Did you know that May is Digital Citizenship Month in California? We’re celebrating by working with our friends at Common Sense Media to help kids become better digital citizens through a “Toon Academy: Digital Citizenship”

To enter the contest, create a cartoon on Toontastic teaching others how they can be digital citizens and stay safe online. Then, submit your cartoon and votes to the Toon Academy Contest by May 22nd, 2013. Finally, get votes for your cartoon by sharing it on Facebook and Twitter – each like, share, comment and tweet counts as a vote for your cartoon!

At the end of the contest, the cartoon with the most votes during the contest will win a super-cool set of Sifteo Cubes! Since it’s Digital Citizenship in California, Common Sense Media will also be sending a set of Sifteo blocks to the California entry with the most votes! We’ve even created a Common Core-aligned Mission Plan and a Launchpad Toytivity to help teachers and parents work with kids to create Toon Academy cartoons and learn about digital citizenship.

So roll up your sleeves and get ready to make some great teacher videos! For more resources on teaching digital citizenship, download the Digitial Citizenship Month Activity Kit from Common Sense Media and start exploring today. We can’t wait to see all the fantastic, informative and inspiring teaching cartoons you create!

Still have questions? Email us at educators@launchpadtoys.com and we’ll be happy to chat! And don’t forget to check out Toontastic: All Access, available through Apple’s Volume Purchase Program and perfect for schools!

To celebrate the launch of our latest app Toontastic Jr. Shrek, we’ve teamed up with DreamWorks Animation to get kids drawing and parents showing off their kids’ creativity skills online – it’s a Shrek & Me Drawing Contest! Here’s what you do to enter:

1. Grab your kids (and crayons) and draw a picture of you and your favorite Shrek characters
2. Snap a photo of your drawing and upload it to the Shrek & Me Contest page
3. Share with friends and family to earn lots of votes
4. The top 3 drawings win a Shrek Family Movie Night Pack – complete with MOVIES, POPCORN, and PRIZES!

We hope you join in on the Shrektacular fun! We’ll be announcing the winners and showing off their artwork next Friday, May 10th. In the meantime, don’t forget to check out the latest in creative movie-making: Toontastic Jr. Shrek, available now for iPad/iPhone.

We can’t wait to see all your fantastical Shrek drawings!

A hearty “Yo ho!” and “Congratulations!” to all the kids who created pirate ‘toons for our Toontastic Treasure Tales Contest!

Your creativity blew us away - literally. We had to rebuild the Treasure Tales webpage just to accommodate the sheer number of submissions. Nearly 600 pirate cartoons were created, with an average of about 10 views per cartoon. Now that’s a lot of Saturday morning cartoon watching!

We’re happy to announce that with nearly 200 votes, “Kidnaped Princess” by B1students is our Treasure Tales contest winner, and they’ll be receiving some treasure of their own very soon.

As always, thanks to all the storytellers, parents, and teachers who helped make Treasure Tales such a seafaring success. Stay ‘tooned for more great Toontastic contests coming soon!

Along with our latest release of Toontastic, we’re excited to announce the Toontastic Treasure Tales Contest to create and share your very own Pirate Adventures! So dig up some creativity, hunt around for that iPad, and upload your swashbuckling stories to ToonTube today! The contest ends on March 29th and the winner will receive a treasure chest full of Launchpad Toys prizes!

Top Tips for Tip Top Treasure Tales

1. Use the Story Arc to tell a captivating tale of mystery, surprise, and intrigue!
2. Yo ho ho ye scallywags and landlubbers – talk like a pirate!
3. Upload your Treasure Tales to ToonTube and click “Submit” on the cartoon approval page to add your cartoon to the contest.
4. Share your Toons on Facebook and Twitter. “Likes” and “re-tweets” = votes!

Happy Treasure Hunting… er, Tooning!

Thanks to some pretty amazing work from playful storytellers, our Holiday Heroes Contest was an awesome success! Overall, the cartoons were watched and shared thousands of times, helping bring a little more holiday cheer to a lot of people this year!

So, from all of us here at Launchpad Toys, THANKS! and CONGRATULATIONS! to all the kids that submitted Holiday Heroes cartoons.

We’re pleased to announce that with the most votes, Kasstoon’s “How We Act” is the Holiday Heroes Contest winner! “The Generous Nutcracker” and “Christmas Pageant Drama” were close runner ups.

Stay toon-ed for more Toontastic contests coming in 2013. We can’t wait to see what you come up with next!

Roll up your Christmas sweater sleeves playful storytellers, it’s a Toontastic Storytelling Contest! We’re making cartoons about our Holiday Heroes and the winner receives a $50 Amazon Gift Card plus a $50 donation to his or her favorite charity!

This year, Parents can help spread the word about their kids’ incredible cartoons. Every Like, Share, Comment, Tweet, and Retweet on Facebook and Twitter counts as a vote. Email Grandma! Post those Toons to Facebook!

To Participate:

1. Create a cartoon about your Holiday Hero using Toontastic for the iPad. Stumped for a story? Try one of these:

1. Smokey Stache is collecting presents for orphans…
2. An ice storm is about to hit Buddy Builder at the North Pole…
3. M.C. Hi-Tops is performing a charity holiday concert…
4. Chef Fuzzerton is fixing a holiday feast at the soup kitchen…

2. Upload your cartoon to ToonTube. Then, log in online, open your video page, and click the “Submit” button.

3. Stay tuned – the winner will be announced Dec. 21st. This contest is open to residents of the US, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia.

We can’t wait to see all the new holiday classics you create!

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!