Emily is still in Australia, so Andy and Jo continue their deep dive into the toy industry with two guests from Bonkers Toys — Lisa Wright, Head of Licensing, and Julie Splendoria, VP of Marketing. It's a conversation that traces the arc from Slither.io and JoJo Siwa's bow to the present day, and makes a compelling case that Bonkers saw the YouTube-to-toy-aisle pipeline coming before almost anyone else in the industry.

The origin story is a good one: Bonkers' CEO spotted the opportunity literally from the driver's seat on the school run, watching his kids obsess over Slither.io on their phones, and moved fast enough to be the first licensee on Ryan's World when YouTube creator toys were still being dismissed by retailers as a niche fluke. Lisa and Julie walk through how the team reads fandom — the science of views and subscriber growth, and the harder-to-quantify art of emotional hook and community intensity — and how that methodology has evolved as the landscape shifted from YouTube to TikTok to Roblox. The "playable props" strategy developed for Toys and Colors — seeding supersized versions of toys into content nine months before retail launch — is a standout example of how to build familiarity authentically rather than just blasting product placement.

The episode closes with a Q4 outlook: unboxing and blind box collectibles, the ongoing Squishies evolution, sports trading cards, and the PopMart-influenced kidult trend are all flagged as the ones to watch heading into the holiday period. Whatnot gets a mention as a platform to take seriously. And Jo reveals she's been holding a Pokémon card the whole time.

Emily is somewhere over the Middle East en route to Australia, so Andy and Jo have been let loose on the podcast control desk — new buttons and all. The result is a slightly more multimedia episode than usual, with trailers played in and reacted to in real time, and a genuinely good conversation about what the summer's animation slate says about where the industry is heading.

Four things get the treatment. Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie has just posted the franchise's strongest opening weekend ever — $20 million domestically, $69 million worldwide — and Andy and Jo make the case that the trailer reveals a show that has genuinely grown into itself, with sharper animation, better timing, and writers who clearly love the world. The Bluey movie teaser gets an equally warm reception, with Andy's observation that it chooses a falling balloon as its centrepiece moment — the smallest thing enlarged into the biggest thing — landing as the episode's neatest critical point.

Coco 2 prompts the more sceptical conversation: both Andy and Jo loved the original precisely because it felt complete, and the worry is that a sequel risks casting a shadow over something people remember with real tenderness. The Pixar slate discussion that follows — one original, Coco 2, an Incredibles spinoff — raises the question of whether the studio is in a defensive crouch. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit rounds things off: Disney reviving a century-old pre-Mickey character in a hybrid live action and hand-drawn animation style, which Andy and Jo read as both a smart copyright play and a meaningful reconnection with Disney's hand-drawn heritage.

John Baulch, publisher of Toy World magazine and the author of the Friday blog that has survived every newsletter cull Jo has ever attempted, joins Andy, Emily, and Jo for a wide-ranging conversation about the state of the toy industry in 2026 — which, it turns out, is in remarkably good shape.

John makes the case that the toy market is in a genuine purple patch: not driven by one breakout product creating supply chain chaos, but by four or five things working well simultaneously — Squishies, Pokémon, Lego, Toy Story merchandise, and the growing kidult phenomenon of adults buying collectibles for themselves. The conversation moves from evergreen IP and what Hasbro has done to revive Peppa Pig, to the fast-fashion end of the toy market: limited drops, chase figures, scarcity mechanics, and the PopMart model that the rest of the industry is now rapidly absorbing.

John's fast-fashion analogy is the sharpest frame in the episode — the idea that the toy industry is entering a phase where some product exists to thrill in the moment and disappear, just like a Primark seasonal range, and that this isn't a problem to be solved but a structural shift to be understood and managed. For anyone working in kids IP, licensing, or content who wants to understand how toys actually work in 2026, this is a very useful 40 minutes.

Jo and Emily are both away, so we’re revisiting two recent conversations that sit neatly together: one about the challenge of making original animated IP outside the Hollywood system, and one about the new frontier of creator-led cinema distribution.

First up is Matthieu Zeller, president and CEO of Belgium's nWave Studios and the team behind the Chicken Hare franchise — a case study in how a European studio can build original animated IP on a fraction of a US studio budget, through loyal distribution partners and a fully integrated model that keeps creative and commercial control under one roof. Then Caspar Nadaud of Piece of Magic Entertainment on what the Amazing Digital Circus and Iron Lung have revealed about cinema's new relationship with creator fandoms — and why the old gatekeeper model has given way to something far more collaborative and equal.

Both conversations are worth hearing in full — links to the original episodes are in the show notes.

Chickenhare

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/kids-media-club-podcast/id1573404550?i=1000777023112

Creator Cinema

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/kids-media-club-podcast/id1573404550?i=1000775115916

Andy and Jo are joined by Jason Tammemagi, Chief Creative Officer of Cartoon Saloon — the Oscar-nominated Irish studio behind The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, and Wolfwalkers — for a conversation that is as much about the philosophy of making things as it is about the business of animation.

Jason traces a career that moved from animator to director to studio founder before landing at Cartoon Saloon, where his brief is essentially to support the creative vision of founders Tom Moore, Paul Young, and Nora Twomey while keeping one eye on strategy and market. The core of the conversation is about what it actually takes to protect brave storytelling inside a risk-averse industry — and Jason is clear that the danger doesn't only come from outside the studio. Fear, he argues, is the story killer, and it operates as much in internal notes as it does in broadcaster development meetings. The instinct to sand off anything uncomfortable or gray-area is precisely what makes safe stories unsafe.

There's also a genuinely interesting thread on Cartoon Saloon's identity as a Kilkenny studio — why its Irish cultural specificity turned out to be a strength rather than a limitation, how the Secret of Kells was an act of creative bravery at a time when the entire industry was pivoting hard to CGI, and why Kilkenny being small enough that everyone walks to work turns out to matter more than it might seem. Jason's closing observation — that the industry has always been good at learning the wrong lessons — is one worth sitting with.

We're revisiting one of our favourite conversations — Emily cornered Sydney Bright at Kids Screen after she got mobbed following her panel — dropped a card in the middle of the crowd, said "come on the podcast," and here we are. Sydney is Head of Global Animation at Webtoon, the world's leading digital comics platform with 145 million monthly active users, and her job is to identify titles from the platform ripe for adaptation and take them through to screen.

It's a genuinely different development model — one where audience investment is baked in before a single frame of animation is made. Sydney explains how Webtoon tracks not just read counts but comment engagement, retention, and emotional intensity of fan response as signals for adaptation potential. The conversation gets into what it actually takes to translate a webcomic into animation, how to honour a fanbase that feels genuine ownership of a property, and why that kind of proven, community-built IP is increasingly what streamers want to see walk through the door.

There's a lot of ground covered — Wattpad's role within the same parent company, the upcoming Lore Olympus series with Amazon Prime, the titles on Sydney's radar for the 6 to 16 demographic, and what her animation students at Loyola Marymount are watching right now, which turns out to be a surprisingly useful window into where the industry is heading next.

Emily has been banging on about Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness for years, so she's delighted to have a professional reason to do it again. Matthieu Zeller, president and CEO of Belgium's nWave Studios, joins Andy, Jo, and Emily to talk about the Chickenhare franchise, whose second instalment — Chickenhare and the Secret of the Groundhog — is hitting cinemas now.

nWave is a 31-year-old studio with origins in stereoscopic 3D for IMAX and theme parks, and a track record of original animated features built on character-first storytelling, European financing, and budgets that are a fraction of what US studios spend. Matthieu is refreshingly direct about what that means: no massive battles or thousands-of-character set pieces, but a clarity of emotional storytelling that he argues can out-move the big studios when the script is right. The conversation gets into how nWave structures its financing through loyal European distribution partners, why constraints produce better creative work rather than worse, and why the mid-budget family animation that once anchored theatrical and DVD has been almost entirely forgotten by an industry fixated on franchises and streaming.

There's also a pointed argument running through the episode about who is actually underestimated in the room — and it's kids. Matthieu's view, backed up by test screenings, is that children handle sophisticated, layered storytelling far better than most adults in the industry give them credit for, and that the industry's tendency to dumb things down is both an insult and a missed opportunity. If you've ever wondered whether a good original family film can still get made outside the studio system, this episode is the answer.

A bonus episode timed ahead of Netflix's earnings call, with Andy and Jo putting questions to Emily as she and her team prep the next Netflix Kids Content Performance Report. The conversation starts with the Warner deal Netflix walked away from, and what that decision — clinical, unmathematical, uncharacteristically restrained — reveals about where Netflix thinks its gaps actually are.

From there it's into the data: second seasons not landing as hard, the hit-making machine feeling slightly less reliable, and the structural tension between binge-model engagement and the habit-forming retention Netflix is now chasing. Kids content, Emily argues, is central to solving that problem — it's the most habitually consumed content on any platform — which makes Netflix's growing investment in the space (YouTube creator acquisitions, the Playground gaming app, no ads on kids profiles even on the ad tier) start to look less opportunistic and more strategic.

The harder question the episode lands on is whether Netflix is actually in the business of building IP, or just exceptionally good at acquiring other people's. K-Pop Demon Hunters was lightning in a bottle — brilliant, defining, not a strategy. Emily's view is that Netflix's note is aggregation, not origination, and the Warner pursuit was less about content ambition and more about filling a catalogue gap they can't otherwise close.

Takeaways:

• In this episode, we discussed the implications of Netflix's recent data drop on children's content and engagement metrics.
• We examined how Netflix's shift from subscriber growth to engagement metrics reflects a significant corporate strategy adjustment.
• The discussion highlighted the challenges Netflix faces with second seasons not performing as strongly as expected, raising concerns about content sustainability.
• We noted the increasing competition among children's programming, particularly how established properties like Ms. Rachel are reshaping engagement on the platform.
• The podcast emphasized Netflix's strategic positioning as a safe alternative to YouTube for children's content, focusing on curated and ad-free viewing experiences.
• We explored the significance of Netflix's kids app and gaming offerings in enhancing viewer retention and engagement for younger audiences.

Links referenced in this episode:

• kidsmediaclub.substack.com
• youtube.com

Three guests on one episode — Oliver and Alvaro, co-founders of Telos Media and the team behind Solar Balls (half a billion views on the English channel alone, 2 billion across all languages), and Mary James, the Hollywood-experienced executive producer who bridges their digital-first world and the mainstream. Together they've just launched Run Monster Run, a new animated IP that hit 20 million views within two weeks of its pilot dropping on YouTube — and they're already fielding inbound interest from platforms.

The conversation covers the full playbook: how Solar Balls went from zero to 100,000 subscribers in 10 days and turned profitable within a month; why YouTube was chosen as the launch platform for Run Monster Run over a traditional pitch route; how Discord functions as a fandom hub that sits outside the algorithm; and how Alvaro manages fan engagement with a deliberately mysterious, Easter-egg-heavy approach that keeps communities theorising and proactive without burning through the IP's future potential. The team is refreshingly candid about what they're looking for in a platform partner — and equally clear that they don't need one to proceed.

The episode also gets into what makes Run Monster Run different from the current wave of independent animation: a deliberately broad, multigenerational emotional premise, complex lore built for long-term storytelling, and the creative discipline not to show everything at once. A team of 122 people, a theme song co-written by the creators of the Paw Patrol theme, and a shorts strategy designed to deepen character rather than just fill a feed. This one is worth watching closely.

Caspar Nadaud, founder of theatrical distribution company Piece of Magic Entertainment, joins Andy, Emily, and Jo to unpack exactly how The Amazing Digital Circus went from a YouTube finale to a global cinema event — and what it reveals about the new relationship between creators, fandoms, and the big screen. Piece of Magic handled European distribution and helped take the Glitch-produced finale to roughly $14 million across 38 markets, with the film's combined US, Canada, and European box office likely exceeding $50 million once Latin America and Asia are factored in.

Caspar walks through the mechanics in detail: why engagement, not follower count, is the real predictor of cinema success; why scarcity (limited cinemas, a tight release window) actually amplifies fandom rather than suppressing it; and why The Amazing Digital Circus's event-model release strategy — concentrating nearly all box office into one mobilised weekend — differed sharply from the slower, word-of-mouth build of Markiplier's Iron Lung. He's candid about the projects that didn't work, where huge YouTube numbers didn't translate to engaged, mobilisable audiences, and about how Piece of Magic is still learning to read which fandoms will actually show up.

The conversation also covers the changing power dynamic between distributors and creators — a genuine partnership model rather than the old gatekeeper relationship — and closes with a tease of Piece of Magic's next major announcement, plus a broader reflection on cinema's surprising post-pandemic resurgence, driven in large part by Gen Z's appetite for communal, dressed-up, FOMO-driven theatrical moments.