The birth of tonies®

Back in 2014, Patric Faßbender, a father from Dusseldorf got chatting to his pal engineer Marcus Stahl at nursery pickup about their children’s listening habits.

The birth of tonies®

He asked the question “in the era of smartphones and tablets, why do children still have to fiddle around with discs to listen to audiobooks and music? And, are they really suitable for children?” He’d found the perfect person to ask and engineer Marcus was immediately passionate about the idea.

Together, they considered that the term ‘audio player’, thinking that even though it contained the word ‘play’, there was nothing playful about it. They looked everywhere for a suitable alternative but found none and in the end thought: let’s invent it ourselves!

This is when tonies® was born.

A brief timeline of Toniebox

• 2014 – the first prototype was created
• 2015 – the product was tested and developed
• 2016 – the Toniebox launched in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
• 2017 – Tonie-Mania took place in Germany, with tonies® being the most sought after tech brand on Black Friday
• October 2018 – tonies® came to the UK!

@all: Are you excited to try out tonies®?