Toy Fair ’18 Highlight: PopSockets!

Now that the New York International Toy Fair 2018 is officially in the books and I am back home, I am going to be covering some of the smaller vendors that I met with at the show. You’ve already seen pics and news from the booths of the big ones like Hasbro, Mattel, and Funko… but this week I am going to give some love to some well deserved companies that we did not cover this past weekend.

First up: PopSockets!

Even if you do not know what PopSockets are… you’ve probably seen them. Located on the back of a growing number of cell phones throughout the US and beyond, PopSockets labeled themselves as “phone grips and stands” that can help you hold your phone, take better selfies, and keep your phone upright (as if you were using it as a TV or movie screen, for example). With the addition of a specially designed mount, your phone can be hung virtually anywhere.

Now, to be fair, this company was not on my radar until later last year, when they released their first line of Marvel licensed product. However, this year I swung by to take a look at what 2018 holds for them.

 

Licensed products for PopSockets will be HUGE this year. In addition to more Marvel items coming out, there will be a Star Wars release to coincide with the Solo: A Star Wars Story movie. Additionally, we will see more with the Disney brand, including Frozen and most likely some Princesses. Jack Skellington and the gang from The Nightmare Before Christmas will also be making their way to PopSockets. They join other properties already out or coming soon, including Pokemon, DC, Rick and Morty, Hello Kitty, Nickelodeon, Spongebob Squarepants, Transformers, South Park, and the worlds of Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts.

To take a look at the PopSockets in action, I was given a couple to try out. I mounted the Toy Fair exclusive one to my Stitch cell phone case to take pictures of how it looks display, and then I tested it with the phone in the case. Even though I positioned my PopSockets on the lower part of the case so as o not block Stitch’s head, the phone was still quite stable as it sat upended on the “stand”.

Overall, this a very fun idea, and I can see this being especially useful for me when I am down at Walt Disney World at the theme parks, mainly because my phones have been dropped around them more often than I’d care to admit.

 

If you are interested in purchasing your own PopSockets, head over to their website where they can be purchased starting at $10 (a bit more expensive for the licensed ones). You can also create you own custom ones, which sounds very intriguing.