Toca Boca

Submission 5,836

About

Toca Boca is a Swedish App company established in 2010 that creates a series of child-friendly life simulation apps. As of 2020, Toca Boca has released over 40 digital toys under the umbrella of Toca Life World that enable players to play as a customizable characters in places such as salons, doctor's office and kitchens.

History

On March 2011, Toca Boca studios published their first app Helicopter Taxi which allows players to act as a helicopter pilot, flying people to their destination. On March 15th, Toca Boca uploaded a trailer for Toca Boca's tea party app (shown below). The video garnered over 291,400 views in nine years. In November 2018, Toca Life: World was released, which is free to download and includes all existing Toca Life Apps in one. As of July 2020, Toca Boca has released 44 apps.^[1]

Reception

In 2011, Toca Hair Salon was named the Gold Winner of the National Parenting Publications Awards in the Children’s Media / Virtual Category.^[2] Since 2011, Toca Boca has been awarded numerous honors. In 2014, Toca Life was included in Apple's Best of 2014 App store list.^[3] In 2018, Toca Life: World was the Parent's Choice Silver Award.^[4]

Fandom

On September 21st, 2018, r/TocaBoca^[6] was formed as theOfficial subreddit for all Toca Boca games. Fans of Toca Boca not only congregated on Reddit but on YouTube too with many YouTuber uploading videos of the game as meme formats. For example, on May 18th, 2019, Underwhelming Arts uploaded, "The Toca Boca Sun is Meme Material" (shown below).

In May 2019, many Redditors began using images from the game and posting them to unrelated subreddits. On May 8th, TheGoodestDoggo posted an image from the game to r/FellowKids^[7] and garnered over 190 points (98% upvoted) in a year (shown below, left). On February 23rd, 2020 Redditor Cbp84 posted a Toca Life meme format to r/DankExchange^[8] and accumulated over 40 points (89% upvoted) in five months (shown below, right).

I Am Lost

In June 2020, TikTokers began using videos from Toca Life: Salon to post POV roleplays of transformations set to "In This Shirt” by The Irrepressibles. On June 10th, zootedzena posted an example that gained over 566,200 likes in two weeks (shown below). TikTokers stalemat and fx.kiara.fx posted other popular iterations that received over 76,500 likes and 22,800 likes respectively in a week (shown below, right). StayHipp^[5] published an article on the trend.