An Education In A Box

Amazon’s launch of its STEM Toy Club earlier this year is the latest in a long list of educational subscription box services to come on the market over the past few years.

Many of the leading names in this space, such as Kiwi Crate, Green Kids Crafts, and Little Passports, rarely, if ever, feature licensed products in their shipments. But a growing number of opportunities exist for licensors and licensees to work with educational box marketers, whether on a property-identified box or to distribute licensed merchandise as part of a monthly product assortment.

Some of the companies that work with licensed properties and products include:

• Pley. Its National Geographic Pley Box includes products that teach about nature, geography, and animals. The company also distributes a Disney Princess Pley Box that contains four to eight items including apparel, figurines, and fashion accessories as well as a DIY activity; it is often listed as an educational box on the major sites detailing subscription offerings.
• Groovy Lab in a Box. Popular Mechanics, which had endorsed Groovy Lab’s core product line and spotlighted the brand in its holiday gift guides, began offering occasional co-branded boxes with the company in 2016 as part of a Groovy Lab subscription. Boxes focus on a single science topic, such as the properties of ice, for kids 8 and up.
• Young Scientists Club. YSC has added a subscription option to its long-time retail-distributed science kit program produced under license from Scholastic. It sells monthly kits tied to The Magic School Bus and Clifford The Big Red Dog, with each box containing experiments, manuals, and supplies.

Some property owners market their own branded boxes, as Highlights for Children does with its Highlights Let’s Grow box, available on its ecommerce site. In addition, licensed products are sometimes featured in reading boxes for kids (e.g., My First Reading Club, which has highlighted Disney and Sesame Street titles), as well as boxes for preschoolers (e.g. Bluum, which incorporated a Dr. Seuss item in a recent shipment). These are just some of the many examples of box opportunities that are not strictly educational but mix in good-for-you products, including items that promote learning.