A child receives a message from Turtle Mail

A refreshing spin on tech toys with Pittsburgh-born Turtle Mail

Turtle Mail is a tech toy like nothing you’ve ever seen before! It’s a small wooden mailbox with a WiFi-connected, thermal printer inside. Through Turtle Mail, children receive paper messages that family and friends send from a phone or computer.

Not only can parents send Turtle Mail messages through the app, but they can also subscribe their kids to daily activities like crosswords, puzzles, coloring sheets and word games. Once signed up, Turtle Mail will automatically print new activity content each day for the child. Parents can also sign their children up to receive pre-generated and customized mail from characters like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus!

The idea for this little mailbox started with creator Alysia Finger watching her daughter, Aedren, play. “Two electronic toys were simultaneously shouting for Aedren’s attention,” she describes. “But she was happy playing with her wooden blocks a few feet away—and I was certainly happy to see her playing with those blocks.”

Finger wanted a better (and less annoying) way to integrate technology into Aedren’s play. So, she took her ideas to her design professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where she was a student at the time, and created an independent study to explore the possibilities.

Finger then interviewed parents to get feedback on her ideas. “Based on the responses, I knew parents wanted a toy that gave them an opportunity to connect with their kids in a fun and meaningful way, and that they were tired of so much screen time.” She adds that many parents loved her ideas, and Turtle Mail is a combination of nostalgia—the old wooden mailbox—with technology that parents are already using.

Since its inception, Turtle Mail has been fine-tuned with testing and feedback from parents and kids. And the final product is a definitely a refreshing spin on techy toys. Rather than enticing kids with the latest and greatest, Turtle Mail is all about hands-on play. “We’re seeing so often with technology that the experience is fleeting and leaves kids with little to look back on,” says Finger.

She adds that many digital games do the work of telling a story or solving a problem for kids. But Turtle Mail puts the power of play and imagination back into their hands. “Paper activities are great because they leave the process up to the kids and to their parents.”

Now, Finger and AE Dreams, Turtle Mail’s parent company, are ready to bring this little wooden mailbox to the world! Through a Kickstarter campaign, AE Dreams is raising the funds necessary for the first round of production of Turtle Mail. “We’re a small team here in Pittsburgh,” says Finger. “We’re having them manufactured locally and delivered in April. And we’ve gotten this far with amazing support from the community.”

With a successful Kickstarter, AE Dreams will be able to convince retailers that families want to see toys like Turtle Mail at their local toy stores as early as 2016. And after that? Finger says they have big plans for more screenless toy products!

For more information about Turtle Mail and to support the Kickstarter campaign, visit here. And if you can’t wait to get your kids’ hands on this cool toy, pledge $100 or more: You’ll be one of the first families to receive it next spring!

Featured image: A young girl receives a message from Turtle Mail. Photo courtesy of AE Dreams.