We’re kicking off a fun new contest today called “Piratepalooza” for all our friends of Toontastic!

We’re looking to add a little backstory to our Pirate characters and, rather than write everything ourselves, we thought we’d ask YOUR KIDS to help us out. So every day for the next week, we’ll be posting one Toontastic character on our FB page and we’d like you and your kids to dream up zany, absurd, and downright preposterous character descriptions (with your help posting to Facebook of course). The winner each day will receive one FREE TOONTASTIC PLAYSET of your choice.

Our inaugural entry is the very first character we made for Toontastic: Crazy Bearde!

Q1: How’d Crazy Bearde get his Peg Leg?

Q2: What’s his favorite thing to do?

Q3: If Crazy Bearde were an ice cream flavor, which flavor would he be (and why)?

Submit your entry today by 1) Liking this contest on Facebook and 2) Answering the above questions in a comment on the post. We’ll announce a new winner each day. We can’t wait to see what your kids dream up!

Last week, we asked Toontastic Nation to join together in the Creature Creator Contest and design our newest character! The response was overwhelming – 264 hand-drawn creatures – and for the past two days the votes have been pouring in.

Today, we’re very excited to announce our winner. The creature’s name is “Macavity” – designed by Maetus Svasti Low, age 6, from Thailand. As you can see in the diagram above (and in the original submission below), Macavity has 8 arms, three eyes, two ears, a mouth with purple teeth, feet (not sure how many), and a belly button. We can’t wait to see Macavity come to life in our upcoming update.

Congratulations and THANK YOU to all 260+ creators for your AMAZING artwork. As always, we were blown away by your imagination, skill, and humor… you make everyday so very fun to come to work.

- Your Friends at Launchpad Toys

Last Wednesday we announced our “Toontastic Creature Creator Contest” for kids around the world to draw and submit a design to be converted into a new character in our upcoming release of Toontastic. We were really looking forward to seeing maybe a dozen or so beautifully drawn characters… and then the email flood started… and never stopped. This morning, we woke up to find  232  kid-created drawings in our mailbox. Wow.

Given that there’s no way for us to judge this many drawings, we decided to put it to you, Playful Storytellers around the world, to vote on your favorite. Here’s the voting page – head over today because the polls are only open until Wednesday March 28th! We’ll present the winner here on our blog on Friday March 3oth!

Thank you to all the kids who submitted drawings and to all you parents out there for your tireless photography. We’re blown away (and quite humbled) by the awesome response.

-Your Friends at Launchpad Toys

Working at Launchpad Toys has many great benefits (watching cartoons, building LEGOs, all-you-can-eat ice cream sundaes…), but one of the best has to be the emails we receive with drawings and suggestions for new characters from kids around the world. SO… drumroll please… we decided to host a drawing contest and the winning character will be released as part of next month’s Toontastic update!

So listen up you budding Picassos! Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to draw us a picture of a creature that you think would fit in Family Portrait above, take a picture of it, and email it to howdy@launchpadtoys.com by Sunday March 25th! Or you can create your creature in Toontastic, upload it to ToonTube, and send us a link.

So what are you waiting for? Get doodling!

It’s Oscar Sunday and that can only mean two things here at Launchpad Toys Galactic Headquarters: LOTS of buttery popcorn and the unveiling of the Golden Monkey Award Winners! For the 2nd straight year, voting was nail-bitingly close for each of our five categories: Most Playful, Wildest Imagination, Top Drawing and Animation, Fantastic Foreign-Language Film, and Best Story. Congratulations to all of our winners and nominees. Your creativity, humor, and imagination never fail to overwhelm and inspire us all.

We’re very excited to announce today the nominations for our 2nd Annual Golden Monkey Awards, celebrating top ToonTube cartoons from around the world. Voting begins today and winners will be announced Oscar Sunday: 2/26/12!

There are four nominations for each of our five categories: Most Playful Cartoon, Wildest Imagination, Top Drawing and Animation, Fantastic Foreign-Language Film, and Best Story. We think you’ll agree: these cartoons are AMAZING. Vote Today!

Roll out the red carpet ‘tooners, it’s time for the 2nd Annual Golden Monkey Awards!

The Golden Monkey Awards celebrate the top cartoons on ToonTube across 5 categories: Most Playful Cartoon, Wildest Imagination, Top Drawing and Animation, Fantastic Foreign-Language-Film, and Best Story. Last year’s winners include ToonTube classics like “The Princess of the Dragon” and “Las Llaves Perdidas” and a host of other cartoon gems.

We’re accepting suggestions for nominations this week to be officially unveiled next Monday, February 20th. Voting will be open from the 20th to the 25th and winners will be announced on Oscar Sunday! To submit your favorite cartoons, email a link to the cartoon on ToonTube to goldenmonkey@launchpadtoys.com between now and Sunday Feb. 19th.

In the meantime, we’ll be ramping up the excitement this week with 5 straight days of DAILY Top ‘Toons. Ready the popcorn!

Congratulations MasterX for “Friends!“, our Action News Contest Winner! We were quite impressed with the breadth of your story and, of course, for the nice “Sign Off” – we’re quite thankful for Toontastic too – not to mention for our legion of playful storytellers around the world.

THANK YOU to everyone who participated. Your creativity, humor, and ridiculousness continue to inspire us here at Launchpad Toys Galactic Headquarters. Bravo!

This just in: submissions are posted for our Action News Story Contest and HOLY CANOLI are the news reports thrilling! Monsters stealing pets, Monsters invading cities, and the most horrifying of all… PUPPIES!

Voting is up today through next Wednesday. Make sure you cast a vote for your favorite as creator of the Top ‘Toon will receive $100 to Amazon!

Nice work kids, we’re SUPER thankful for all your hard (creative) work! This is TV8 News signing off!

To go with our latest update, we’re thrilled to announce that we’re hosting yet another Story Contest – this time with AngelasClues.com, creator of Blues Clues, and Super Why.! It’s an Action News! storytelling contest for kids to create and share their own News Broadcasts (Monsters Optional). Get your entries in soon – the winner will receive a $100 Amazon gift card!

To Participate:

1. Create a cartoon News Broadcast using Toontastic for the iPad. Extra points for “signing off” with the line “Let’s all be thankful for ______. This is TV8 News, Signing Off.”
2. Upload your cartoon to ToonTube and send a link to your cartoon to actionnews@launchpadtoys.com by November 9th.
3. Participants will be announced on November 10th. Voting will be open through November 16th.
4. The contest winner will be announced on November 17th.
5. Contest is open to residents of the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. Please see contest rules for further details.

Congratulations Alfred Hitchcock Trickynoodle, winner of our 1st Annual Toontastic Spooky Story Contest! Your Ghosts! cartoon was terrifyingly terrific – just the right mix of Vaudevillian suspense and bone chilling spookiness. Bravo!

Special thanks go out to all of our participants. Your cartoons were wonderfully suspenseful, creative, and oh-so-funny. Seriously, we had nightmares for days! We hope everyone enjoyed the contest and can’t wait to see your submissions for our next Storytelling Contest (to be announced very soon)!

Gadzooks and Gee Willickers! Ghoulish Goblins even! The submissions are in for our Spooky Story Contest and we’re very proud to unveil today 23 Terrifying Toons created by playful storytellers around the world.

If you like a good fright, be sure to stop by the contest page this week to watch bone-chilling tales like “Crankenstein’s Halloween” and “Zombie Attack” and vote for your favorite cartoons to support all our creative participants. The contest winner will receive a $100 gift certificate to Amazon – just in time for costume props and supplies!

Thank you to everyone who submitted a Ghost Story – we’re so very impressed with your creativity, humor, and imagination. Bravo and Good Luck!