Big Potato Games Interview
excellent flood and storm protection to coastal areas. On our website you can click through to see a little virtual forest which shows all the trees we’ve planted so far.
Is there a rise for more educational toys that have a deeper meaning? We’re not sure there is a dramatic rise in educational games or games that have a green message at their core, but it can’t hurt. The most important thing for us is not that a game is deliberately educational or has a green message but that it is as green as possible, from factory to shelf and is fun. We think the simple act of playing a game is hugely beneficial to people, a game doesn’t need to be educational by design to do the world of good. Games help build human connections and that’s brilliant. We have received some amazing stories
from parents and gamers about how our games have helped them build connections in tricky times. We’ve received stories about how our games have helped connect children who struggle with autism. And also an elderly gentleman with dementia who was able to play again with his family. We didn’t make our games with that
intention, but it’s great to hear that simple games done well have such broad appeal and can do such amazing things.
What is your promise to the planet? Our promise is to become the greenest company we can be. We’re by no means
32 | toy news | Jan/Feb 2022
perfect, but we’ll keep plugging away (or maybe that should be unplugging away). A great starting point is to ensure we
make games that are really good fun so that customers keep them forever and they don’t end up in landfill. But if they do, at least they’ll bio-degrade naturally because they’re just made from paper or wood.
Are there any other prominent issues or trends impacting the toy industry at present? The obvious one is shipping. Getting stock delivered on time has been a mission for everyone and the cost of shipping looks like it will never return to pre-covid levels. That’s an extra expense for everyone to absorb. But we’re working on that too, shrinking our boxes, and looking at manufacturing closer to home.
How did coronavirus impact the business? Like every company we had to learn to adapt to a life working from home. With the office opening back up we’ve found a good balance now between working from home and coming in. When you’re working on making games nothing beats sitting round a table and simply playing and playing and playing again. Big Potato continued to grow during
lockdown, and this summer we had our first ever Tato Festival. It was the first chance we all got to be together for so long and for
some of our new hires it was the first time we got to actually meet them. For a company that has always prided itself on simply ‘turning up’ we’ve certainly missed the face-to-face interactions with our colleagues and customers, so hopefully 2022 will be the year we get that back.
What do you see for the future of sustainable, eco-friendly and educational toys? It’s been said time and time again in reports that the toy and game industry is the most plastic intensive industry in the world. There is certainly a lot of work still to be done. But we’ve seen plenty of cool initiatives out there to be optimistic. Our MOOP cards came about because we collaborated with a company who were pioneering recycling ocean plastic in the fashion industry. I think we need to look outside of our industry for cool ideas we can borrow and apply to what we’re all doing. I think collaborations are going to be
key, we shouldn’t keep these ideas and initiatives a secret. If anyone wants to know about how we rolled out our ideas or if they want to use our MOOP cards in their games they only need to get in touch. Equally if people have ideas for how we can do even more we’d love to hear from them. If anyone would like to see our MOOP cards, or talk through our green initiatives then please stop by our stand at London Toy Fair Stand (stand b20) for a chat and a cup of ‘green’ tea.
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