The ever successful Pudgy Penguin project has broken into yet another non-crypto market as the squishy toys get put on the shelves of Walmart.
Pudgy Penguins began online and was indistinguishable from other NFT PP projects until CEO Luca Netz bought the brand in 2022 for 750 ETH. Netz saw a unique opportunity to unify the crypto and non-crypto world and wanted everyone, crypto native or not, to enjoy the experiences, content and products of web3 spaces.
And so the franchising of Pudgy Penguins began and Pudgy Penguin soft toys were launched.
In May 2023, Pudgy Penguins was for sale on Amazon. Within 24 hours, more than 20,000 toys had been bought, which caused a spike in the floor price of all Pudgy Penguin NFTs. The Pudgy Penguin plushies are not just cute toys but ‘passports’ for the digital Pudgy world offering owners access to a multiplayer environment where they can engage, play games, and personalise their Forever Pudgy character. Crucially, every time a Pudgy Penguin toy is purchased, the owner of the corresponding NFT earns royalties from the sale.
Building on the momentum from the Amazon drop, Pudgy Penguin attracted millions in investment while Netz has continued searching for ways to break into the non-crypto market even further. Fast forward four months, and the Pudgy Penguin toys are stocked and sold in Walmart, the largest supermarket chain in America.
Brittany Price, VP of Merchandising for Walmart, said: “Pudgy Penguins is bridging the gap between our physical and digital worlds of play for kids in a really engaging way.”
This mirrors Netz’s mission statement of creating a “transcendent IP brand that provides a community of both crypto-native and non-crypto-native consumers with products, experiences, and content”.