When you travel for work and are forced to leave your little ones home, staying in touch with them once the work day ended is every parent’s goal. But as you know by now, children don’t have the longest of attention spans. Wouldn’t it be great if there was something to help maintain their attention other than just your conversation?
The Toymail app lets you record voice messages from your smartphone, hit send, and talk to your kids in an animated voice through their own toys.

Our Mailmen™ toys effectively speak to them through a two way radio. Kids can then reply to you right from the Mailmen. Sure to maintain their attention as long as you want to talk to them, the Toymail app is designed for use with the WIFI enabled Mailmen as part of a new breed of ‘smart toys.’ Founded in 2012 to keep families connected in a fun way, The toy actually connects wirelessly with your home WIFI network for consistent connectivity. Voice messages are sent through the app, available on both iOS and Android.

Toymail is being very highly received. The solution actually won the Innovation Grand Challenge prize, awarded by Cisco to companies that are creating breakthrough technologies and products that contribute to the growth and evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT). Cisco received more than 800 entries from 71 countries and judges evaluated the ideas based on market opportunity, level of disruption, uniqueness, and the management team’s ability to succeed.According to USAToday, “…the Toymail Mailmen ($59) are super cute, super durable characters your kids can play with all day long… [They] are actually Wi-Fi walkie talkies that you can use to check in with your youngsters wherever in the house — or world — they might be… It’s a pretty sweet way to keep in touch and the kids can even reply right from the toy itself.”The New York Times said of the app and toy, “…Toddlers… like to stay in contact with family members.

Toymail… gives them an opportunity to stay connected with Mailmen, a line of whimsical smart toys that work like Wi-Fi walkie-talkies. When a Mailman receives a message, it snorts and growls and plays the message in a funny voice. … [This allows] busy parents [to] subscribe to a daily greeting, which includes jokes and fun facts, delivered every morning.”