassador, and we'll be kicking off a Read to Your Child campaign later this month, where he's going to be issuing a challenge to all parents to sit down and read with their children. Oh my gosh, how exciting is that? Anything else we should cover? I don't think so, Jackie. It's been a great discussion. I'm super excited to be on your show. I love,

you know, the progress you've made in launching the podcast. And I am excited to learn more about the work that you're doing as well. Well, thank you so much. I'm so grateful that you took the time out to be with us today. And I'm happy to promote this product because I believe that it's just going to be such a gift for kids and parents and grandparents. And I actually love the pen pal bringing back the days of the pen pal. Yeah. I mean, you can literally like wake up and put the figure on the box and have like a new message from your pen pal, from your grandma, like anytime, like, and you can correspond that way. And it's a very like kid safe, kid friendly way to do that because some of these other smart speakers like Amazon Alexa and things like that,

they're all Bluetooth connected to the internet. You have no idea like what your kid is going to be doing. But this is like a very safe thing where you report a message and it'll beam it over to that other Tony and you can kind of keep in touch with loved ones and friends. Yeah, through actual conversation.

Yeah. Imagine that, right? Yeah, exactly. All right, parents, how cool is that?

I think it's like the best ever new product on the market. And in order to win a free Tony box, Tony's is actually giving one away to one of my listeners. You have to do three things, just three real quick things. First thing is like this episode.

The second thing is share the episode on your favorite social media site or with your family and friends. And the third thing is to comment in the comment box, hashtag Tony's. That's hashtag T-O-N-I-E-S. I'm going to pick one lucky winner on August 5th.

So you have a little bit of time just in case you're not catching this episode right away when it airs. So again, like the episode, share it with your friends and family and hashtag Tony's in the comments. And then I will reach out to the winner. We'll draw that winner and it'll be announced on August 5th.

And I'll reach out to that person, grab your address, and then you're going to get your free Tony box mailed directly to your home. Shipping included in that. And for those of you that are interested in learning more about the Tony boxes, you can go to us.toniestonies.com.

There's also a Facebook page called Tony Box USA for parents. So if you want to join that group and learn about all the fun, exciting things parents and kids are using their Tony boxes for. And there's also Tony's for teachers. And I'll have a link in the show notes for all of these groups, all of these sites, as well as how to get in contact with Drew.

If you are a school or an organization, a daycare provider, a homeschool parent, and you'd like more information on how you can bring Tony box into your classroom. All right, that's it for today, guys. Hugs and high fives, Jackie.