Taggy Bears was created after a visit to the CNE, Toronto’s biggest summer carnival. I noticed that nearly every prize was either a knockoff Pikachu or a poorly made licensed plush. That made me wonder: why are amusement prizes always such low quality?

In short, the margins are far tighter than I thought. When amusement plush are officially licensed, most of the budget goes to the license, leaving little for materials or design. That insight sparked the idea for Taggy Bears: a brand built specifically for amusement parks, designed for today’s kids, where the entire budget goes into creating high-quality plush that actually stand out as prizes worth winning.The challenge became: how do you make a teddy bear relevant to kids today?

I began by deep diving into Gen Alpha culture and visual language. Through my sketch explorations, I developed bears with exaggerated expressions inspired by memes, slang, and the faces kids make and share online. Each plush became a physical embodiment of Gen Alpha humor, from the “Rizz Face” (shoutout Rizzler) to other internet-driven reactions. To strengthen their presence in amusement parks, I designed oversized hangtags shaped like speech bubbles, giving the bears a bold voice to enhance the meme worthy facial expressions I gave on the plush. The Taggy Bears are designed for Gen-Alpha, and only found online or won at Amusment.

From there, I led the brand into marketing. Since the DNA of Taggy Bears is rooted in memes, I led the creation of TikToks, Giphys, memes and various other social media assets designed for virality. By tapping into current trends, I grew the TikTok page to 250K+ views and 12K+ likes before the brand even launched, engraining the Taggy Bears into meme culture built for Gen Alpha. Check it out on TikTok here: @TaggyBears.