Helping the RealFX Toothless Puppetronic take flight across the globe

In 2024, we’d worked with WOW! Stuff on a campaign for their Disney Stitch Puppetronic by RealFX and – in their words – it was “the best advert [they’d] ever commissioned”. For this release, it just made sense to get the band back together.

HUB Studios is built for this kind of work. We needed to shoot videography for TV, cinema, social media and product websites, as well as lifestyle photography for eCommerce and packaging. On top of that, we needed to produce a selection of ‘how-to’ videos to share on socials and their website. These assets would then be used across the UK, Republic of Ireland, Europe, and Australia.

This Toothless Puppetronic is a seriously cool toy. Our creatives were tasked with showcasing some of its standout features including its reactivity, range of sounds, plasma blast and lighting effects. This emphasis on making the features sing came directly from Universal, one of the biggest movie production companies in the world – no biggie!

One of the most important parts of the brief was to really capture those ‘WOW’ moments and bring the Puppetronic to life. The interactive nature of the toy and its animatronics had to be done justice in the most exciting and attention-grabbing way possible.

The original brief was for a room set, but we had other ideas. We wanted to create a set that truly brought the toy to life – an all-encompassing build on a large scale. It needed to show the toy at its best on everything from the silver screen to your mobile phone.

The solution? We built our own forest! A few tonnes of sand and mulch, trees and logs, boulders, monoliths and a smoke machine later – and our in-house studios in Leeds were unrecognisable.

We chose to recreate some iconic scenes from the film, such as Toothless’ adorable head touch to Hiccup – something Universal loved so much that they decided to include more Easter eggs into the ad. We threw in nods to scenes where Hiccup offers Toothless a fish and even recreated Hiccup’s sand drawing of the wide-eyed dragon. It all added to that feeling we were tying the film and the toy closely together – and also helped us show off just how cute Toothless is!

Of course, a production of this scale didn’t come without its challenges. Bringing a beach’s worth of sand into the studio aside, we knew we had to strike a balance between creating an engaging advert and showcasing the features of the Toothless Puppetronic. We also had to take on a slightly different role. While we’re more than used to working solely with clients, adding Universal into the mix meant becoming more of a support function. Balancing the needs of our client with those of Universal involved plenty of back and forth to ensure everyone was happy – and that we were getting the most from the assets.

They say never work with kids or animals. We’ve never had an issue with either. For this project, factored in chaperones, regular breaks, council licensing, performance licences, and watertight safeguarding – not to mention keeping the child models entertained and engaged – but that’s all in a day’s work for the HUB team. It was literally a day’s work, too, because we wrapped the shoot in only a few hours!

WOW! Stuff came back to us because they know what we’re good at. Give us the toy and a list of deliverables, and we’ll make it happen. The entire process was done in-house by our team – that’s full-scale integration at its finest. We’re talking (deep breath): storyboarding, planning, model scouting, prop sourcing, set build, hair, makeup, videography, photography, editing, scripting, voiceover, and delivery – all in only seven short weeks. Phew!

At the end of it all, WOW! Stuff, Universal Pictures, and HUB were left with a suite of assets that smashed the brief – showcasing the Toothless Puppetronic in its best light, and in front of a huge, global audience.