Elmer’s Squishies is a fun-filled activity that is perfect for kids, letting them mix, pour, and play with their character in 60 minutes. The product is an activity-based experience where the consumer creates their toy by mixing a solution, pouring it into a plastic mold, and after a specific time, opening the two-part mold to reveal a 3D soft figure.
Each Mystery Mold in a kit creates its own mystery character. Secret Solutions refill packs mean you can reuse your Mystery Mold to make even more characters. With over 80 to collect and 12 rare characters to hunt for, the experience creates an engaging activity that is a new hands-on activity and collectible.
More than just a toy, Elmer’s Squishies is a fun, creative activity. It stands out in the category by giving kids the opportunity to change their Squishies appearance how they would like. With Elmer’s pourable glues, they can customize their character with different colors or effects. Add Elmer’s Glitter Glue for a sparkle, or Elmer’s Color Changing Glue for a color-shifting ability.
The multidisciplinary design team created Squishies around the three core drivers of play:
Physical attributes include bright colors, the element of surprise and the sensorial joy of the squish.
Cognitive attributes include the mindful activity of mixing the ingredients, the sense of accomplishment for revealing the cast character, and the divergent outcomes that are possible.
Social attributes include the social capital of a shareable, unique-to-you creation and the world-building potential of collecting families of characters Meeting all three of these drivers makes Squishies a compelling and differentiated product for users.
Squishies helps Elmer’s to capitalize on the brand stretch established by Slime. Growth outside of adhesives is incremental to the business. Establishing a stronger presence in the activity aisle category is a key differentiator, bringing a trusted brand presence to a space where few recognized brands exist. Design was essential in this process to create a recognizable language for the characters that aligns with the positive, optimistic nature of Elmer’s brand. Strong packaging design was needed to create impact in store and clearly communicate the unique benefits of Squishies.
The pandemic introduced new behaviors in creativity as people yearned for physical connection with ideas and materials. The market for creative products has grown post-pandemic and this is forecast to continue. Squishies responds well to this trend providing a safe and rewarding activity for kids.
In a broader sense, the product also meets the increased desire for wellness amongst consumers. As parents become more aware of the need for digital detox time, or the ability to get off-screen activities mixed into the children’s appetite for learning, Squishies provides a fun, hands-on activity away from screens. Kids benefit from time spent on mindful creativity, and having a squishy, stretchy fidget toy to play with at the end of it. The incentive to collect and trade characters encourages more in-person social interactions between them.
The design team worked hard on a family of character designs for Squishies. Each character needed to be distinct yet related to others within its family. Clear personality traits were established and captured in the designs. To appeal to a broad age range, characters were designed ranging from cute to cool and care was taken to give them a gender-neutral appeal.
The molds were designed to be easy to use, minimizing the potential for casting defects while emphasizing the mystery of character collection. Cheerful bright colors were selected to make the product fun and appealing to kids.
