For years, Spin Master has occupied a rare niche in the toy industry: It’s a company big enough to manage global powerhouse brands like PAW Patrol, Rubik’s, and Melissa & Doug, while still acting like a nimble inventor’s house that chases fresh ideas at speed. Balancing those two realities isn’t easy, and it’s one of the reasons David Voss came aboard as Executive Vice President, Global Toy Design and Development three years ago.
“I came here to prove that a company of this scale could do it,” he says when asked about balancing tech-driven products with classic play patterns
At many large companies, Voss notes, core brands and innovation live in separate universes. The big machines continue to churn out proven IP, while experimental work is pushed to an incubator or a far-flung R&D group that may or may not ever integrate back into the main business.
“You’ll hear about companies… Disney, right? There’s the Imagineering, they do these amazing, phenomenal things. And then there’s the classic licensing and core businesses,” he says. “What we focus on is making sure that those two things are very close together, the core business and the innovation.”
That philosophy shows up structurally. Spin Master has built what Voss calls “the balance of prioritization, focus, [and] resources” into its organization. Alongside the core businesses sits the New Brand Group, a fully formed business unit created to shepherd ideas that don’t naturally live under existing banners but have the potential to become franchises of their own. Primal Hatch is a key example.
“They were responsible for saying, OK, this doesn’t fit neatly into one of our businesses. So how do you plug it into the company?” Voss explains. “You create this whole new group that’s focused on taking those things that may not organically fit into one of the core businesses, but can be something really special for us as a company.”
That structure is only half the story. The other half is speed.
Voss had just returned from CES when we spoke last month, where he saw plenty of buzzwords and not always a lot of substance. “I can’t tell you how many people I walked up to, and I asked, ‘Hey, could you tell me how this AI works on this camera for kids?’ and they’d say, ‘Well, we don’t have that figured out yet, but we expect to use AI,’” he recalls. “I’m like, well, you have a sign that says this camera has AI.”
Spin Master is taking a different approach. Internally, Voss says the company thinks about AI in two buckets: using it as a tool to help teams work more effectively, and incorporating it into its products in a way that enhances the play experience without becoming the headline.
“I’ve always felt like the best way to apply technology is to apply it where no one even notices it’s there,” he says. “I don’t feel the need to wave Wi-Fi, AI, app-enabled as a flag if it doesn’t do anything to make the experience better.”
That focus on meaningful tech, paired with an emphasis on speed, helped Spin Master deliver a recent “big-hero item” for a major studio partner on a compressed schedule. When the studio needed a fast-turn launch item, Spin Master raised its hand.
“There’s no way to get that done in that time,” Voss says he told his marketing partner initially. “Because of the investment of resources we have in our company… we pulled it off.” Attendees at this year’s Toy Fair will get their first crack at checking out the mysterious, film-inspired item, which at press time is still under wraps.
Consumer feedback and market observations inform Spin Master’s development cycle at multiple stages. An advanced concept team tracks trends and competitive activity across categories, surfacing what works, what doesn’t, and where the white space might lie.
“We pride ourselves on being very aware of what’s going on in the marketplace,” Voss explains. But in the end, the company still bets on its team. “We hire these people because they’re good at what they do and they have good instincts.”
Risk, he says, is built into the Spin Master engine, dating back to the founders’ spirit of cruising across North America in a minivan, selling “Devil Sticks” to retailers more than 30 years ago.
“The appetite to go try something new is very high at Spin, and that’s part of our DNA,” Voss explains, pointing back to early bets on Air Hogs, Bakugan, and PAW Patrol. “You can’t be an innovative company without wanting to go after some risk. But it’s a balance of risk and the solid businesses and how they can support that risk.”
One area where that balance is paying off is in the interactive digital space, which Voss remembers well from his time at Tiger Electronics. After years of relative quiet in that category, Spin Master’s Bitzee line signaled a new wave of physical-digital play.
“Then all of a sudden, Bitzee came in, and it’s like, ‘Oh, this is great,’” he says. The company has since invested in the people, technology, and proprietary AI-based tools needed to quickly and affordably build out that space. The upcoming Bitzee Aquarium, a portable interactive fish tank, is designed to scratch the classic “I want a pet” itch while solving real-world pain points for parents.
Global thinking is baked into the process from early line reviews through final pricing and configuration. Achieving a product like the Bitzee Doghouse at a $19.99 price point, for example, wasn’t just a North American decision; it was crucial for Europe. For franchises like Gabby’s Dollhouse, the company has offered different versions of its products to address varying regional price sensitivities, including a feature-packed dollhouse for North America and one without electronics for other markets.
“We’re casing the entire world to try to figure out what’s gonna happen and then designing products that are appropriate for each one of those regions,” Voss says. “We are a global company. Not every company has to think this way, but we do.”
And through it all, the mission remains the same: protect and grow the core, take smart swings on what’s next, and move fast enough to matter.
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A version of this feature first appeared in the 2026 edition of The BIG Toy Book. Read the full issue here!
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