Toy Pitch - Nicole Hieter

This is Hide-A-Bear!

He is a bear that has been genetically modified and put through many lab experiments to become the bear that hides anything in his stomach! He is designed to sit on your bed and hide everything. In fact, you could hide anything from from innocent spare change and keys to your dirty things to that stash of you-know-what that has been hiding in a shoe box up until now. The fun part is his stomach pouch is completely invisible from the outside and only you know that your bear can open up and hide. In other words, the fun part about hide-a-bear is that everything is a secret! He comes in four different colours and is a soft and fuzzy little friend. What more could you ask for? He's the cuddly mutant bear for all your hiding needs. And you have a lot of stuff to hide!

Hide-A-Bear came about for an older demographic and combines the stereotypical idea of a teddy bear from their childhood combined with a new and secretive purpose. When ethnographic research was done one of the things the ideal demographic studied found fun was things that reminded them of their childhood. Combining the bear of our demographics' childhood and giving it a bit of a naughty and secretive twist is something that I thought would really appeal to a lot of people.

After some real user testing with the individuals of the demographic we were targeting I noticed some major flaws that needed to be fixed. First it was very hard to user test such a toy that was really a thing that had to be in a bedroom and needed to hide their personal things to be fun. It is very hard to creative a narrative with a bear with a hole in his stomach in a classroom setting, especially when its objective is not to clear. Also when asked if any students would like such a bear most said no. After this I did some additional research asking students how they would feel about a bear that would hide their things on their bed without being noticed and many enjoyed the idea. By just explaining the product and telling them how it is used many people understood and really liked the idea. It appeals to the certain "stoner" persona because of the hide-ability of weed. It appeals to many other demographics as well such as the "hipster" because they think it is cute and clever and would have no problem with this on their bed.

Now that I have figured out that Hide-A-Bear is something our demographic is genuinely interested in the key to selling it properly in the store. I think that in order for Hide-A-Bear to become successful it needs to be sold in small trendy stores in the downtown areas of cities. As well trendy nick-nack places, places in markets such a the Blue Banana in Kensington and even in drug paraphernalia stores would be great for selling Hide-A-Bear.

Overall Hide-A-Bear is a great new toy that will appeal to many people as long as it it sold in the right stores. Its invisible pouch is both exciting and the mapping of the pouch on the bear (its stomach) provides some humour when opening and closing it. The pouch also provides a more adult humour as you open a bears stomach, which would not really be a good choice for a child's toy.