What are Pop It Fidget Toys, and Why Are They So Popular Right Now?

The latest toy craze is here, making waves in households across the country, and it's basically glorified bubble wrap. Featured recently in The New York Times, Pop Its have enthralled kids everywhere with their satisfying poppable blisters. Here's what you need to know about these flexible silicone toys and how they might benefit kids.

Where Pop It Fidget Toys Originated

The story of Pop It Fidget Toy begins with Theo and Ora Coster, a married couple from Israel. Over the years, they invented more than 190 games—including the face recognition game Guess Who?—and founded a company called Theora Design, according to the BBC. (Amazing fact: Theo was actually a classmate of Anne Frank.)

When Ora's sister died from breast cancer in the mid-1970s, she had a dream about a field of breasts. "Imagine a field of breasts, that you can press from one side, and then press from the other side," Boaz Coster, her son and co-C.E.O. of Theora Design, said when describing his mother's vision. Theo created a prototype, and it sat around for many years until the couple's sons sold it to Montreal-based games company FoxMind.

FoxMind manufactured the product in silicone, and it was marketed as a game called Last One Lost, a puzzle in which two players press the bubbles together, and the player who presses the last one loses. It debuted in 2013 and was not exactly a smash, but in 2019, it relaunched under the name Pop It! and hit Target shelves.

How Pop It Fidget Toys Took Off

The big moment of Pop It Fidget Toy has been linked to its appearance in a viral TikTok video. In the clip, a capuchin monkey-turned-influencer with almost 8 million followers named Gaitlyn Rae can be seen playing with a Pop It. The monkey's owner, Jessica Lacher, told the BBC: "Somebody sent her a pop-it for her birthday. … That was the first we had ever seen of them."

Gaitlyn's video launched a craze. You can now get Pop It-style knockoff toys—not licensed by FoxMind—in a variety of shapes and colors. You can find versions inspired by Peppa Pig, dinosaurs, unicorns, pineapples, and more.

Kids have been loving Pop Its during the pandemic and while learning remotely, according to The New York Times. "Especially in these times, they can be calming, they can be soothing," Adrienne Appell, a senior vice president at The Toy Association, told the outlet. "Even adults are enjoying them."

The Benefits of Fidget Toys

Experts say that Pop It Fidget Toy Animal might help kids focus, particularly if they struggle with ADHD. That's because the act of fidgeting allows the mind to be still and focus.

"I often tell parents that for their child, as for me, if the feet or fingers are still, it's a safe bet that the mind isn't," Thomas Beck, M.D., co-founder of the Winston Center for Attention, Language, & Learning tells Parents.com. "There will be more problems with focus, not less!"

But every child is different, as Yamalis Diaz, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and a clinical assistant professor at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, explained to The New York Times. She has treated two children with the same diagnosis, both of whom chose a Rubik's Cube as a fidget toy, and although one child could keep answering questions while he played with the toy, the other was entirely consumed by it and couldn't multitask.

The squid game is a story of 456 players risking their lives to become the last winner in a survival game with a prize of 45.6 billion won.

Netizens from Korea and China are arguing over the green gym uniform in Netflix’s original ‘Squid Game’.
On the 5th, Chinese media observers and others responded with the news that “China is claiming that the costumes in the ‘Squid Game’ were copied in Korea.”

In particular, Sungshin Women’s University professor Seo Kyung-duk took issue with an article posted on his Instagram the day before.

Observer Network criticized “Professor Seo has stimulated China many times over this agenda,” and said, “This time, he chose the wrong target.”

Previously, Professor Seo mentioned various cases of copyright infringement in China and argued that the green sportswear of Lee Jung-jae in ‘Squid Game Mask’ was sold in Chinese shopping malls with the word ‘China’ written on it.

Professor Seo analyzed in this article, “China seems to feel a great sense of crisis as Korean content such as Squid Game and Kingdom continues to attract attention from people around the world.” He also criticized China, saying, “China should learn respect for other countries’ cultures first.”

Chinese media claimed that the picture of the training clothes that China copied was a scene from the movie ‘Teacher, Like’ released in 2019, and that actor Wu Jing wore it as a gym teacher. The words ‘China’ are engraved on the tracksuit he is wearing.

Stanford professor Robert Sutton notes that the Pixar movie Cars was chosen from about 500 pitches, and at Skyline, the Originality Toys design studio that generates ideas for Fisher-Price and Mattel, employees submitted 4,000 new toy concepts in one year. That set was winnowed down to 230 to be drawn or prototyped, and just 12 were finally developed. The more darts you throw, the better your odds of hitting a bulls eye.

Though it makes perfect sense, many managers fail to embrace this principle, fearing that time spent conjuring lots of ideas will prevent employees from being focused and efficient. The good news is that there are ways to help employees generate quantity and variety without sacrificing day-to-day productivity or causing burnout.