Playing with the Underfoot toys outside enables children to engage cognitively in the magical natural world. The Underfoot family of character toys are designed to be played with outside in the dirt and undergrowth of the garden. Oke Velvet Worm takes children on a wild adventure into the natural world as children use the characters' stories to learn about the interlinking ecosystem of characters and their homes in the natural world.

Play with the Underfoot characters encourages children to engage with nature while playing with the toys outside. Children engage in less outdoor play than previous generations. This global trend has impacted a child's ability to understand and form a relationship with the natural world. Unstructured and imaginative play is where children engage in self-actualised play separate from parental supervision and small-world play, where children develop stories inspired by their immediate surroundings.

The Underfoot range of toys is designed for children aged 5-7. This is a key age when children develop their imagination, communication and social skills and interact more independently with the natural world. Using an eco-fiction framework during the design process enabled the design of more ecologically embodied toys. The Underfoot character toys are themed around the nitrogen cycle system and focus on character play in outdoor spaces. A core design feature is integrating natural materials such as soil, leaves and water during play as part of the toy's character.

The Underfoot Toys propose a new mode of character toy, specifically designed for outdoor play, where the natural world becomes an ever-changing playset for the characters. The Underfoot toys seek to reconnect children with the natural world's magic through character toy play in the environment.

Overview of the problem Children are becoming disconnected from the natural world. Richard Louv describes this as 'nature deficit' disorder, and research from the Child in Nature network suggests children engage in less outdoor play than previous generations. Studies show that play in nature helps children to become more empathetic to other beings and to be more likely to think of and maintain responsibility for the natural well-being of these spaces. Post-pandemic parents seek toys that encourage their children to play outdoors and engage cognitively with nature.

The Underfoot family of character toys help to take children outside to play. Even though children do take their character toys outside, they need to be more fit for purpose. A hybrid range of character toys, the Underfoot are designed for outdoor play in the garden, the park or local wilderness areas. The core character, Oke Velvet Worm, has been specifically developed to hang on branches. The arms of Myco can wrap around saplings, encouraging children to use natural materials, trees, dirt and plants during play as a nature playset world for the toys.

The ecological focus of the story world of the Underfoot introduces children to their home habitat at the bottom of the garden, where all the characters live in a home tree on the banks of a stream. Prone to flooding, the narrative of the Underfoot helps children to navigate our changing environment due to climate change and gives them tools in the form of character toys to explore these themes. Designed and tested for play in the New Zealand, Aotearoa outdoors, the toys mimic the vibrancy of the insect and fungus life in a whimsical product with global appeal.

Playing with the Underfoot toys in natural spaces enables children to shape and disrupt the landscape to develop a connected relationship with nature. Engaging in Small-world play is a way for a child to map out the world with a sense of organisation and structure. It is a sensory form of imaginative play where the child explores the environment around them and uses this to inform the fantasy play world they engage with.

Core design features The Underfoot Toys combine character toy play with small worlds nature play by making play in outdoor natural spaces integral to the design. The Underfoot toys incorporate natural materials such as dirt, water, leaves and sticks into the toy form as an extension of the character, making natural elements integral to play. An example is Leafy, which uses an encapsulated leaf for the boat to float. Natural materials become a loose-parts-themed playset extension for each toy that reinvents the sensory experience every time the child plays outside.

The Underfoot uses an eco-fiction framework to develop the story world, so the focus is on animal narratives. This design feature is used to help children attune to the narratives of nature and animals to support the children in seeing the world through a natural worldview.

Children use the story on the backcard packaging and the information cards for each of the toys to learn about the character's role in the environment and relationship to other creatures. Each character has a clearly defined personality and physical attributes that link them to a step in a natural cycle.

The play function and character of the Underfoot toys are based on the Nitrogen cycle to make an ecosystem of toys that encourage play in the dirt and leaf litter, breaking down and transforming matter. The product's name, Underfoot, references the toy characters who all live in ecosystems under your feet. Each toy represents a different species or vital role within the ecosystem, including the velvet worm predators, leafy photosynthesisers or mix-and-sift decomposers. Children learn about ecological systems tangentially during play, with the designs focusing on the characters' personalities and roles within their world. This encouraged children to explore nature cycles imaginatively and to see the core agents within natural systems as living beings rather than just processes.

Each Underfoot character links to the next through their play action. One toy uses the leaf as a boat, and when the leaf breaks down, another toy turns that leaf into compost, which another toy uses to grow plants. The toys are characters first, with all toy mechanics discreetly incorporated into the design to not affect the aesthetic form of the toy.

The Underfoot toys are not gendered, and the combination of character form and action mechanics gives the toys attributes of both dolls and action figures. During playtesting, girls and boys both played with the toys together.

About the characters Oke and their worm family are the central characters in the range and are based on the Velvet Worm, a tiny creature found in the southern hemisphere that lives in the dirt and leaf litter. Velvet Worm toys come in various colours and shapes that can attach to foliage. The toys include a water squirt and a colour change version.

The Leafy uses a natural leaf to make a boat to carry their friends. Encapsulated magnets hold together the two halves of Leafy, which sandwiches the leaf, making a watertight seal. Children use moss or other natural materials to pack around the velvet worm character to hold them steady.

Wiggle is a Roly-poly, and they are crucial to breaking down matter in the ecosystem. Wiggle lives in a fallen log and has a busy job of chewing old leaves into pulp. They live with Tily, a bacteria-inspired character who helps transform leaf pulp into forest food. Wiggle can make leaf confetti from fallen leaves, a soft belly, and glow-in-the-dark scales.

Mix and Sift are mystical fungus creatures that pop up out of the ground every time it rains. Mix and Sift are made from translucent material so children can watch the composting process in their bellies. They have various tools, including sieves, mortar, pestle, and scoops.

Myco are fungi that are guardians to all living beings in the forest. They use their long tendrils to communicate with the trees. They are always happy to offer shelter and support to other creatures in the forest. Myco can be broken down into various play parts that can store water, grow seeds, and provide shelter to other toys in the ecosystem.

Benefit to the children. Getting kids back out in nature helps with their overall well-being, enabling them to play with the Underfoot toys as character extensions of the natural world. Play with the Underfoot toys offers children a multi-sensory experience as children forage in the bush for natural materials to integrate into the toys. We conducted extensive playtesting with children from the local nature organisation Kiwi Conservation Club and children from the bush school as we wanted to see how they would use the toys and how connected to nature they would become. In the middle of winter, children were engrossed in floating boats in the creek and mixing up fungus motion with little concern for the muddied surroundings. This mode of world play helped fuel curiosity about nature as children used the toys to "communicate" with other bush inhabitants, such as spiders and fungus.

Appropriateness of design The Underfoot characters mimic the bright colours of insects, fungi and flowers, which are often too small for us to see. The vibrancy of the character colours challenges our assumptions about the colours of nature that are perpetuated through the greenwashing of environmentally focused toys. The Underfoot toys show children the authentic colours of nature. The colour palette also appeals to the fantasy play aspect of the design, enabling children to see the wonder in the way the natural world is embodied in the designs. The bright colours make it easy to find the toys when playing outside, and the contrast against leaf litter and natural foliage helps to find any missing parts.

Emotional relationships are formed with Anthropomorphic characters to give them meaning. As a bridge between the human and the animal worldview, the Underfoot needed appealing natural shapes to enhance the natural world's magic. The Underfoot design went through many iterations to get the right balance of animal and natural features without them feeling too scary or alien.

The design was well received at the 2023 Nuremberg Toy Fair. Industry reviewers praised the freshness of the aesthetic and the integration of natural material within the play. The need for children to go outside to use natural objects to complete the play was of great appeal and a pivotal selling point of the product. The need for children to go outside to use natural objects to complete the play was of great appeal and a crucial selling point of the product. The Underfoot toys are currently being developed as advocacy toys for nature play educators.