Toi ecológico (I'm ecological). Yo Toi de muchas maneras (I'm Toi in many ways), pero ¿alguien le ha preguntado a la tierra como tá? (but has anyone asked the earth how it is?). Toi likeao (I'm liked), Toi digitalizao (I'm digitized), Toi down (I'm down), Toi de finde (I'm on weekend), Toi de güay (I'm cool). These are some of the new moods of Toi, a cartoon character created by designer Jordi Català, who was a popular phenomenon in the late 80s and 90s. Success came when the company Panrico decided to make a collection of adhesive stickers to put inside Bollycao packages.
Now, 32 years later, Toi tá de vuelta (Toi is back), because the company Panini España commissioned Jordi Català to bring the character back to life to launch an album of 200 new collectible adhesive stickers. 14 million stickers will be distributed throughout Spain where Toi has caught up, "with a language adapted to current times, closely linked to new technologies, new habits, in short, to the new society," explains the designer, who now also collaborates with The New Barcelona Post.
Català believes that the stickers will delight the little ones, but also their parents, the first fans of Toi, who will find some vintage pages in the collectible "to know what this mutation is about." He hopes it will become a phenomenon again, "in this case, viral because some stickers have already been designed, which can become a communication tool for Whatsapp and other networks and digital messaging formats."
The idea for the relaunch arose when, at the end of 2019, to celebrate Toi's thirtieth anniversary, an exhibition was organized at the Official College of Graphic Design of Catalonia and the echo made Panini interested in the character and saw many opportunities.
Jordi Català: "Toi is a mood with antennas, which was the precursor of emoticons and SMS language"The function of Toiwas and is that of"to communicate and visualize things at a synthetic level, with moods and human reactions, with the language of ordinary people", explains Català, who describesToias "a state of mind with antennas," which was "the precursor of emoticons and SMS language." In the new album,Toiwill express and give opinions on new thematic areas such as ecology, climate change, technological languages... and others in the field of leisure, such as cinema myths, horror, sports, video games or mobile phone use.
The long career of the graphic designer and professional in marketing and visual communication and his academic dedication takes him further in his explanations about "this icon": he recalls that "the first Toi, a green doll, with antennas and large yellow eyes, were drawn by hand to illustrate a cartoon for the humorous section La caña dulce, directed by journalist Joaquim Coca, in El Periódico". Català also gives a recommendation to his students at Eina University Center of Design and Art of Barcelona: the first step is always to take pencil and paper.
Toi has always expressed itself in Spanish (and in Portuguese when it made the leap to Portugal). And, for now, Toi will continue to express itself in Spanish. To complete the album Toi el Toi you will have to obtain the 200 stickers that make it up and that can be acquired in all kiosks and candy stores in Spain and in the distribution channels of large chains such as El Corte Inglés or FNAC. 2 million envelopes will be published ---with seven stickers each---, which will cost 0.8 euros, and some packages of 10 envelopes, which will be worth 8 euros.
It was in 2011 when Panrico made the last campaign of enveloping the iconic cartoon inside the Bollycao, a pastry that was very popular among young people. Since 1989, the Catalan industrial pastry company ---also manufacturer of Donuts and today owned by Bimbo--- distributed more than 150 million Toi stickers.
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