WORK

A Birthday Party for Parents, Children, and Thomas & Friends

For the 70th anniversary of Thomas & Friends, FROM helped create a revolutionary new parent-child co-play experience.

To maintain its leadership in the toy and family products industry, Mattel has to keep a close eye on the evolving needs of both kids and adults – and the evolving technologies that will keep both groups engaged.

As the 70th anniversary of Thomas & Friends® approached, Mattel knew they needed a completely new digital experience for this hugely successful global pre-school property. So they turned to FROM, their longtime collaborator in digital design for kids.

Our idea was simple, but revolutionary: Use the world of Thomas as an empowering child development tool for parents and their children, and also as a separate kids' play space that would offer pre-schoolers endless opportunities for safe, unsupervised playtime.

The technological underpinnings were breakthrough as well. We developed a new HTML5 website – fully responsive for PCs, tablets, and smartphones – with a new modular content platform to enable more fluid and frequent rollout of new programs.