Toy ideas can come from anywhere—viral trends, nostalgia, late-night brainstorms, even an obscure take on everyday household items. But sometimes, the most valuable ideas come from the kids themselves.

Part 1: Jumbo Stickies – The Accidental Blockbuster

Flashback to VidCon 2024. We were gearing up for Sky Castle’s biggest brand debut yet: Sticki Rolls. The first-ever wearable, shareable sticker bracelets—50 holographic, Kawaii-themed stickers ready to be dispensed directly from a fashionable bracelet.

We’d spent months prepping. As toy people reading this well know, proper planning of an exhibition show is absolutely crucial. Hyper-analyzing how your booth looks, flows, and functions is non-negotiable. It’s the difference between “cool booth” and “talk of the show.”

We’d gone viral three weeks before the show with millions of YouTube views validating our content-first launch strategy. But there’s a difference between comments online and a line of screaming kids IRL.

By noon on Day One, we had a line wrapped around the booth. Kids swarmed our custom-built, 8-foot-tall Gacha machine like this brand had existed for years. But that wasn’t the only surprise.

What caught us off guard was what happened with the booth design.

Sticki Rolls are miniature stickers, roughly 1 x ½”, with over 1200 unique Kawaii designs to find and collect. All our stickers have varying levels of rarity, highlighted by unique foil holographic effects. We knew we had to feature this special artwork, but in a tradeshow environment, we knew they wouldn’t be visible. So we had to go JUMBO.

We super-sized our art—printing our favorite designs over 100x their normal size in vibrant holographic foil and pasting them across the back wall.

We thought it was a cool backdrop. The kids thought it was a product.

People started asking: “Can we buy those giant stickers?” At first, we laughed. “Nope, they’re just decoration,” we told them.

But then Josh (my biz partner) and I exchanged that look—the one every founder duo knows. We didn’t say a word, but we both had the same thought: We’re making those.

Within days, we repurposed the leftover jumbo prints from the show and filmed a couple YouTube videos. The concept? Use the giant stickers as room décor. The response? Massive. Those two videos have racked up over 3.6 million views and 5,000+ comments demanding a product drop.

So we listened. Jumbo Stickies are now shipping globally, transforming bedrooms into sticker-powered fan zones. We never planned to launch a room décor line—but we listened and reacted.

Part 2: When Fans Pick the Stars

Sticki Rolls launched with over 1,200 collectible stickers—a vast universe of small characters with big personalities. We had early favorites in mind, based on VidCon reactions and internal playtests. And sure, some of those hit. But others? The kids had different ideas entirely.

In fact, a few of the breakout stars in the Series 1 collection were characters we almost didn’t print. That’s the wild thing about launching a platform: sometimes your audience sees the magic before you do.

As Series 2 planning kicked off, we realized we had something rare—real-time feedback at scale. Within 60 days of launching on YouTube (and before the product had even hit shelves), Sticki Rolls was pulling in over 20,000 comments a month. We hired a full-time Community Manager just to engage with fans, absorb sentiment, spot trends, and most importantly—listen.

We started seeding open-ended questions: “Who’s your favorite character?” “Which one should we redraw next?” Then came polls, side by side comps, and creator videos where the audience voted on which fan-favorite should be featured next. It wasn’t just engagement—it was research disguised as fun.

From thousands of comments, reactions, and redraws, we built a heatmap of Sticki stardom. We narrowed it down to a final six—characters that had real staying power, not just because we loved them, but because the fans had already chosen them.

Now, those six fan favorites are getting their own spotlight with the launch of a new SKU: Sticki Pendants.

These collectible necklace charms don’t just showcase the top-loved characters—they also dispense exclusive stickers of that character’s brand-new artwork. It’s a perfect loop: fans picked the stars, and now they get to wear them (and share them) wherever they go.

The upside? We walk into retail with a data-backed assortment that we know kids already want—minimizing shelf lag and maximizing sell-through.

Fans got their faves. We got the data. Everyone wins.

Part 3: Perseverance

Sticki Rolls is Sky Castle’s first big hit. We’re a young company, but this isn’t our first rodeo—we’ve been in the trenches of this industry for years, and when something’s working, we know it. The momentum is incredible, but like all toy companies right now, we’re facing some serious headwinds.

Let’s not sugarcoat it:  the toy business is brutal. As I write this, the industry now faces 30% China tariffs, which is much more manageable than 145%, but nonetheless makes an already tough business model even harder.

As expected, knockoffs of Sticki Rolls have started creeping out of the woodwork, and that’s the price of success. But here’s the thing copycats don’t get: you can’t fake community. You can’t reverse-engineer trust. You can try to replicate a sticker, but you can’t replicate a movement. We didn’t just make a product—we made a category.

Sticki Rolls are now the “Kleenex” of sticker bracelets. And that comes from relentless R&D, organic content that actually connects, and a brand that listens more than it talks.

We’re not naïve—tariffs hurt. Fakes sting. But we built this brand with fans, not factories, and that gives us staying power.

We’re not just launching products, we’re building a platform—where kids become collectors, characters become icons, and stickers are the glue that binds it all together.