The appeal of the apps is easy to see – as Toca Boca CEO Björn Jeffery once described them to TechCrunch, they aren’t really games so much as they are “digital toys.” I’m hard-pressed to meet a child today who doesn’t have at least one of the company’s apps installed on their tablet or on a parent’s device. This is a significant move for Toca Boca, whose apps dominate the kids’ section in today’s app stores, and have drawn quite a following among younger kids. Spin Master produces a number of toys and other entertainment properties, including five television shows, like its 2007 hit series “Bakugan Battle Brawlers” and its current hit “Paw Patrol.” It’s also home to popular toys like Buchems, Zoomer Dino, Air Hogs, Maccanoid G15, and Flutterbye fairies and Kinetic Sand, among others.ĭeal terms were not disclosed, but the move will see all of Toca Boca’s over 100 employees joining Spin Master, along with those from Sago Mini, another kids’ app maker Toca Boca itself had previously acquired.

The company had originally operated like a startup within the 200-year-old Swedish publishing firm Bonnier, but has now been bought by Spin Master, a children’s entertainment company with 950 people working in offices in Canada, the U.S., France, Italy, the U.K., Slovakia, Germany, the Netherlands, Mexico, China, Hong Kong and Japan. One of the world’s largest children’s mobile app makers, Toca Boca, whose studios have produced apps totalling over 140 million downloads, has been acquired.

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