My four-year-old recently figured out how to properly use our TV remote, which means she’s also figured out how to find what my wife calls “brainrot” on YouTube. She’s specifically referring to the kind of colorful, chaotic content that feels engineered to loudly capture a kid’s attention without offering much else.
Polygon can exclusively reveal that Toy Story is coming to Lingokids as the next major content drop for the fast-growing kids platform, which aims to provide more meaningful and impactful screentime options for young children. The April 27 update will introduce 10 new custom-built activities that gamify skills like literacy, problem-solving, and critical thinking with Toy Story characters as the stars. Young gamers can learn spatial awareness by packing a box with various toys and learn vocabulary by repairing Woody before Andy gets home.
For Lingokids, Toy Story is more than just another collaboration with a recognizable brand. It’s part of a bigger strategy to help kids learn while sharing experiences with characters they know and love.
“Ultimately, our goal is to become the go-to destination for kids to enjoy interactive content,” Lingokids founder and CEO Cristobal Viedma told Polygon over a video call. A lot of the company’s strategy involves “IP Discovery,” a two-way street that makes transmedia collaborations like this effective for both parties. Many of the platform’s 20 million monthly active users are looking for new experiences. What happens when a 3-year-old meets Jessie the cowgirl for the very first time? They instantly ask their parents to watch the movies.
On the flip side of that, my daughter screamed and ran around the room when I told her that Lilo & Stitch was coming to Lingokids. She’s spent a lot of time taking pictures of Green Goblin in one of the Spider-Man games, and we’ve had long conversations about the character, his backstory, and why he loves pumpkins so much. Lingokids made her a novice fan of Spider-Man, and that might stick for years to come as she matures into other types of Spidey content. Lingokids is essentially brilliant marketing for Disney, but it’s also relatively guilt-free. My daughter now has a budding passion for actual photography and has learned about creative problem-solving.
Viedma said he came up with the idea for Lingokids more than 10 years ago, when his sister asked him to help his niece with digital learning. A computer scientist by trade, he looked to mobile platforms like Duolingo as a source of inspiration — but he knew that something intended for kids should be less about the push for persistent engagement and more about nurturing skills in meaningful ways. At first, it was just a few moderately successful games released on the App Store. But he recognized that even though there are roughly a billion children in the world under the age of eight, there weren’t any large platforms tailored toward their needs and wants.
For years after its 2015 launch, Lingokids was a premium product that required a subscription to access, but it pivoted to a freemium model akin to Spotify or Duolingo in 2023. Viedma said that within two months of launching the free tier, Lingokids Basic, the platform’s user base grew 10 times the size and reached one million daily active users. Inside the app, users can search for specific keywords to find the games they want, and Viedma said that data inspired a new strategy pivot.
“We started seeing search terms for things like ‘Moana’ or ‘Sonic’ or ‘Blippi,’” he said, even though none of these things were actually available. “If the kids are using it like a platform, then we should give them what they’re asking for.” Following a successful licensing partnership with Moonbug Entertainment to create Blippi games, Viedma said they suddenly started fielding a lot more requests from kids and their parents.
Moana has been the most popular request by far (remember that Moana 2 was released in November 2024), so Viedma’s team pitched Disney on licensing Moana to make a few Lingokids games. According to Viedma, Disney’s response was, “Okay, we would love to work with you, but let’s think bigger.” To his surprise, the House of Mouse was open to licensing any and all of Disney’s IP — which includes Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. The partnership was inked last summer and announced in November 2025, initially launching with games featuring characters like Mickey, Elsa, and Moana. In the months since, Lingokids has added more crossovers with Zootopia, Spider-Man, Cars, and Lilo & Stitch. Toy Story is just the next of many.
“The selection of the IPs is based on requests from users, whatever they’re telling us that they want to see,” Viedma said, but timeliness is also a driving factor. Zootopia games launched shortly after Zootopia 2’s theatrical release. Toy Story content looks to capitalize on the June 19 release of Toy Story 5. The goal is to launch two new IPs per month with around 10 experiences each. Some games are reskinned experiences that users will instantly recognize from previous collabs, but the team is constantly iterating on new potential mechanics.
“One of the first things that the team does is they rewatch the movie,” Viedma said. “So you will find a lot of familiar elements that we get from the movies, like backgrounds and whatnot. Then we brainstorm about what could be good game mechanics based on the templates that we have.”
Polygon can exclusively reveal that Lingokids content drops coming later this year will feature more Marvel characters and the platform’s very first Star Wars games. Based on previous Lingokids strategy, it sounds a lot like we’ll be getting games tied to movies like The Mandalorian and Grogu as well as Avengers: Doomsday.
If that strategy holds, Lingokids won’t just be teaching kids how to spell or solve puzzles by helping Doctor Doom put his helmet on, or teaching Grogu how to cook a pot of soup. It’ll be shaping how kids discover the biggest characters in entertainment. And for parents trying to steer their kids away from the loudest, yuckiest corners of YouTube, that might be the most valuable part.
