Squishies! This is the Squishy 1-Button Sound Book, a 7 x 7 board book with an embedded sound module with a Squishy button. Squishy polyurethane toys really took off in the US around 2017, and I thought we could do a great job incorporating a Squishy (or two, or three, or four) into our licensed books.
Here is my very first concept image. Three removable, scented squishies are stored in a clear 2-piece blister. But what's missing? Sound! I thought perhaps we could eliminate that expense to offset the cost of the squishies themselves, but our licensing agreements would not allow it.
It is decided that we do need sound for this format. To help reduce tooling cost, I try a design that uses the same squishy shapes for all titles in the line, but uses paint color to differentiate the various licenses. In the Minnie design, I have added ribs of plastic between each squishy. The engineering team was concerned that it might be possible for a child to pull the squishy out of the base plastic without the ribs.
I was asked to make the squishy shapes less specific than cupcakes and milkshakes so that we can use the same squishy across even more titles. Now we have five shapes, and ribs between each shape.
Our costs are still coming in too high. One idea to reduce the cost of the squishy is to make it a little smaller by putting the speaker on the front of the module.
Still attempting to control costs, I reduce the size of the book from 11 x 11 to 7 x 7. I also change the module to have two squishies, then one, and finally one small circular squishy.
I am asked to put the squishy in the center of the book. I avoided this because it makes it more difficult to design the cover and interior pages, but people seem to like it. One final change made after this design was to enlarge the squishy so that it almost reaches the edge of the hard plastic base (the white circle in the above design).
Here's a prototype module placed into a book dummy. The speaker and battery compartment appear in a diecut in the back cover.
Ultimately we also made a 9 x 9 version of the Squishy book for clubs. The clubs require that the book be stackable, so we add a thick corrugate base the raises the height of the front cover to sit just above the squishy. These are still prototypes, but they are very close to final.
