More room for childhood.

For a few years now, little things have been piling up. Kids who can't be handed a quiet minute without a screen in it. A trophy for showing up. Grown-ups who stopped saying no because saying no is hard. Lessons landing on kids from every direction before anyone at home has had a say in them. None of it is one person's fault, and all of it worried me, because a kid is being built in those years. Who they become later starts on a living-room floor at six.

Then one afternoon I asked a kid if he wanted to build a blanket fort, and he told me he'd never built one. Not once. That was the moment. Forts were the best part of my childhood: the cushions, the flashlight, a whole afternoon that belonged to us. If a kid can get to seven without ever making one, something has gone missing, and I'd rather build something than complain about it. That's why we brought Canoogles back.

What gets me about Canoogles is what happens after the hood goes up. The sofa becomes somewhere. A quiet afternoon gets a cast. And a story gives us something to talk about that would have been hard to bring up cold.

I want this brand to have imagination and a spine. Honesty should mean something. Effort should mean something. How we treat the kid standing outside the game should mean something.

Our creatures will get it wrong. They'll want the easy way. They'll have to practice, apologize, wait, ask for help and try again. They'll also make an enormous mess and have the best afternoon of the week.

Our job is to make those stories worth reading twice, and to give your family a small place to start.

Cole