Designing the figurine was also challenging for me as Lunar New Year is culturally unspecific! This is one of the things I spiral about frequently as a person tasked to visually represent “pan-Asian America.” What actually is Lunar New Year? Is it even possible to have cultural symbols that are recognizable, multi-cultural, but not hugely alienating to minority groups? I grew up celebrating Chinese New Year with my Taiwanese family, but not in a super traditional way, we mostly would have dinner together and I would get a red envelope from my ama. After living in both Minneapolis and near the Uptown neighborhood in Chicago, I was familiar with the breadth and variety of cultures that celebrate their new years on the Lunisolar calendar, and ones that don’t!

At the time of designing in 2022, there was no content for the Tonie and the production team didn’t know if they would be able to roll it out for 2024 (year of the dragon) or 2025 (year of the snake), which was another huge design question for the Tonie.

I don’t think it’s actually possible to create a pan cultural theme with one figurine, and I had a feeling that the content they would load onto the figurine would be primarily, if not entirely, Chinese. So after some research and consideration, I did end up using symbols more associated with Chinese or Vietnamese American cultural celebrations of LNY/Spring Festival/Tết – the color red, zodiac animals, the golden pearl.

I decided to make the child light brown skinned and in a snow suit, thinking of the many multi-ethnic kids I knew across the midwest who celebrate LNY in the cold. The face and hair is inspired by my godchild/adopted nibbling Wylde (whose family ironically celebrates Khmer new year in April)! Between the two animals, Emma asked me to design the Tonie with a dragon theme, since it felt more culturally ubiquitous, and we hoped that it would not have to come out in the year of the Snake (it did :,)). For the dragon hood I took inspiration from dragon dance puppets decoration and style, not to be confused with lion dance.

The final designs for the Tonie. I was excited that they let me use so many colors, especially because each figurine is hand-painted by artisans in China. I wonder how those artists felt about painting my diasporic mish-mosh design!

Here is the finalized Tonie figurine and the package design, which I also illustrated. I absolutely love how the figurine looks!

I was excited to share my figurine with my nibbling, who shared her honest review as a “quiet time” Tonie user and burgeoning illustrator who loves to draw ‘cute’ faces:

Aki did tell me at a later date that she changed her mind and she now thinks the Tonie has cute eyes. Here are some other reviews of the Tonie since the release in January 2025:

I am pleased to see multiple people comment on how cute the Tonie is 🙂 I am also heartened to see people being vocal and critical about the way the elder characters are represented, and the choice to only have one kind of traditions mentioned. I have honestly not listened to the Tonie all the way through, but there’s no mention of China at all on the official Tonies messaging, though they do use the Cantonese terms for grandparents. They did also add this ‘note’ to the Tonie after it’s release:

Note: This work features a variety of linguistic expressions, including commonly used versions of words from different dialects. The author has intentionally chosen to incorporate these variations to reflect the rich diversity of language rather than favor one dialect over another.

Additionally, this work draws on traditional myths and folktales that are often subject to multiple interpretations and retellings. The author’s portrayal of these stories is one of many possible versions and is not intended to be definitive or authoritative. This interpretation is presented as a creative exploration rather than a scholarly representation.

This seems like a thin response to address the way Tonies has told a single story of Lunar New Year! I totally agree with the amazon commenter who suggested a “record your own” portion of the Tonie, where family members could record their own traditions and stories for the child to listen to. This is a function that exists on other Tonies! The technology exists!!

I really struggled with navigating these choices around cultural representation while contracting with a giant corporation. I wanted to complicate the idea of a flat, generalized Asian figurine, but in the end I only had influence over one aspect of the product as a whole.

We can’t rely on large companies to teach us about our own traditions, especially as we let traditions transform and adapt in the diaspora. I hope that as Lunar New Year further enters the American imagination, we in the diaspora can keep the individual textures of our cultures present and centered as we pass them on to the next generation. As a family, we make sure Aki knows that there are many different ways that people track time and celebrate the New Year, including the New Years that our family now acknowledge and celebrate:

• Gregorian New Year
• Shōgatsu Japanese New Year
• Okinawan New Year
• Chinese New Year
• Rosh Hashanah Jewish New Year