One of the pieces in Toca Boca's lively new line of kids' clothes—debuting in i,700 Target stores nationwide afterwards this month—is a coral-colored T-shirt of a mean-mugging sloth donning a baseball cap, with the word "Fast" printed underneath. It's a piece that the company has institute tested well across ages and genders, from younger girls to those harder-to-engage 9- and 10-year-old boys. As Mathilda Engman, Toca Boca'southward design director, puts it, "Information technology's a featherbrained humor and quirkiness that resonates with both girls and boys, and doesn't fall into gender stereotypes."

Since 2010, Toca Boca has been perfecting that bright aesthetic and sense of unexpected humor through its popular digital toys. The Stockholm- and San Francisco-based company is best known for games, like Toca Boca Pilus Salon and Toca Robot Lab, that eschew the gender norms that are ofttimes built into children's toys with otherworldly characters and wild, colorful settings. With a new gender-neutral production line for Target, Toca Boca is bringing its particular brand of inclusivity and playfulness into the physical globe.

The new back-to-school line includes wear, accessories, backpacks, and some bedding (for example, a very '80s-chic cloud pillow with a lightning rod headband). When it hits stores July 17, the Toca Boca line joins the ranks of a growing cadre of children's clothing brands that shed gendered cliches with designs meant for all kids.

[Photos: courtesy Toca Boca]

Bringing A Fantasy Globe To A Big-Box Shop

Besides the oxymoronic sloth, the other characters you will find on Toca Boca items are a plump pineapple in sunglasses, a leggy hamburger, and—a perennial favorite amongst the Toca Boca consumer base—a regal pile of poop. These are characters ripped straight from the apps of Toca Life, a subsect of Toca's digital games that emphasize role playing and are set in common locales such as farms or city streets. Those were the games that the design team felt would provide the characters, colors, and experiences that would work all-time in the real world. "Our vision for the clothing line was to practice what we're good at at Toca Boca, which is play, and interpret that into everyday experiences for kids," says Engman.

With that vision in mind, the Toca Boca team set out to find manufacturers to produce the products and a retailer to carry them. In the latter they found Target, who Engman and Toca Boca COO Caroline Ingeborn say shared a similar thinking about the values inherent in their company. When the products launch in store, they volition be located between the girls' and the boys' sections.

This is the first fourth dimension that Toca Boca has designed a concrete production, and Engman notes that it's a slower process, with considerations that sometimes differ from the work of designing digital games that has taken up much of her career. Some of the characters that are most popular among users in the games, for example, were non the same ones that kids were near fatigued to on shirts or backpacks.

[Photo: courtesy Toca Boca]

The team did use the same guiding framework that they utilise for their apps, though, to make sure they are hitting all of the typical Toca Boca marks: diverseness, gender inclusivity, sense of humor, playfulness. In a broad sense, the Toca squad says, designing for inclusivity ways creating enough options so that anyone can find something that they similar. "We worked with all the values and principles of how we design things in the digital world and translated that to the physical world," says Engman.

Toca Boca is one of several kids' app makers to brand designing their digital tools specifically for all genders an official company ethos (others include Tinybop and Sumdog). Digital products exist outside of the pink and blue toys aisles, and the cyberspace and proliferation of kids gaming apps have made room for toys for a variety of kids' interests without beingness beholden to marketing that relies on gender stereotypes. Information technology's as well a time of broader cultural acceptance of gender fluidity: gender-neutral bathrooms continue to be a hot-button event, loftier-mode labels have gone gender neutral, and public figures like Caitlin Jenner and Laverne Cox have increased awareness in trans rights. While big-box stores haven't always been quick to cover all-gendered products, popular progressive companies are making that shift more mutual. Target, for its part, got rid of its pink and blue toy aisles in 2015, and its conquering of a gender-neutral wearable line is in line with its progressive company policies (recall the controversy final year when Target stated its policy to allow transgender people to the bathroom of their choice).

[Photograph: courtesy Toca Boca]

Data-Driven Duds

Besides already having experience in the world of gender-neutral kids' products, Toca Boca has another of import reward: extensive data and user feedback. When I spoke to Engman concluding year for an article on gender fluid design, she noted that while the visitor does not collect data on its users on principle, it does test apps through case studies, both by bringing kids into their offices and bringing their games into schools. Observational testing lets the designers see what elements of the game piece of work all-time and the systems that are almost intuitive, just it also gives them an idea of what characters users almost similar and identify with, equally well as the most appealing colors, what kids retrieve is funny, and what scenarios skew as well heavily toward a certain gender or seem to exclude some players.

Toca Boca uses this information to build out its apps then that they volition engage children of all genders, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds—and when it came to developing their physical line, they already had that information at their disposal. Testing guided them to brilliant accents confronting grey or neutral backgrounds in both the Toca universe in a game and on a T-shirt. The designers knew from watching kids play their games that their users valued elements of surprise, which they translated to habiliment past hiding characters in patterns and making them pop out of pockets. Combining that testing with more anecdotal testing for the article of clothing line—showing kids sketches and concepts and asking for feedback—gave them a skillful idea of what would exist inviting for girls and boys in all different age groups. Those aren't always the aforementioned affair, but as with all of Toca'southward products, the goal is to provide enough options that there is something for everyone.

They also, of course, knew what quirky humor was universal—and that the sloth would impale. "It has a surprise chemical element," says Engman. "It'southward a bit weird, and a combination of something yous wouldn't look with something that is everyday and ordinary. That'due south the type of humor that we see that is really appreciated in our apps."

The collection ranges in cost from $six.99 (for a character headband) to $32.99 (for a twin comforter), and tin be bought in Target stores or online at Target.com starting July 17.