Nothing, says I. (And I’m the mother here, so you should listen to me.)

First off, remember the Wumblerful World of Seasons Art Contest? If you’re not in the New York City metropolitan area (and therefore, don’t have ready access to the New York Daily News), you may not know that the winners were recently selected and their artwork will be featured in upcoming Wumblers music videos and in a book whose proceeds will benefit Gilda’s Club Worldwide. You can read the article here, which focuses on the five winners from the Bronx. (There were twenty-five grand prize winners, and seventy-five runners-up.)

And if that story doesn’t make you feel warm and fuzzy enough, try this one: A bunch of Kenyan youths made some great cartoons.

A compilation of nine short toons made by children in Kenya during August’s inaugural Lola Kenya Screen film production workshop won the Africa Grand Prize for achievement in a film made by children at the close of the fifth World Summit on Media for Children, held in Johannesburg last week.

Films by Children for Children beat 50 other productions from 12 African nations in a festival held alongside the summit, giving it automatic entry in the international Kids for Kids fest to be held in Amsterdam Sept. 21-24. The win will also mean the pics will be included in a compilation of the “Best Films Made by Children for Children,” to be distributed globally by the Canada-based Intl. Center of Film for Children and Youth.

Two great examples of kids contributing to cartoons for fellow kids, both here at home and abroad. Well done!

I think I’ll bring this up the next time my kids complain about doing chores. (”You know, some kids are winning animation contests by your age. What have you done lately?”)

(It wasn’t on purpose. Well, okay, it was sort of on purpose, because I had so many other things to tell you, but the point is… wait. I’m not sure what the point was. Maybe we should just move on. Yes.)

Anyway, as part of the series kick-off, Giddy Gander is holding the Wumblerful World of Seasons Art Contest. And you know how much I love a contest.

Read the complete rules before entering, but the upshot is that any child from kindergarten through 5th grade may submit a piece of original artwork having to do with any of the four seasons. Entries are due by March 15th to be eligible to win.

The winners will have their artwork integrated into The Wumblers in two different ways; first, pictures may be shown during the music video portion of the television show. Second, pictures may be included in an upcoming Wumblers book. And here’s the best part:

50% of the proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to Gilda’s Club Worldwide and their affiliates to support Noogielands children’s activities at the local Gilda’s Club affiliates.

Gilda’s Club is named in honor of Gilda Radner, who, when describing the emotional and social support she received when she had cancer, called for such places to be made available for people with cancer and their families and friends everywhere. The mission of Gilda’s Club is to provide meeting places where men, women and children living with cancer and their families and friends join with others to build emotional and social support as a supplement to medical care.

From its beginning, the Gilda’s Club program included a children’s-focused are called Noogieland designed for children impacted by cancer — whether having a family member or friend with cancer, or being a survivor of someone with cancer… or having cancer themselves. Noogieland is a warm, supportive play environment in every Gilda’s Club that fills important psychosocial needs and, through help from trained staff and volunteers, allays children’s fears by making the appearance of cancer part of ordinary life.

So, no, your kid isn’t going to win a trip to Disneyworld or anything, but what a great way to get your kids excited about helping others. And the whole seeing-their-picture-on-TV thing will probably appeal to them, too.

Grab an entry form and crack open the crayons, and your child could be a winner.

Just as Laura Wellington is not your ordinary businesswoman, The Wumblers is not your typical cartoon. As discussed in yesterday’s installment, Ms. Wellington is firmly ensconced at the development helm. “Nothing that is developed for Wumblers I don’t know about or I haven’t approved,” she says. “I’m very hands-on as far as the creation of the show, because it’s very important to me. Because I’ve seen it… productions where people didn’t take it as seriously. The quality has to go in, first, and everything else will be built around it.”

Given her insistence on creative control, you might wonder if the Giddy Gander Company is a dictatorship. But it doesn’t take long to realize that, again, this is a model built very much on the ideal of motherhood. “You have to work with your partners as well, and hear them. They know their business. You should never be inflexible. You have to rely on the experts. I am certainly listening to all my producers and licensors and partners; they all have a strong say and voice in what we create. That’s called mutual respect and building a brand together.”

Indeed, a peek into the Wumblers brand does seem to be a very different model than what is typical for the world of mass-marketing. And that’s because Wellington is not concerned about making dollars so much as she’s concerned about making a difference.

“We are not going to look to take the entire marketplace by storm in one big sweep; that’s not our goal. We want it to be a brand and not just a moment in time. There’s a difference between a brand and a moment.” When pressed about plans for The Wumblers, she becomes protective: “If you’re looking to gain the whole world, but your brand doesn’t have a soul… that’s very good for you and you’ll be happy in doing that. But this brand has a soul. It came out of many souls. It will continue to. That means you have to protect the brand.”

So what is this brand actually all about? Have a quick look at Wumbleton:

From the Giddy Gander Company landing page:

The Wumblers are a sweet-natured, whimsical collection of characters who live in a world enough like our own to make sense but different enough to be enthralling. The Wumblers are multi-colored, bulbous-shaped characters whose food falls from the sky, whose babies come from watermelons, and whose stories blend inspiration, imagination, and fun. Spiritually and globally conscious, The Wumblers devotes each and every episode to making the world a better place for ALL.

(I’m thinking I could get behind that babies-coming-from-watermelons thing. That sounds a lot easier and more refreshing than the way I did it.)

The Wumblers is a good fit for the the Trinity Broadcasting Network (where it will begin airing in September, as discussed yesterday) because it is intended to be inspirational. This is not to be confused with religious or dogmatic; it’s merely intended to be about wholesome family values and living together in diversity and harmony. (You can read more here.)

And if that doesn’t impress you, maybe this will: The Wumblers is privately funded entirely through “families devoted to the welfare of children,” and in addition to the crack team of business professionals at Giddy Gander, Wellington put together a National Moms Advisory Panel whose “experience and insight into the needs and preferences of the family remains invaluable” to the development of The Wumblers. There’s no lip service here; the devotion to developing a product that’s good for our children is being put into action every day.

And so I doubt it comes as any surprise, by now, that charity is also an integral part of what The Wumblers is about. A portion of the proceeds from the brand will be distributed through the Dean R. Wellington Foundation to a number of worthy charities, with recipients ranging from Make-A-Wish Foundation to Slow Food USA.

It’s easy to see why Ms. Wellington is proud of The Wumblers and what she views as her late husband’s legacy. “You can create wonderful television that’s fun for children, teaches them lessons, and adds to people’s lives—families’ lives—and do something different, and at the same time, you can make money at it. It doesn’t have to be an either/or thing. You can change peoples lives and make money at it. And then,” although we are speaking by phone, here I swear I can hear the smile stretch across her face, “you have the ability to give back, and change more lives.”

I suspect that very few people who come into contact with Laura Wellington don’t feel their lives have been changed.

Many thanks to Giddy Gander and Laura Wellington for graciously agreeing to be featured here at the Ty’s blog. Stay tuned in the coming months for new about upcoming Wumblers products right here at Ty’s Toy Box!

Pictured to the side here is Laura J. Wellington (with a couple of stuffed Wumblers), age 40, creator of the multi-colored creatures. I think she looks remarkable for a woman who never sleeps, don’t you? And despite her protestations to the contrary, I’m pretty sure she never does sleep. It just doesn’t seem mathematically possible, given her life. Here; see for yourself:

Every day, she is busy running Wellington Consulting, a technology company providing a broad range of services, and Wellington Financial Systems, her company which provides software and systems to some of the big houses in the financial industry. On top of that, since August of 2006 she’s been managing her new baby, Giddy Gander, which owns The Wumblers.

That’s a lot to be doing, don’t you think?

Now what would you think if I told you that in addition to those commitments, Ms. Wellington has four children, ranging in age from 7 to 13? How about if I told you that she was widowed four years ago, and is doing all of this not only on her own, but in the wake of recovering from the horrible blow dealt to her family by her husband’s death?

Now do you understand why I refuse to believe this woman ever sleeps?

Most people would react to a tragedy such as the one Ms. Wellington was forced to face by doing one of two things: Retreating from work commitments to tend to their family, or immersing themselves in work to the detriment of the kids at home. Either way, you could hardly blame someone in mourning for simply not having the wherewithal to, well, do it all.

And this is exactly why Laura Wellington is not “most people,” and also why I really enjoyed my time speaking with her even though she does all of this and runs over three miles on her treadmill every morning. Ordinarily I would have to hate such a person immediately (from right here at my desk, where I routinely opt for snacking over exercising), but instead I found myself wondering if maybe she would adopt me.

Left to rebuild her life and the lives of her four children, Ms. Wellington began sketching again. The wumblers, as she’d called them when she first started drawing them as a child, proved to be a tool for talking through and dealing with the sadness her family was feeling. These little creatures were kind and accepting, and soon people were suggesting that they might make a great show for preschoolers. So the Wellingtons—all of them—set out to make it happen.

“My kids are phenomenal,” Ms. Wellington says, with quiet pride. “They’ve been through a lot. That ‘a lot’ has brought us closer. We have a very tight family. A very pitch-in family. They’re very much involved with the series as well. They have helped me cast the voices for the series, and they have helped me work through artwork. They’ve read through scripts with me. It’s very important to me to involve them. And they’re a heck of a focus group to have in-house!”

She goes on to draw the parallel between her business associates and her children: “[My business partners and I] work well together and we respect each other. Same thing with the kids: I respect them. And it works. It’s an old-fashioned way of raising kids. They have obligations to the family beyond themselves and we work together as a team.”

This philosophy of mothering and family is the core of Ms. Wellington’s values for her business as well as for her personal life. “Anything of quality takes mothering,” she asserts. “Whatever you’re endeavoring to do. You have to be able to rise to the occasion and be that mother, be that person; be that leader.” Here she pauses. “If I’m going to perfect or create any kind of children’s television program and come into your house and say ‘Let your children watch this,’ I’d better have some credibility behind me in my own personal life.”

And that, apparently, is how you balance creating a hot new children’s property and raising some great kids.

Now poised on the edge of launch, The Wumblers will premiere on TBN this Fall and licensing and merchandising are already underway. This is the point at which, often, the corporate machine would spring to life and a series’ creator would become but a tiny cog in the process. But Ms. Wellington retains complete creative control over the property. “I’m very hands-on as far as the creation of the show. Everything that I take part in has to be, for me, something I’m very proud of, and live up to the reputation I’ve built for myself.”

When I suggest that this level of involvement is unusual, she laughs. “You’re looking at someone who does not fit the norm. It’s my life, and I really love it.”

Come back tomorrow to find out more about the Giddy Gander Company and The Wumblers, and for further evidence that Laura Wellington never sleeps.