Noggin, Paramount Global’s kid-friendly SVOD that boasted more than two million lifetime subscribers when it was shuttered in July 2024, is coming back as an independent gaming/streaming app—and the company behind it has a multi-staged roadmap for growth.

CEO Kristen Kane, who ran Noggin previously, has been quietly raising capital from private investors—a process that’s still ongoing—to set up the new platform for a beta soft-launch next Tuesday. 

It’s important to note that Noggin 2.0 is completely independent. Paramount signed over all brand assets (including the name and underpinning technology) to Kane’s company last fall, and a core team was assembled roughly six months ago. 

The platform they’ve developed since is intended for kids ages five to 12—a slightly older demo than the original’s preschool target. By aging up, new Noggin hopes to reach Gen Alphas who are eager to discover and explore their passions, says Kane.  

The plan is for the app to grow in three phases. First, it’s launching a virtual city that’s essentially a rebuilt version of Nogginville, an explorable map that was introduced in the old app shortly before Paramount shut it down. As kids check out this rebooted world, they’ll be able to play minigames tied to hobbies such as cooking, chess (pictured at top), building and fashion. 

A look at Noggin’s new virtual world. It will have mini-games where kids can explore and develop their passions, says Kristen Kane. Image courtesy of Noggin.

Then for its second phase, Noggin plans to roll out a streamer that licenses—and eventually commissions—series connected to some of these hobbies. Out of the gate, the company is looking to ink acquisition deals with digital-first creators who make niche content from cooking to fashion to music and more, says Kane. 

Spanning both existing episodes and a few originals, these licenses are being negotiated and signed now as Noggin works on building out its content library. Kane expects to start announcing partnerships in the coming months, and the app will host a mix of short-form and long-form content. She adds that eventually the plan is to get back into developing original content, just like the old Noggin did.

New Noggin’s gaming and streaming features will be free at the outset, with a paywall to come once an audience is established, says Kane. And longer term, the team also plans to monetize the app through advertising and in-app purchasing. 

Finally, in phase three, the Noggin team plans to create live location-based experiences tied to the app’s content. This could take the form of a Noggin-branded baking club, for example, where kids can use what they’ve learned from the games and content on the app in real life. They would presumably bring siblings and friends with them to share their passion in fun, educational settings. The Noggin team imagines a sort of clubhouse that could include a test kitchen, a garage for shop projects and a music studio. 

Noggin would monetize these in-person models through membership fees, as well as opportunities to sell products on site, Kane notes. “We want Noggin to come to a town near you. It’s mostly like a place where kids can be with other kids on their own—supervised, safe, just doing their thing.” 

Eventually, the plan is for all of these pieces to work together as an ecosystem where kids play games that stoke their passions, watch aspirational content that encourages them to try out new hobbies themselves, and then go out and do these things with other kids, she says. 

The minigames in the app will have a level of realism that teaches kids how to build real skills, Kane says. “So it’s not like, poof, the cake is made. It’s going through [the process] step by step by step, and hopefully saying, ‘I could totally do this’.”

The team will add multiplayer functionality to the app soon, and at some point they plan to let young users become creators themselves. For example, kids might design products in the fashion minigame that Noggin could then ship to them, Kane notes. “It’s about finding your thing and doing it,” she says. “It’s really about obsession. We want to help them with their obsessions and just make them more real.”