This project is a children's toy and clothing take-back program for Target: designing for a more circular toy industry. In thinking about designing for a more circular toy industry, I wanted to focus on a company that produces a substantial amount of children's clothing and toys every year. As a leading producer of children's products, Target is a good example of a company that should consider taking responsibility for the amount of products they produce and put into the economy and environment every year.

Looking closer at Target, I wanted to focus on the children's items that are most commonly purchased every year and in every season. This led me to the t-shirts and t-shirt dresses of Target's private brand, Cat & Jack, as well as the plethora of stuffed animals sold in their toy aisles. If Target were to start a take-back program for children's clothing and toys, they would consistently receive large amounts of these items, and so they became the foundation of the toy line that I designed.

Understanding that fun storytelling has the ability to capture the hearts and minds of consumers of all ages, I created the characters, Odd and Undercover, to tell this story. Odd and Undercover are toys that have been thrown away by their previous owners. In order to escape their life at the dump, they cover themselves in broken toys and old kids' clothes to sneak past the guards and live fun and adventure-filled lives! To remain undetected, the quirky duo constantly change their disguise by covering up in different clothes and toys that they find along their travels.

Each Odd and Undercover toy would be constructed out of the most commonly purchased children's clothing and toy items that Target sells. Recovered clothing would provide fabric to make new toys; limbs, ears, and tails from old toys would create unique characteristics; and all leftover scraps would be shredded and used as stuffing. The infinite number of fabric patterns and stuffed animal limbs recovered by Target would create an infinite number of "disguises," and therefore toys, for the characters.