Where Crayons Meet Calling: The World of Totsy Tinkers
- 20 hours ago
- 5 min read
Richard Dubose is building more than a brand — he's building a legacy
Born from Real Life
Some brands are built in boardrooms. Totsy Tinkers was built from something far more personal. For Richard Dubose, the colorful, creative universe he's spent years bringing to life isn't a product strategy — it's a survival story.
Oversized crayons, vivid characters, and joyful worlds of imagination: every element of Totsy Tinkers traces back to Dubose's own journey and a deeply held conviction that creativity is more than a hobby. It's a lifeline.
"Totsy Tinkers was born from my life," Dubose says simply — and that simplicity carries the full weight of lived experience. It's a brand rooted not in market research, but in memory, healing, and hope.
Wonder First. Possibility Always.
Ask Dubose what he wants people to feel when they step into the Totsy Tinkers world, and his answer is immediate: wonder. But he's quick to add that wonder is just the doorway. What he really wants people to discover on the other side is something deeper — a sense of possibility.
The power to create, in Dubose's vision, doesn't belong to artists with fancy degrees or kids who win the school art show. It belongs to everyone. That belief shapes everything from the brand's visual language to the experiences he designs for families.
"When people step into the Totsy Tinkers world, I want them to feel wonder first — but underneath that wonder, I want them to feel possibility."— Richard Dubose, Founder of Totsy Tinkers
Creative Cathy: The Heartbeat of It All
At the center of the Totsy Tinkers universe lives Creative Cathy — and calling her a mascot would miss the point entirely. For Dubose, Cathy is the heartbeat of the whole project. She's a character with a mission: to remind kids, in every story and every interaction, that imagination doesn't just make things prettier. It leads somewhere beautiful.
Creative Cathy was designed to be a mirror for young audiences — a reflection of their own creative potential staring back at them with confidence. She's resilience in cartoon form. No matter what the world throws at you, her very existence says: don't settle, and always believe.
"She teaches children to believe in themselves," Dubose says. "Creativity is a superpower" — and Cathy is the superhero who proves it.
Step Inside Imagination
Dubose isn't content with art that hangs on a wall and gets admired from a distance. His partnership with Young At Art Museum in Plantation has produced something far more ambitious: Creative Cathy's Art House — a brand-new immersive, hands-on exhibit opening this month at YAA's home inside Broward Mall.
"I don't want families to simply look at art," he explains. "I want them to step inside imagination itself." The exhibit delivers exactly that, with interactive stations designed for hands-on experimentation, sensory exploration, and storytelling using everyday materials. Children are invited to tinker, build, design, and imagine — with zero fear of being "wrong."
Beyond artmaking, the experience is intentionally rooted in character education and emotional development — skills that Dubose and YAA recognize are increasingly absent from school curriculums. Each station helps children build confidence, resilience, empathy, and problem-solving skills through the simple, powerful act of play. The exhibit also features a collaboration with artist and designer Adam Von Dolle, whose work explores how environments shape human experience, adding another dimension of depth to the immersive world.
Young At Art, for its part, believed in that vision from the start. And for Dubose, bringing the Totsy Tinkers world to life in the community that shaped him carries a meaning no press release could fully capture. The exhibit and its year-long programming are made possible by the generosity of the Williams Family Fund.
"I'm excited for the kid who walks in shy and suddenly lights up." That's how Dubose describes what he's most looking forward to. Not the critical reception. Not the foot traffic numbers. The kid who didn't expect to feel seen — and then did. "Those moments mean more to me than anything." YAA CEO Traci Leon echoes the sentiment: art, she says, is not about perfection — it's about process.
Emotion Before Everything
Dubose's creative process defies the typical design workflow. Before a single line is sketched or a color is chosen, he starts emotionally. Feeling before form. Heart before hand. It's an approach that explains why Totsy Tinkers has such an unusually resonant quality — the work isn't trying to look a certain way. It's trying to mean something.
"Every piece is built with heart first," he says. That principle is the through-line connecting every giant crayon, every joyful character, every immersive installation in the Totsy Tinkers world.
For the Kids Who Needed This
Totsy Tinkers is a South Florida story. Dubose speaks about his community with the kind of tenderness that only comes from belonging to a place — really belonging, not just living there. He wants kids from this community to walk into a Totsy Tinkers experience and feel three things: seen, celebrated, and empowered.
That's a high bar. But Dubose believes he's already cleared it. "This project has already succeeded," he says — because the mission was never about making a splash. It was about making contact. Reaching the kid in the corner of the room who didn't know that creativity was an option available to them.
Every giant crayon, every splash of color, every character comes from a real belief that creativity can save lives — the same way it helped save mine." — Richard Dubose, Founder of Totsy Tinkers
Building Legacy, One Color at a Time
What comes next for Totsy Tinkers? Dubose answers with the clarity of someone who has thought long and hard about what he's really building. This isn't a brand waiting for its next product launch. It's a movement in progress — and its ambitions are generational.
He wants to build something that future generations can look back on as proof: proof that imagination matters, that creativity matters, and most importantly, that they matter. The giant crayons are just the beginning. The real work is writing a story that outlasts any single exhibition, partnership, or viral moment.
Creative Cathy will keep showing up. Dubose will keep building. And the exhibit itself is designed to evolve alongside that ambition — over the course of a full year, families can expect monthly activations, new programming, and fresh character introductions from the Totsy Tinker World, giving them fresh reasons to return again and again. And somewhere in South Florida, a shy kid is about to walk through a door and light up — maybe for the first time.
Join the Free Opening Party — June 20
Families, educators, and community members are invited to experience Creative Cathy's Art House at Young At Art Museum inside Broward Mall, Plantation.
The opening party is free and open to all on Saturday, June 20 from 2–4 PM. For more information, visit YoungAtArtMuseum.org
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