New toy company Sport Bigs is celebrating female athletes by launching a line of talking toys dedicated to women’s sports. The line includes 18-inch plush celebrating only women’s sports and inspired by famous athletes.
Sport Bigs will direct portions of proceeds from the toys into women’s sport sponsorships, athlete compensation, and additional grassroots efforts.
“In the past, if you were an athlete in girls’ and women’s sports, you didn’t have many visible role models. And you certainly didn’t have a talking sports action toy that encouraged you to use your own power and voice while training like a pro athlete,” said founder Pam Kosanke, a six-time competitor in world championships across three different sports, who is also a mom and a professional marketer. “This changes all that, and so much more.”
Sport Bigs has teamed up with three women’s sports professionals, including five-time WNBA champion, basketball all-star, and current Minnesota Lynx assistant coach Rebekkah Brunson; professional soccer player and current soccer commentator and analyst Lori Lindsey; and four-time world champion, multi-gold medalist, and current UCLA softball head coach Lisa Fernandez, to provide the likenesses and voices of the first round of Sport Bigs. Kosanke intends for the platform to eventually add more women’s sports role models in the future.
“When I think about the 25th anniversary of the WNBA, I can’t help but think about how long the league has been around, but also how young it is,” said Brunson. “Now that I’m in a position to inspire young girls and empower them to be their authentic selves, I wish that I’d had something that represented me when I was a child — something that I could play with that showed strength and power, and wasn’t packaged as male. Sport Bigs are so exciting because they fill that space. They inspire young girls and allow young people to imagine strong, powerful women who dream of what they can be, and what the world should look like. They’re about being big, speaking big, acting big, and living big.”
“As a kid, I was starved for trading cards, memorabilia or toys that looked like me,” added Kosanke. “Today you have a few special-edition toys — used as one-off stunts — that come across as wimpy and barely marketed. Nothing really comes close to respecting the breadth of sizes, shapes and big-time attitudes of real athletes in women’s sports. This toy line is a first in the market and necessary for all ages to truly celebrate big athlete identities in women’s sports.”