Last Thursday we hosted our Mind Candy bi-weekly invention… a little something we call GAME JAM!

Participants were divided into three teams that used a brilliant and hilarious online service called, ‘Video Game Name Generator’ to select their game name at random.

Selecting the names of the games...

Thus was born: Wondrous Lawn Mower Rider, Future Sewer Studio, and Super Skydiving Showdown - These names haven’t developed into massively popular games in the past  (…hard to believe – I know!)

Luckily we came across them and game magic began. Teams had one hour to bring their game concept to life with or without their computers. (Craft supplies were also welcome for those that are more hands on.)

Working on creating 'Super Skydiving Showdown..'

Craft supplies come out for 'Wonderous Lawn Mower Rider'

Research for 'Future Sewer Studio' begins...

The game results were shared with everyone in our Friday ‘Show and Tell’ session. What bizarre games will we come up with next!?

Super Skydiving Showdown

Wonderous Lawn Mower Rider

Future Sewer Studio

-  Guest written and photography by Megan Kane

 Michael isn’t the only celebrity in the office though as a few other Mind Candies got to star in the shoot too! In the far, far background yes…but we’re still there! 

The debut album stormed the official UK album charts coming in at number 4 – ahead of iconic music artists including Madonna and Lost Prophets! Achieving a top 5 for a debut album with no radio or TV play is some feat so we’re really proud of our little musical monsters!

To support the album we hosted an exclusive media launch party at the Hard Rock Cafe in London, which was well attended by media, competition winners and celebs including McFly, Sophie Ellis-Bexter, James Bourne and Matt Willis from Busted and Javine Hylton. Zack BinSpin performed a world exclusive and there was lots of fun with more performances, Moshi tattoos, sweeties, candyfloss, a photobooth, the real McNulty pup walking the red carpet and Mr Moshi arriving in this Moshified Mini!

Mr Moshi arrives at The Hard Rock Cafe in the Moshi Mini!

McFly and Mr Moshi at the album launch party

On the day of launch we ran an event at HMV’s flagship store on London’s Oxford street for fans to see Zack perform his single and meet Mr Moshi to get their albums signed. The first 50 fans received goody bags and everyone received sweets and a Moshi mag. Hundreds of fans turned up with some queueing from as early as 5am – now that’s Moshi dedication :)

The big queue of fans outside HMV in Oxford Street, London!

Zack Binspin performing his single

Check out all the music action in this video!

The trip kicked off in San Francisco where management and some Mind Candy staff attended the GDC conference. This bought together gaming pros from all over the world to attend talks, conferences and to do some networking!

Whilst out in the US, the team took an inspiring trip to the Pixar Headquarters…

The Mind Candy Team inside Pixar's Headquarters!

Woody from Toy Story

This was followed by meetings, interviews with some potential new Mind Candies and a little sightseeing around San Francisco!
Michael also gave a talk at Stanford University and had a brilliant tour of the Facebook campus…

Inside Facebook's Headquarters

Next up was LA (aka MoshAngeles) to meet up with the Mind Candy US team in the Santa Monica office. Meetings here, interviews there and an addiction to the DrawSomething app later… it was back to Moshi HQ in London to share the stories!

Mind Candy in LA! (R to L: Brad Schultz, H/O Moshi TV - Divinia Knowles, CFO - Michael Acton Smith, CEO - Katie Gerber, Director, PR North America)

There’s an exciting buzz at Moshi HQ today as word of our partnership with ‘Sony Music Records’ is spreading! We launched our new record label, ‘Moshi Monsters Music’ a while back and are now ready to rock the music scene with our debut album ‘Music Rox!’

The album is available for pre-order online as of today from Amazon.co.uk, Play.com and HMV.co.uk. Physical copies will hit shelves in the UK from April 2^nd and it will be available to download globally on iTunes!

Our music is produced in house by our brilliant Music team, headed up by Jason Perry (Head of Music) alongside Steve Cleverley and Sanj Sen (Writers/Producers). Jason is our resident rock star, having experienced huge international success fronting rock band ‘A’ and producing many number one records for McFly and Busted’s Matt Willis. We’re sure he’ll bring some of his magic from past projects to our very own MonStars! He’ll be working closely with Sony Music who will handle our UK distribution for our forthcoming music releases.

(Left to right: Jason Perry, Head Of Music Mind Candy; Nicola Tuer, EVP Sony Music; Katsuma – Moshi Monster; Nick Gatfield, Chairman and CEO Sony Music; Pete Leggatt, VP Sales Sony Music)

‘Music Rox’ features twelve tracks from our favourite Moshi characters including Dr Strangeglove, Popstar Poppet, Zommer, Big Bad Bill and Sweet Tooth. We’ve also developed some awesome new music characters including, Bobbi SingSong and Zack Binspin! We experimented a lot with the sound of our album and covered all genres from rock to Bollywood, combining catchy tunes and witty lyrics that we hope will appeal to both kids and adults.

We’re hosting an exclusive album launch party at the Hard Rock Café in London at the end of March prior to the album being released on April 2^nd. This will give our musical Monsters their first taste of gooperstardom!

Check out our new lid on the block – Zack BinSpin featuring Blingo The Fox. He’s a Moptop Tweenybop and his hair’s too long!

You can check out all of our other new artists at www.moshimusic.com

 Mini art in the form of monsters, cities, birds, cars, swirls, and rocket ships were to name a few of the fantastic specimens of our handy work. We raised cash for Epilepsy Action too, and a snazzy time lapse video was created from the hours of doodling we put in!

 - Guest written by Megan Kane

- Photography by Megan Kane

Mind Candy came 25th in The Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies to Work For 2012! This prestigious award puts companies through their paces, checking their workplace performance and success based on staff well-being, benefits and management leadership to name a few. Michael and the team were thrilled and partied the night away.

We’ve also won the ‘Highly Commended’ award in the technology category at The Marketing Excellence Awards 2012! We were up against the likes of Microsoft, Siemens and TalkTalk so this a testament to the fantastic Edward Relf – our Chief Marketing Officer and all of his hard work alongside a great team!

Our Head of Moshi Live, Clare Wiggins tells us: “The atmosphere was electric with thousands of amazing Moshi fans bringing along their Moshi collections & favourite toys each day to Bradford.  Each one was greeted by the happy and passionate staff at the Museum, who also shared the Moshi love with their customised t-shirts and bags!  There wasn’t a sad face in the house by the end of each day. So many happy fans from all the free activities and also lots of tired Moshlings for Mum and Dad to tuck up in bed after so much Moshi excitement!”

Here’s some pictures from the event and a brilliant video of Katsuma shaking his hips and tail to show the crowd his best dance moves!

This gave us all fond memories of the treasured items we collected as kids so – we sent James a box of trading cards to help him restore his collection! We were excited to hear that many kids from the town had got involved – The Argus had printed it on their front page and one girl even gave away her own cards to help James! 

Mr Moshi invited James and his brother George along to Moshi HQ so they could see how the game is created and the people behind the monsters….

- Guest written and photography by Megan Kane

…Moshi Monsters won the ‘Toy License of the Year’ award and our Moshlings by Vivid won ‘Collectable Toy Of the Year’ too!

Michael and the team celebrate our win alongside some partners!

In the photos are Innovation First’s CEO Tony Norman, Chief Marketing Officer Joel Carter, Jason and Brad from Moshi TV.

Keen Moshi fans and parents, armed with their favourite Moshi cards/figures/toys had been queuing up for about an hour before we started!

The Moshi Bus crew kept some of the kids occupied by doing some ‘Mash Up’ card trading in the queue.  The highlight of my day was meeting a family visiting from Spain who changed their holiday schedule & made a special detour just so they could get on the Moshi Bus!

Keep your eyes peeled in the next few months for the tour….!

- Written by Akira Cheng

- Written by & photo’s by Megan Kane.

On board, kids will have the chance to draw and colour monsters at the art and craft sessions, enjoy clay buddy modelling and trade Moshi toys and cards. There will also be Moshi giveaways, quizzes and competitions to win Moshi merchandise, including a special “Busling” Topps trading card. You can even browse and buy your favourite Moshi merchandise in the Mobile Moshi Monsters Store at the top of the bus. And if that’s not enough…there’s a slide so that kids can have as much fun getting out as they did going in!

The bus will stay there till December 23^rd with Mr Moshi making a guest appearance on the 18^th for a meet and greet between midday and 3pm.

It will then move on to Manchester’s Trafford Centre where it will park up at The Great Hall entrance car park from Wednesday 28th December until Monday 2nd January.

Keep an eye out as next year it will be touring shopping centre’s and festivals all across the UK! Check out www.moshibus.com for the latest news from the Moshi bus.

The two final contestants Zara and James had to create an online game with the help of Mind Candy. The winner, Zara went for ‘Piggy Panic’ whilst runner up James went for ‘Crazy Cabinet.’

The Mind Candy team put in a lot of hard work and turned the games around in just 2 days.  Some of our favourite screen shots are below!

It was a fantastic turn out with a lot of excitement in the air. The first people in the queue had been there since 9:30am even though the event started at 2pm. Two children in the queue had even been up till midnight the evening before drawing pictures especially for the event!

Thanks to all those who came along.

Want a job? visit our recruitment page or follow @mindcandyjobs on twitter.

The pair made quite the cheeky duo as David grilled Michael on the trials, tribulations and darker moments of becoming a Tech Entrepreneur. They also discussed future plans and Michael’s vision for making Mind Candy one of the first billion dollar businesses to emerge out of London’s Tech scene.

The event proved very popular, pulling in hundreds of people who were keen to hear the Mind Candy story.

Thanks to the team at Glasshouse for hosting a fantastic event and to all those that came along.

Pictures by @paul_clarke

The popular and well respected Glasshouse events are hosted by Judith Clegg (@judithclegg)

Michael and David take to the stage

Deep in chat…

That tequila moment!

The event drew a great crowd

As the party buses arrived and the crowds flooded in to our Shoreditch-based offices, the party kicked off. We had a DJ, an Awesome band (Skalectrix), a photo booth (along with some dashing accessories) and lots of other fun treats including candy floss, retro sweeties and the obligatory Moshi tattoo’s – many of which were placed prominently in the middle of foreheads…hot!

Thanks to everyone that came along – we hope you had as much fun as we did. (and managed to scrub off those temporary tatts in time for your early morning meetings).

A few pics below – more here

Our son suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome and, whilst he looks like any other 7 year old, his condition means that there are certain things that he really struggles with. His difficulties became so great for him that he is no longer even able to attend school and is now home educated.

Since discovering Moshi Monsters earlier in the year, we have seen some major improvements in him. He is happy to talk to anyone (and everyone!) about Moshi Monsters – and yet he normally finds it difficult to even say hello or goodbye due to the social communication difficulties he experiences.

Like many other children with Asperger’s, creativity can often be a problem. Yet he has amazed us all with his constant outpouring of Moshi ideas. He wakes early each morning and designs a new Moshling, Moshi food or Moshi idea.

Doctors and therapists have been astounded by the progress he has made in his handwriting – he is happy to practice his handwriting using Moshi words like ‘roarberry cheesecake,’ and Moshling names like ‘Ecto,’ ‘Iggy’ and the others and can even manage cursive-style handwriting when focused on Moshi words.

He has been able to write stories for creative writing about Moshi Monsters – sometimes many pages long (previously it would be a struggle to get any form of story more than a couple of sentences).

Often parents complain about the negative effects of the internet and computer games on their children’s wellbeing and yet, thanks to Moshi Monsters, our experience has been an extremely positive one.

We genuinely believe that the progress that our son has made in the past six months or so would not have been possible without the fabulous concept that is Moshi Monsters. Thank you Moshi for all you do.

After a fun night – and a very mixed bag of abilities throwing the more strategic into disarray – it was poker novice (and Senior Software Engineer) Greg Roodt who took home the trophy. Resident IT guru James Minerve followed as a close second and the latest addition to the marketing team, Tanya Laird, came a very respectable third place!

It’s good humoured at the beginning…

But when the chips are down…

…and the pressure is on…

It’s about bringing home the win! …Well done Greg :)

We’ll also be throwing a party during the evening on day two, so grab the party bus outside Olympia at 6pm, come along for a drink and mingle with the Moshis :)

BLE Keynote Speech – 13:00 Tuesday 18th October – The Licensing Academy

Monster Party – From 18:00 on Wednesday 19th October – (Please note this is a trade event only)

To attend the party or request a meeting RSVP to licensing@mindcandy.com

Unfortunately there were no awards for the little Monsters this time around, but with some of the activity Mr Garnham and team have up their sleeves next year has to be our year!…

Congratulations to all of last night’s winners from team Moshi!

Team Moshi

Indiana Furi takes to the big screen

What…it’s black tie? Yes boys, but you look lovely all the same…

The government are increasingly intrigued by the buzzing tech startup scene in Shoreditch and Lord Sassoon wanted to come and check out what it’s all about…

Fans were treated to various Moshi delights at the dedicated Moshi Monsters Marquee including, glitter tattoos, colouring activities, online games, meet-and-greets with Katsuma – and a very special visit from Moshling starlet, Lady Goo Goo (who made her first ever public appearance).

The turnout was monstrous and a fantastic time was had by all :)

The Moshi team hanging with McFly!

The kids adored the new Lady Goo Goo costume character…

The Mind Candies had a busy weekend.

(Pictures from Scott Davies)

ABC figures released today reveal that within its first six months on shelf the Moshi Monsters magazine has reached a circulation of 113,748 (Source ABC – 1 April to 30 June 2011), eclipsing its rivals and ranking at number 70 within the top 100 magazines sold in the UK overall.

Fantastic news – the team at Moshi HQ are chuffed :)

Emma (Editor) and Andy (Product Manager) celebrating success!

The cover of issue #7 – 3D themed issue out August 18th

Last Friday Toys”R”Us in Times Square, New York, played host to an exclusive Moshi Monsters toy launch party. It was a fantastic event that saw thousands of kids queueing to check out the range and get signed goodies from Mr Moshi.

Toys”R”Us stores across North America will stock Moshi product exclusively until the end of the year.

This weekend also sees the Monsters setting off on a U.S. Mall Tour – set to reach over 1million kids! Check out the Moshi blog for more info.

Moshi Rocks! Michael, Darran and Eric hit Times Square

The fans meet Mr Moshi!…

…And Poppet

Getting creative.

A fantastic time was had by all in attendance and it’s great for the company to win its first games industry accolade :)

The Develop Industry Excellence Awards form part of the Develop Conference, which took place in Brighton this week. Michael closed day one with a keynote speech that went down a storm.

Check out the awards write up on Gamasutra

Michael collects the award

The Mind Candies celebrate

Michael with Ian Livingstone, creator of Fighting Fantasy and one of the reasons he got into the games industry

The team picked up the Venture Capital-Backed Management Team of the Year award, having previously scooped the London and South-East regional heat.

Nice work guys…keep ‘em coming!

Divinia, Toby and Ed were at hand to collect the awards

Next week, the Mind Candy team will head out to the Las Vegas International Licensing Expo to exhibit for the first time.

The show brings together brand owners (such as ourselves) with licensing partners – but most importantly, is also attended by retail buyers who are keeping their ears to the ground for the latest must-have properties.

Drop by and visit us at booth 5669 and head over to our brand presentation at 5.30pm on Wednesday 15th June – Mandalay Bay Convention Centre, 3rd Floor, Jasmin A&B.

There will be about 8 Mind Candies at the show, so drop us a line if you’d like to arrange a meeting – licensing@mindcandy.com

Mind Candy kicked off the inaugral Silicon Drinkabout event last week – a casual Friday drink in Shoreditch to bring together like-minded tech startup folk.

Tonight’s event will be at the Strongroom (120 Curtain Road) from 6pm ish.

The venue will change each week so keep your eyes peeled for updates via twitter (#SiliconDrinkabout) and Facebook

Poster kids for the first Silicon Roundabout - Mind Candy, Moo, Songkick, Group Spaces

Journalists and their children were invited into the hub of Moshi Monsters for a morning of monstrous fun and games! We had a fantastic turn out including The Times, The Independent, The Evening Standard, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Glamour, Vogue, Mother and Baby, AskAMum, Tums2Mums, First News, The Licensing Source Book and Ad Age.

Children were delighted to meet the Moshi team and our many special guests including Poppet, the real life McNulty pup, Piff the Magic Dragon and the star attraction, Mr Moshi himself.

Our guests enjoyed a speech from Mr Moshi (including some top secret upcoming Moshi plans), party games, face painting, drawing, dancing, general dive-bombing into our much loved bean bag ‘Glumps’ and plenty of yummy treats.

An office full of children, a puppy and copious amounts of sugar could have proved challenging, but with no tears, no sickness – despite the sugar-fuelled dive-bombing! – and lots of happy faces, we’d like to count it as a big success!

Mr Moshi welcomes the guests

Meeting the Monsters

Sweet Treats…

The Real McNulty Pup

The ‘Glumps’ were a smash hit!

The kids get ‘Moshified’

Axel (our designer) gets glumpy…

Around 70 guests turned out to join the discussion on how social gaming changes everything and why maturing businesses need to retain customers, not buy them.

Michael was joined by Patrick O’Luanaigh (nDreams), Dylan Collins (ex Jolt Online, DemonWare) and Andy Moseby (Kemp Little) on the panel which was hosted by Nicholas Lovell from Gamesbrief.

It was a great discussion with a healthy amount of debate – and a few jibes at Mr Lovell for his recent blog posts!

A great evening had by all.

- Moshi Monsters was rated amongst the top 5 favourite websites for both boys and girls between the ages 4 – 12 years old including the likes of Facebook and Miniclip
- Moshi was voted the 2nd favourite website amongst girls 7 – 12 years old, 2nd only to Facebook!
- The site is equally liked amongst both boys and girls 4 – 6 years old

It’s quite incredible to see how Moshi Monsters has grown such broad appeal amongst both boys and girls, with children as young as four playing in over 150 countries worldwide! It just goes to show how magical and unique Moshi Monsters is as we continue to strive to revolutionise the kids entertainment space!

Go Moshi!

The revellers enjoyed live music from Amber States, beat-boxing from the talented A Plus, quirky Moshi themed cocktails and a photo booth – which produced some very creative shots (none of which made the cut for the Mind Candy blog)

All in all a fabulous event…and hopefully the first of many!

APlus takes to the Mic

Party Posers

Michael introduces Amber States

The Mind Candies mingle

More photos here!

We won in the Virtual Worlds category and were just pipped to the post by Spotify, who were crowned as the overall Winners, but took a very respectable second place.

Very exciting news – with hopefully many more to follow throughout 2011.

Check out press coverage here:

The Telegraph

The Telegraph

The Wall Street Journal

The Moshi team celebrate the win.

With plenty of cool bars, great lunch hang outs and other interesting companies in the area, East London really is the place to be for any up and coming media company.

Mind Candy has taken residence on the 4th floor of the old Lipton Tea Building, a lovely 30s industrial style space with many of the old features and much of its character carefully preserved.

When not hard at work at their desks, Mind Candies can be found gathered in our two large glass enclosed meeting areas, having one to ones on “Glump” beanbags on our artificial grass, having lunch at our 16ft dining table or playing games on the velvet sofas beneath the sparkly chandelier in the library.

There is still plenty more we are looking to do with the space but it is already proving very popular with our staff, and our neighbours!

Look out for future Mind Candy events to come and take a look for yourself.

Michael will be speaking during two sessions at the market; Digital Distribution: Monetising Content on New Platforms (Monday 4th April, 15:15pm) and Connected Creativity Forum: Innovation from Around the World (Tuesday 5th April, 16:10pm).

The dynamic duo will be spreading the word on Moshi TV – an all-new online kids platform that will play host to video-on-demand programming including bespoke Moshi Monsters content, safely moderated user-generated content and third party programming.
The player’s key differentiator will be a social element that allows kids to comment, rate and recommend shows to their friends across Moshi Monsters’ network of 37m registered users.

Michael and Darran will be in Cannes until Wednesday so drop them a line if you’d like to talk Moshi TV

Michael@mindcandy.com
Darran@mindcandy.com
We’ll also be recruiting several new roles within the Moshi TV team so keep an eye on our recruitment page.

News of the new Monster platform hit The Guardian this weekend. Read here.

This year’s event was held at Shoreditch House, an absolutely stunning venue, and started off with a bit of breakfast and some strong coffee in a room aptly named the Biscuit Tin.

Michael Acton Smith our CEO, kicked off with an inspirational speech about the company’s amazing journey so far and ambitious plans going forward.

Exciting updates were given by team members across all departments including a great video from our US team. For everyone it was an incredibly eye opening morning, and never more obvious to me what a hard working and innovative team we have at Mind Candy.

Lunch was mini bowls of lovely food, my favourites included pork and apple with crackling, mushroom risotto and tomato and mozzarella salad.

A short taxi ride and Moshi quiz later and the whole team were go karting at Team Sport near Tower Bridge in electric karts. It was a nail biting finish but our Web Designer, Leo just managed to steal victory.

A great day was had by all.

We are already planning the next event – MoshiCon 2011 for the summer.

The day started with a VIP preview which attracted the likes of The Evening Standard, The Guardian, The FT and a host of bloggers and their children.

By 11am crowds were swelling with dedicated young fans who had traveled the length and breadth of the UK to visit the shop.

Excited children came face-to-face with the monsters (Poppet and Furi) in real life and we handed out free copies of our newly launched Moshi Monsters magazine. The highlight for many young fans was meeting Michael, aka Mr Moshi as he made his way around the crowds chatting to the children and signing autographs.

The shop – complete with Moshi Monsters themed walls and furniture, fake grass and (one of my personal favourites) ‘glump’ beanbags – came to life as children flooded in, creating art work and sticking it on the walls, gathering around laptops to play the game online, playing with products and having their faces painted.

The quiet before the storm…’The Glumps’

With 1700 parents and children making it through the doors on day one, we were left shattered and absolutely blown away by the reaction to our first ever pop-up shop.

To top it all we made the front page of The Guardian on Wednesday – another awesome week for Moshi Monsters and we’re thrilled to see the fans enjoyed it just as much as we did!  It was such a hit that we’re now seriously considering opening our first permanent Moshi shop.

Check out footage from our launch event here Moshi Popup Store on Youtube

The shop in full swing

Filming with the FT.com

Mr Moshi meets his fans

The kids get creative

Moshi Monsters has grown very rapidly in the UK, both on and offline, but our next big challenge is to crack North America. The US is currently our largest single market in terms of registered users (12m+) but our licensing program and general awareness is at an earlier stage.

Michael Acton Smith (CEO), Darran Garnham (Head of Licensing), Rebecca Newton (Chief Safety and Community Officer) and Nicola Duarte (Head of PR) are planning a New York invasion from Feb 13th to 20th to tell the Moshi story and meet with a wide range of partners.

Shea Stadium was booked, so the fab four will be speaking at Engage, Toy Fair and Kidscreen.

Michael will be speaking at two events:

Feb 16th 11:30h at Engage during Toy Show
Moshi Monsters: How We Built a $100m Transmedia Monster
http://www.engageexpo.com/2011/01/19/future-is-online/

Feb 18th 11:00h at Kidscreen
Moshi Monsters: The Making of a A $100m Web-driven Hit
http://summit.kidscreen.com/2011/sessions.html?s=64813

Rebecca Newton will be speaking on a panel:

Feb 16th 15:45h at Engage during Toy Show
Community Management: The Long View
http://www.engageexpo.com/2010/10/22/community-management/

Drop Darran, Rebecca, Nicola or myself a line if you’d like to arrange a meeting while we’re in town

michael at mindcandy.com
darran at mindcandy.com
rebecca at mindcandy.com
nicola at mindcandy.com

Christmas party 2009 (80′s fancy dress)

Christmas party 2010!

Growing a company at this rate whilst continuing to build more amazing products can be a point of concern for management teams, but thanks to a great company culture, strong company values revolving around passion, playfulness, entrepreneurialism and respect and a strong team foundation have made it a joy, and working at Mind Candy feels even more close-knit than it did last year.

Here’s to a fantastic 2011!

Toby

The league started at the beginning of November and despite no one having picked up a netball since school and the freezing cold weather it’s been a lot of fun. The team has improved so much since the first game (a 21-2 hammering from a team that really shouldn’t be in the same league!) that we have now managed our first win!

So it’s onwards and upwards in 2011 for Team Moshi and surely it’s now a Boys vs Girls competition to see who will bring back the first trophy…

Yesterday we released a HUGE new feature – ‘Moshi Missions’ – starring the ‘Super Moshis’. Moshi Missions brings a deep and involving narrative gameplay to complement the successful social features of Moshi Monsters, check out the trailer below:

It’s easy to see how exciting Missions is going to be from a users point of view, but from a development point of view it’s super exciting too. It’s a great project to work on creatively, imaginations have been set free to run wild and behind the scenes there is a lot of cool new technology powering the Moshi Missions.

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures of the Super Moshis!

A few nights ago, TechCrunch held their annual european startup awards, the Europas, at Centre Point in London. Over 350 people, including VCs and entrepreneurs attended the evening and of course Mind Candy were there to join in the fun.

We’re pleased to say that Moshi Monsters took home two of the many awards up for grabs that night. Firstly, we are thrilled to have been awarded the “Europas Grand Prix” – the top award of the evening – where we were presented with a JoliCloud Vye netbook by JoliCloud’s Tariq Krim.

In addition, we were named “Best Learning Startup” in recognition of the hard work we have put into making Moshi a great place for kids to learn as well as to have fun.

For more details on the awards, check out the article over on TechCrunch.

There once was a squad,
who persisted to plod,
through the Battersea League 6-a-side.

Week after week,
a win they did seek,
but alas their best efforts went wide.

But on one fateful night,
when they brought the fight,
they claimed victory, fame, fortune and pride!

This is an exciting week at Mind Candy’s MoshiMonsters.com site as we’re searching for three young Moshi fans to star in our new Moshi Bandz TV Ad competition. The TV ad will be run on national television in the UK. We’re also running the  Monstro City’s Got Talent (MCGT Summer Shades Edition) competition this week, and have nearly 400 entries.

The internet presents people of all ages with opportunities we normally wouldn’t have available to us. Because of social media tools, Moshi can provide an opportunity for three UK kids between the ages of 11 and 14 to star in a TV advertisement that will be broadcast nationally.  [If you have a budding young TV star in your life, you can read about how to enter here in our blog.

We’re privileged to live in amazing technological times, where we can share information globally in seconds. We can meet people from all over the world and learn about each other’s cultures. We are presented with life-changing opportunities daily.

Now and then we hear from well-meaning people who think the net is unsafe for kids. We believe there is no reason to be afraid of social media.  Rather, we should teach each other, at every age, to behave responsibly in the online world just as we do in the offline world. We certainly wouldn’t get far if we hid in our homes and never came out because we were afraid of unfortunate things happening to us. Avoiding the online world is not living in the world – it’s hiding from world.

Thankfully, most of us don’t live this way. Instead, we are taught how to live in the world as safely as possible. We look both ways when crossing the street. We wear helmets when riding our bikes. We don’t take candy from strangers on the street. We don’t get into cars with people we don’t know. The online world is an extension of our offline world. We have a responsibility to teach each other how to be safe online.

When we ask for videos in our contests, we always ask for Monster Owner names and no other personal information to be shared. We monitor the submissions. And we flag any potentially problematic submissions to YouTube or the content site where the video is uploaded. Educating people on how to be netwise but still enjoy the wonders and opportunities of the internet is paramount to Moshi’s success.  Here’s to appreciating and encouraging creativity online and offline.

Here is one of nearly 400 entries from our recent Monstro CIty’s Got Talent Content. We’re thrilled to facilitate sharing their talent with the world.

Miss Pinky

With a new player joining Moshi Monsters every second, we are continuing to grow at a phenomenal rate and are on the lookout for creative, talented and ambitious folks to join our growing team.

If you fancy joining a fast paced and growing tech media company that is ‘set to make waves in the near future’ then check out our latest vacancies here.