We’re avant-garde toy designers. Actually scratch that. We’re Toy Terrorists. We take standard toys and we mess with them. We like toys that don’t take themselves too seriously. Toys with a bit of humour. Toys with a twist.

We were attracted by the new wave of toy designing. The urban toy movement, with its sub-divisions of Urban Vinyl and Street Plush. You know, stuff from Japan and San Francisco. It all started in Tokyo’s Harajuku area in 1997. And was inspired by Michael Lau. We’re really into it. And we’ve been collecting these kinds of toys for yonks. Traipsing round toy fairs, window-licking in shops like Play Lounge, leafing through Clutter magazine and Juxtaposed. Then we thought why don’t we have a stab at that. It’s just our cup of tea.

So we set up in the Spring of 2005 in a dingy basement in West London, Shepherds Bush. From this dank, disheartening place we started forming our Squash-plush idea. It mainly came about from a bit of doodling we were doing. And in our misspent youth we used to photograph roadkill, and make artworks out of splatted furry animals. So we put two and two together, and came up with Squash-plush. Teddies that have been run over.

After a childhood spent with Star Wars figures and Zoids, it’s been a dream of ours to create our own toys. We’re just big kids really. Big kids who never quite grew out of playing with toys.

We went through quite a few prototypes and samples before we were happy with the first character in our Squash-Plush range. Twitch the Raccoon. We then tested it out on old folk, kids, and people with nervous dispositions. It seemed to have the desired effect.

We realise Twitch and the rest of his gang won’t be for everyone. For all the sissies, the dweeboids, the nay-sayers, and the cry-baby buntings out there. But, as they say, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.