Since two fathers started Tonies nine years ago, parents have bought almost ten million Tonieboxes plus 125 million of its 1,300 story and song figurines -- like the princesses and animals dotted around Wann's office -- that children plonk on the box to listen to songs and audiobooks.
With most costing between £14.99 and £19.99 (the more sought-after ones fetch nearly £40, second-hand, on eBay), each figurine contains a chip that unlocks content from the cloud. To parents, the figurine might feel like a shrewd marketing tool to hook children and spark a wave of nagging, to which it is sometimes easier to give in.
Once it is in their hands, kids can tap the side of the figurine to flip forward or back in a story. The simplicity -- and the "toy-ification" of what amounts to little more than a cassette tape, for those who grew up in the 1990s or before -- has helped make Tonies one of Europe's fastest-growing toy and media brands.
Now Wann hopes that the new, £95 Toniebox 2 -- which he is still gripping like gold bullion -- will be added to the toy boxes of millions more children as part of parents' fight for a screen-free childhood.
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Against a tide of tots addicted to rubber-encased iPads, the UK is a key battlefield. In part this is because it is one of Tonies' biggest markets after Germany and the US; Selfridges, John Lewis and Argos all host large Tonies displays, with more than a million Tonieboxes sold here.
But the UK is also the home of Tonies' closest rival: the start-up Yoto, whose child-friendly device playing music and audiobooks is backed by Sir Paul McCartney and Mark Zuckerberg.
Yoto generated £51 million in sales last year, when it broke even after eight years of losses. It has just begun a developers' programme to expand its roster of games and stories, and appointed Jesse Dorogusker, who ran iPhone accessories at Apple. Yoto audibooks and music are unlocked with a simple card as opposed to an enticing colourful figurine, but they are still not cheap. Bestselling options, such as Peppa Pig: Bedtime Stories or Winnie-the-Pooh: The Complete BBC Collection, will set you back £9.99, for example.
Tonies, which is aimed at a younger market than Yoto, is ahead in the race. In Germany, its home market, about 50 per cent of all households with children own a Toniebox, while almost half of earnings came from the US, where it started in 2020.
The company, which has 500 staff, moved into the black for the first time last year when it turned 2023's €12 million loss into a €13 million profit. And at its half-year results presentation on August 21, Tonies said that despite swallowing the painful impact of US tariffs and the cost of investment in its new Toniebox 2, it expects revenues to grow by 25 per cent this year, with "strong profitability".
Amid this upturn, the company hopes that its new box's interactive gaming -- a controller allows children to play quizzes based on Paw Patrol, Gabby's Dollhouse, Winnie the Pooh and other Disney hits -- will win over more kids from tablet and phone games. "We are talking to all the large board game licence-holders," Wann says, adding that hits like the card game Uno could be playable on his new kit.
"The foundation of our success is in offering this screen-free alternative. Schools are banning phones; Sweden is trying to reduce iPads in schools and bringing back books. Even the youngest kids can use a tablet quickly and easily, but the responsibility is on us, as parents, to make sure we watch the way kids touch technology."
Will young children, who are increasingly used to -- and addicted to -- the flashing graphics and electronic noises of online games, be won over by what is, in essence, a Sony Walkman with a quiz buzzer?
Investors are uncertain. Tonies listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange in 2021 at a share price of €9.70 and then hit €14 -- admittedly during a tech bubble. But the shares now change hands at €7.59 apiece.
Wann refuses to take responsibility for the slump. "The stock market has its own rules that I can't influence, but we're a very healthy, successful company ... and the market will notice at [some] point," he insists optimistically.
Some analysts do agree. Henry Wendisch, at the German equity research firm NuWays, says: "Tablets like the iPad might keep a kid quiet all day, but growing worries about screen time are feeding into the Tonies story. Plus, when someone buys a Toniebox, the data consistently shows that customers go on to buy up to 20 [figurines] over the next few years, so they can plan capacity.
"It's a nice niche to be in. Parents are willing to spend a lot of money on it and the margins are high."
Wendisch adds that although the company trades off its anti-tech credentials, its success stems from the software. "Tonies is a toy company on the outside, but really it's a data-driven platform with an accessory of a toy,"he explains.
Its audio stories are not stored on its figurine but in the cloud, "giving the firm a clear understanding of what content children are listening to and when. This allows detailed and specific marketing and provides a huge pool of data, which helps Tonies plan which markets to enter and what new products to create."
Indeed, Tonies' marketing material crows that, "thanks to being data-driven", the firm knows what its users listen to, "where and when, how often and for how long, how many users share a box, and how intense[ly] they engage with the platform".
Fearful of claims that Big Brother is now in millions of bedrooms around the world, Wann is quick to add that all data is anonymised, and loftily pitches Tonies as sitting at the intersection of the gaming market, the toy sector and the streaming industry.
"We're a story-telling company like Disney, a creativity company like Lego, an audio tech company like Spotify, and now we're adding gaming," he says. "We also have features like Nintendo. We're a mixture."
The demand for Tonies' products is clear: the company's sales grew by 21 per cent in the first half of this year, and this is a repeated trend. "The Toniebox developed an alternative that didn't exist before," Wann says, adding that "we're seeing phenomenal growth in the US [where sales jumped 28 per cent] born not only of the desire of the parents [for screen-free games], but also because it really, really works for kids".
Toniebox 2 includes a sunlight-simulating alarm to make it easier to wake children up (my own experience of a decade of parenting with 5am starts suggests a sunset simulator would work better). But would Wann ever bow to children's love of the tablet and integrate a screen? "Never say never, but it is important that kids find ways to get used to an environment without screens."
Wann, who is 53, concedes that his own childhood was not affected by computer or smartphone screens. "I'm old enough that I grew up listening to vinyl, then tapes and CDs. I listened while playing, so the imagination kicked in -- just as children do with the Toniebox."
Wann faces other battles beyond the iPad, though. In May, Tonies delayed its profit guidance as it calculated the impact of President Trump's tariff changes. Previously manufactured mainly in China, Tonieboxes for the US market are now made in factories in Vietnam, a country whose tariff is set at 20 per cent. "It's been difficult," Wann says. "We are continuing to find different sourcing strategies."
Artificial intelligence is also challenging the toy-tech industry, like so many others. Parents wanting to outsource bedtime can now insert their child's name and interests into ChatGPT, for the chatbot to read out a personalised bedtime story.
Wann says Tonies has tested an AI story generator and it was "a smashing success -- especially a Christmas version, with Santa reading out kids' own lists on their Toniebox". But it later pulled the trial. "With the new box, and everything going on right now, we need to focus on where we are deploying our resources."
Ultimately, as a child grows up, their Toniebox will start to gather dust in the toybox. "There's a point where kids move on," Wann concedes. This typically happens "when the iPhone hits ... but if we're able to make sure they have more screen-free alternatives and time, then we have done everything right".