Visionary of
PLAY
The wild wild world of Attaboy, aka Daniel Seifert, Toy Design ’96
Daniel Seifert
“Attaboy”
“I think like a toy designer. I try to maximize the fun.”
What is your vision for the future?
“For me, the future is now. So I’m going to fill it with wide-eyed curiosity, open-minded possibilities, friends, silliness, and empathy, squeezing juice from a raisin if I have to; because old age isn’t guaranteed.”
—Attaboy
By Alex Joseph
“I think like a toy designer,” says Daniel Seifert, known professionally as Attaboy. “I try to maximize the fun.” His boundary-demolishing oeuvre encompasses games, books, art toys, cartoons, fine art, and an influential magazine. Fun is the common thread, he says. “The act of play is crucial to the way I operate.”
Attaboy’s annual Game of Shrooms began with a prompt he circulated on social media in 2019. Each year on a different day, artists worldwide make—and hide—small works of art for an interactive Easter-egg hunt that lasts 24 hours. Players hail from Hong Kong, India, Russia, the U.S., and many other countries. In 2017, Attaboy launched Vampires vs. Unicorns. Funded by a Kickstarter campaign, this board game requires players to throw cards, introducing an element of randomness that defies skill and strategy. “The harder you try, the worse you do,” he says.
His Upcycled Garden art installation features fungi made of repurposed materials like old pizza boxes and newspapers, all painted riotous Day-Glo colors. Dreamed up in the gloom of the pandemic and designed to biodegrade, the modular, ever-mutating piece has toured throughout the U.S. This year, it sprouted up at the Richmond Art Gallery in Richmond, California, where Attaboy lives with his spouse, Annie Owens.
Perhaps his best-known project is the quarterly art magazine Hi-Fructose. Co-founded in 2005 with Owens, the publication has global distribution and over 2 million followers on Instagram. It’s a showcase for artists both storied (Shepard Fairey, John Waters) and offbeat (the late trailblazing Japanese painter Yui Sakamoto). In 2019, the mag’s editors branched out into book publishing with the handsome volume Hi-Fructose: New Contemporary Fashion, a review of cutting-edge garments.
“He’s a born visionary,” says Judy Ellis, retired chair and founder of the Toy Design program. As a student, she says, “Daniel’s ideas stood out for their whimsy and brilliance, blending storytelling, art, and play in ways that defied convention. His ability to leap fearlessly into the unknown and inspire others to do the same has made him a pioneer in fostering joy and creativity worldwide.”
After graduation, Attaboy worked in the Milton Bradley and OddzOn subsidiaries of Hasbro for four years, designing toys like Fishin’ Around and Jump Rope Rock and redesigning classic games like Cootie and Don’t Spill the Beans. But he felt constrained by the toy industry and soon pivoted to making collectible art toys. Axtrx, a 4-inch-tall green vinyl monster, came with a set of interchangeable mouths for different moods.
There’s even more to Attaboy (the more you learn about him, the more his gung-ho nickname makes sense): He’s created cartoons for Cartoon Network, devised funky ice cream flavors for Disney cruise ships, and developed toy prizes for the Chuck E. Cheese pizza chain. In 2013, talk show host Wendy Williams spotted his homemade pilot for a TV show that never aired, They Actually Made That, in which Attaboy deconstructs a Mommy-to-Be Doll—a Barbie-esque pregnant doll with a spring-loaded baby in her tummy. Williams aired the clip on her show; it now has over 3 million views on YouTube. For a wildly original thinker like Seifert, creativity has no set goal. “I love people who do things for the sake of doing them,” he says.
For this issue, Attaboy created a playful traveling companion named Huebert. Join the fun!