Perhaps you’ve heard of My Singing Monsters (Free) from developer Big Blue Bubble. We briefly mentioned it way WAY back in August of 2012 just before its official release in the App Store because we were really digging the look and concept of the game. But boy howdy has My Singing Monsters taken on a life of its own since then. For the uninitiated, My Singing Monsters is a monster breeding game similar to something like DragonVale, but with the awesome twist of having every monster emit its own unique sound. So while you’re placing monsters around the different areas in the game, which monsters you pick and where you place them will slowly create a hypnotic song. It’s a bit tricky to describe, but makes much more sense if you check out this official trailer from seven years ago.

So as you can see, My Singing Monsters is charming as all heck, and its combination of cute characters and catchy tunes has made it a runaway success amongst children and adults alike. The game became so popular in fact that someone along the Big Blue Bubble food chain decided that making toys out of the game’s characters would be a good idea, and they were not wrong! Back at GDC this past March I met up with Big Blue Bubble to check out a number of their upcoming projects, and they had mentioned they were working on a line of toys which had created a huge buzz during the New York Toy Fair the month before. The toys officially went on sale over the summer, and now here we are and they are a finalist for the Toy of the Year award in the Collectibles category.

Obviously the creative monster characters in My Singing Monsters lend themselves well to becoming physical figures, but it’s really the technology inside the toys that makes them so much fun. Like the game, each figure sings its own note, and also like the game when you put multiple figures near each other they contribute their unique noises together and create a harmonized song. The figures can actually detect when another one is near and will only start chipping in when the timing is just right, so that the resulting song will always be in sync no matter how many figures you have or when you put them all together. Check out this video to see how they work.

Man, I love those things. I need them all in my life. The winners of the Toy of the Year awards in all the various categories it’s offered in will be unveiled at the New York Toy Fair in February of next year. If you’re a My Singing Monsters fan yourself, you can actually vote for them to be the winners of the award. All you need to do is visit this page on the Toy Awards website and check the box for the My Singing Monsters toys. You’ll need an email address to register your vote but it’s a fairly quick and painless process signing up. Of course if toys aren’t your thing, you should very much check out the My Singing Monsters mobile game, as it’s an absolute delight and has been going strong for more than 7 years now.