Is there anything more heart-melting than watching your kid dance? We’re unanimous. It’s just the best!

Our team has fond memories of lazy Sundays in the living room, listening to albums with our parents. We could walk up to the pile of records, CDs or tapes and choose some music to play. Sometimes we flicked through stations on the radio, too. It was thrilling!

Discovering new music with our ears was one thing, but being able to choose what we listened to and control the experience with our hands made it all the more exciting. Do you remember flipping through music bins at the local music store?

Our kids will probably never have that experience.

Instead, we ask Siri or Alexa to play the usual — classical music, nursery rhymes and catchy earworms that we tolerate because our kids love them.

What about reggae? Hip hop? Folk? Funk? Rap?

For the past few months, our Pok Pok Sound Designer has been writing new music just for your kids. The best part? They can control it all on their own. Flick between albums. Pause, fast-forward, rewind. They finally get to explore music like we did as kids — on their own terms.

Introducing Pok Pok Radio

Radio is designed to inspire kids to dance, clap and sing along to a variety of handcrafted songs. Each track explores a range of emotions and energy levels but never becomes overstimulating. All of the music was written and produced to appeal to children of all ages (and to you too, actually).

Kids control the playlist in Radio. From reggae to rock-and-roll and dance to international folk, Radio invites kids to develop an appreciation for arts and culture through the universal language of music. Rounding out the collection of music is a piano waltz by Chopin and contemporary electronic music to encourage kids to get their groove on.

Each track was recorded in our studio in Toronto, Canada and inspired by some of the greats like The Beatles, Bob Marley and Van Morrison (to name a few). We used a diverse collection of instruments, including piano, ukulele, various shakers from Africa, a glass bottle flute, an Andean Charango, “found percussion” like a plastic nut jar or cardboard box, synthesizers and drums, and a few different guitars. Our Sound Designer Matt and his wife Cathy did all of the vocals (which you may recognize from our characters in Town and throughout the app).

The Tracks

These songs don’t really have titles because it’s much more fun for you and your child to invent ones for your favorites. But, we wanted to share a track list with you, so we made up a few, too:

1. Funky Groove Thing: An uptempo and anthemic dance track with soaring background vocals, thumping bass and funk guitar.
2. Electro-Dance Beat: A mid-tempo electronic dance song with catchy robot-voice melodies, lead vocals with attitude and synth stabs.
3. Relaxed Folk Song: A laid back, melancholy, instrumental folk ballad with layered guitars, electric piano, melodica and plastic containers used as percussion instruments.
4. Snappy Folk: A snappy, South American inspired folk tune with ukulele, guitar, electric bass, glass bottle flute and various hand percussion and shakers.
5. Hip Hop Shuffle: A shuffling hip hop track with Pok Pok rap vocals, earworm background vocals, synth bass, glass bottle flute, melodica and drums that include a cardboard box, bottle caps and various hand percussion instruments.
6. Reggae Chill: A super chill reggae tune with ukulele, electric bass, plastic container drums, hand shakers and sweet bird song.
7. Rock & Roll Swag: A bouncy, high-energy rock-and-roll/rockabilly tune with layered lead and rhythm guitars, bass, drums and swaggering Pok Pok vocals.
8. Acapella Percussion: A rich acapella performance with layered vocal harmonies, mouth and body percussion.
9. The Town Song (okay, this one kind of has a real title): This is the folk rock tune from the event space in Town that inspired Radio. So many families adore this song so it had to make the cut into Radio. Featuring acoustic guitar, bass, drums, piano, saxophone, congas tabla, marimba, and of course, Pok Pok vocals.
10. Folk Rock Pok: An instrumental folk rock tune, reminiscent of The Beatles or Pink Floyd, with layered acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums and lead synthesizer.
11. Waltz in A Minor by Chopin: We recorded our very own live piano performance of this calm classic. The perfect soothing song on the go.

And this is just the beginning.

Future updates will expand kids’ horizons even further as we delve into more musical genres across continents.

How to Use Radio in Your Home

Unlike the rest of our toys, Radio doesn’t need to be “played with” actively (although it absolutely can be — there’s even a dancing bear). Radio can be a tool in your child’s toolbox. They can groove to the music in the kitchen, can play in the car (tip: let them DJ on a long car ride!), listen to it in the background while they’re playing with other toys, or it can be a calming companion on your next flight.

How Music Supports Brain Health

We wrote an entire blog about how music supports brain health when we made the Pok Pok Sequencer, but the long and short of it is this: listening to music develops math fundamentals, working memory, listening skills, patterning, counting and can create important emotional memories. It’s very powerful!

Listening to music develops math fundamentals, working memory, listening skills, patterning, counting and can create important emotional memories.

Music also encourages physical movement — singing, dancing and simply moving around. One of the most unexpected things that music can also improve is emotional regulation and connection. Music evokes feelings in us which makes it a great tool to help touch base with your child and talk about how they are feeling. For example, you can ask them to choose a track that represents how they feel in the moment. Are they relaxed, excited, joyous, silly, sad, frustrated?

No matter how your family uses Radio, we hope it will help begin to help form your child’s musical tastes. Listening to music shapes us. It can lift our mood, spark ideas and feelings, and define memories. It’s an extremely powerful tool that helps us discover more about ourselves, and it’s never too young to start that process!

Radio is available in the latest update of the Pok Pok app. We hope that our new update will bring joy and lots of dancing in homes around the world. Happy grooving!

We’ve been so inspired by the unique approach of each child who plays with our toys and can’t wait to hear what families like yours think of this new expansion. We’d love to receive your feedback, see your play videos and hear your ideas — share your thoughts and say hello at hello@playpokpok.com or on social media @playpokpok.

Join our community to get insights from our educators and take a peek behind the scenes into our toy design process over on our Instagram and TikTok.