By Allison Watkinson
TLL Reporter
People of Play has celebrated the winners and honorees of this year’s TAGIE awards during a live award ceremony on November 8, 2024.
The winners and honorees of the 2024 Toy & Game International Excellence awards includes design teams, companies and professionals across several distinct award categories related to the global toy and game industry.
This year’s category winners are:
- Toy Innovator of the Year: Yair Shilo and Nextoy
- Game Innovator of the Year: April Mitchell
- Rising Star of the Year: Hasbro’s Ava Garfinkel
- Most Innovative PR & Marketing Team of the Year: LEGO and Disney
- Most Innovative Art and Design Visuals of the Year: Brady Lang and Brittney Hassinger
- Most Innovative Supplier of the Year: Product Counsel
- Most Innovative Retailer of the Year: Hilary Key, The Toy Chest
- Most Innovative License of the Year: BBC Studios and Moose Toys
- Young Innovator of the Year: Evelyn Halbach
This year’s TAGIE honorees included the British toy & game designer, Mary Danby; Warner Bros. Consumer Products founder, Dan Romanelli; and Super Impulse USA president and co-founder, Alan Dorfman.
Close to 350 toy industry professionals from 20 different countries attended the 2024 TAGIE awards ceremony at the Joe’s Live Rosemont concert venue.
“The evening was celebratory and entertaining,” said People of Play founder, Mary Couzin. “The theme Toys Though Time was amplified by an insane time machine transporting us through decades of toy crazes.”
The evening was hosted by Disney Consumer Products SLM, Karri Bean and live entertainment was provided by Skip Towne and the Greyhounds, a popular blues band from Chicago.
Barry McLaughlin, Jason Lautenschleger and Brent Roland served as script writers and co-producers for the awards ceremony.
Sponsors for the event included Disney, Oxford Games, Mattel, The Michael Kohner Corporation, Hasbro, Longshore, Barry and Jason Entertainment Spin Master, Nextoy, Super Impulse, Backdrop.com, Baby Paper and Peggy Brown Creative.
The Toy & Game International Excellence (TAGIEs) Awards are led by People of Play (POP), a division of The Toy Association.
People of Play is a global trade organization for the toy and game industry that focuses on promoting innovation, creativity and connection through both live events and its online networking platform.
The POP platform offers a wide range of online resources, networking opportunities and more for contributors to the global toy industry.
In addition to the annual TAGIE awards, People of Play’s live event portfolio includes the Chicago Toy & Game (CHITAG) Fair, the Young Inventor Challenge, the Thought Leaders Summit, the Toy Takedown, the Toy & Game Inventor Pitch and Innovation Conference and more.