How I was created

I was the first Squeeble to be designed and have since taken on a life of my own, but I started off as a simple drawing in a sketch pad. My inventor drew several versions of me and his children joined in too. You can see in the picture below that I started off looking very different to how I do now! Even the number on my body has changed.

Once the drawings were finished, I was the Squeeble that our inventor chose to start working on first and he began redesigning me on his computer. Eventually he and his family all agreed that my eyes were just the right size and that they liked the way that my head was round on one side but swooped up into a flame shape on the other. In the first drawings, all the Squeebles had different kinds of eyes and noses, but once I was finished it felt right for Squeebles to have feet, eyes and a nose that looked just like mine. They also decided that we should all have numbers and letters on our bodies as these things would be a big part of what all Squeebles would go on to do in the apps which we'd appear in. However, once those things were decided there were no other rules about how a Squeeble should look and the others seemed almost to invent themselves, appearing quickly on the screen as our inventor clicked his mouse around, smoothing edges and adding a little gloss here and there. Much later my inventor wrote some code that let me spin around, allowed my eyes to move and my mouth to smile. Once I was in the computer I really began to come to life.

Eventually though, there were so many of us being lively inside our inventor's computer, that he couldn't get much work done and we were getting squashed, so he designed the Squeeble Island where we could live happily. He opened a door between the island and his computer and we come and go as we please. Sometimes we come onto our inventor's computer screen and suggest ideas for a new app or other ways we might be able to help children learn....and sometimes we just appear and pull a funny face before running back through the door to Squeeble Island again!

Whizz :)

Win a Squeeble Competition!

Hello Friends,

I'm so excited to announce that we've decided to run a special competition where the prize is a cuddly, stuffed version of....me! When Lex first said that she wanted to make a toy version of me, I was a bit worried. I was even more worried when she started sewing. First my eyes were too small and then she said that she couldn't quite decide how to attach my feet, so considered not giving me any at all. It was a stressful time! But finally, Lex came up with something that all the other Squeebles agreed did look just like me (although slightly less handsome). At present, there is only one Squeeble toy like this in the entire world. This means that it is quite a special prize, because if you win it you will know that, not only do you have something totally unique, but also that you are touching something that has been made right here on Squeeble Island. Your work would also be featured on this blog, for public admiration!

To have a chance of winning, we're asking you to draw a picture of the house that you imagine your favourite Squeeble might live in, here on Squeeble Island. It can be the inside or the outside of the house, but it must include one of the Squeebles. You can use pen, pencil or paint, you could create a collage, or you could be incredibly modern and design it on the computer!

You'll probably know all about who the different Squeebles are and be able to imagine what kind of houses some of them may have, but if you need inspiration you can find out more about us by reading the other posts on this blog or looking at the Squeebles you've won in any of our apps and reading up on our likes and dislikes.

We can't wait to see your pictures and when we've got a nice, juicy pile of entries, we're planning to take them up to The Roundhouse Den to look through them all (we're going to bake chocolate brownies to eat while we admire them!). The competition closes on the 22nd March at midnight (British time).

The (human!) caretakers of Squeeble Island have written all the competition rules and how to enter on their website.

Squeeblemail can be very unreliable and slow (as it depends on finding a willing seagull), so we sent the stuffed Whizz toy through the Squeeshoot, which meant it landed straight in our inventor's house in England! Once it had arrived we asked the inventor and his family to send a photo of the prize with their cat because we love seeing animals with so much hair, as we don't have any fur at all. This is the photo that they sent to us. A Golden Retriever puppy is coming to live with them soon too and we've seen a photo of her and think that she may end up being even bigger and hairier than their cat!

Whizz :)

The Roundhouse Den

Hello Friends,

I can't stop for long today as I'm busy making cheese and pickle sandwiches for Jingo's birthday party (that's his favourite food, not mine, but it's his birthday, so he's allowed to choose what we eat). Jingo is quite shy and doesn't like too much fuss being made of him, so we're just planning to gather at the Roundhouse Den and watch a film while eating the sandwiches.

I thought you might like to hear about the Roundhouse Den as it's quite an unusual building. There's a spot on Squeeble Island where you can see the view in nearly every direction - sea, hills and beach - and years ago we decided it would be the perfect place to build a den where we could all meet. Before we started building we laid out tree stumps to sit on to see how big it would need to be to fit in all of us. We arranged the stumps in a circle and once we'd placed them so that we were cosy but not squashed, we sat admiring the view. But as we sat there we realised that our plan had a flaw: once you were sitting in a chair you would only see one view, which would make it just like every other house on Squeeble Island (we're lucky that every house has at least one amazing view). We all felt quite dissatisfied by this and weeks of dreaming over quite how marvellous this new building with its wonderful views could be felt suddenly dashed.

A few weeks later Trig had called a meeting. We'd gathered at Ruby's Ice-Cream Parlour, which wasn't quite big enough for all of us, so some Squeebles stood outside and listened through the open windows. When Trig had told us he wanted to talk to us about the den a hush had fallen over the ice-cream parlour and we'd all waited in silence to hear what he had to say. Trig told us that he'd spent the last few weeks thinking the problem over and had come up with a solution. His ingenious plan was that instead of the den being a square building, it would be round. The building would sit on a turn-table located just below the ground, which would slowly rotate, meaning that the view from the windows was always changing. We all loved Trig's idea and Ruby began handing round ice-creams in celebration.

We spent a year digging and shifting mud, Brains and Trig spent months engineering the wind-powered turn table which would make the building rotate, and then we spent even longer building the walls, and finally, the roof.

The Roundhouse Den is my favourite building on the Island, not only because of the amazing views or how good it is to have somewhere we can all fit in, but because we had so much fun building it. Whenever the weather was dry we spent whole days together working on it, and by sunset our limbs felt warm with tiredness and our hearts felt happy with all the fun we'd had as we'd tried keep each others spirits up during all the hard work. Ruby often surprised us with ice creams, Edgar happily did all the tidying up at the end of the day (because he loves tidying and knows that most Squeebles don't) and Zuma and Jip amused us all with jokes whenever it felt like squeebles were becoming weary and considering giving up.

So now I'm off to carry trays of sandwiches over to the Roundhouse Den for Jingo's party. I hope you have some fun planned too.

Whizz :)