Our signature Incog water gun design was six years old and in need of a refresh. Last winter we collected years’ worth of reviews and customer videos to deliver a big upgrade in spring 2026!
Intensive social media for a kids’ outdoors activity brand never felt quite right for us. Kids’ clubs frequently got in touch about their Team Magnus interaction, something we wanted to share. That’s why we created Shout-outs instead. We credit Team Magnus relationships and other youth sport initiatives without joining the infinite scroll universe.
Northeast USA has always been key to Team Magnus – not least because kids there get to enjoy way more snow play than in our home country the UK… Next day distribution relies on strong, local partners like Shipcube, now incorporated in logistics giant Stord.
Dancing professional @supermylo created epic Team Magnus videos which we still use every summer! Thanks also to French marketing consultant Sylvia Lefevre for the Marseille location!
Local activists in Perth, Scotland started driving frequent trucks to Ukraine during 2022, where the suffering population needed all kind of staples. We redirected kids’ sleeping bags and base layers as a small act to protect against the cold.
Design accolades kept rolling in for the Incog water gun, designed by Glasgow-based industrial designer Scott Jarvie the year before and manufactured by our long-standing partner CNW in China.
We strengthened our team with a Japanese-Scottish hire Megumi Huntly, who set up our Japanese store and ensured that a range of quality Team Magnus products were tested and reviewed locally – from wool socks to kids’ skis. We love a country with a varied climate, where snow gear and water play equipment are in equal demand!
USA Nordic, now USA Ski Jumping, started buying our Tundra wolf skis for their kids’ camps in Park City, Utah. A long running collaboration was born. Team Magnus has supplied hundreds of pairs of entry level skis over the years to allow the Olympic federation a simple way to introduce more kids to skiing.
The Tundra wolf snow sled and our Devilfish slip and slide won consumer awards in Germany. We wanted to match the German export success with a US launch. We decided we needed Chicagoan Ramon Rouse to get the US entity off the ground. He also brought ping pong savoir to our in-house matches.
We’ve always engaged with clubs and communities, and the Team Magnus blogs became a natural way to share the experience we acquired about kids’ outdoors activities. Later PE Lecturer Valerio Boldreghini from the University of the Highlands and Islands would bring more youth health and fitness content to round out the active family themes from founder Kristine Moody.
Testing the new, lined neckwarmers in Italian microfibre in the Norwegian mountains, our natural habitat! The new model added warmth, but for versatility nothing beats our classic full length snoods!
Exciting times as Team Magnus pitched to Richard Branson in Pitch to Rich. Weeks on the leaderboard didn’t result in a win – robbery!
All logos – for the corporate van mentioned below as well – had to be changed after rebranding. Often digital requirements have forced branding changes, with physical knock-on effects!
UK event and consumer fair sales were backed up by a modest, early days Joomla website, later graduating to Magento e-commerce. In the early days, kids’ wetsuits, learner bikes, mini skis and other entry-level sports gear for juniors were driven up and down UK roads in our legendary LWB Ford Transit.
Too ambitious? Avid sailor and dabbling product engineer Mike McMillan developed a landboat concept to get children familiar with wind and with vessel control. We worked with the University of Strathclyde to develop and test our highly functional landboat – never mass produced though.
Next up after our balance bike start : 5mm wetsuits for Scottish summers! We launched both steamers and shorties, which have saved the beach holiday for many family campers on the west coast of Scotland over the years. Our Devilfish wetsuits became very popular amongst US families in the Lakes and on the Pacific.
First big idea: Balance bikes! Company stalwart Magnus (age 3) had raced around on a German balance bike when he lived in his native Norway. After moving to the UK with his family, Magnus discovered that his Scottish peers mostly used old school stabilisers, which slow down learning. Neighbours Logan, Cameron and Reece become the original Team Magnus – a group of sporty young product testers in Perth, Scotland. They started off helping him test bike prototypes – later launched as the Bulldog balance bike with tens of thousands sold at UK fairs.
