Social-media stars Charli and Dixie D’Amelio are introducing “Squeaky and Roy,” cartoon characters based on Dixie’s pink teddy bear and his penguin bestie, in their latest media offshoot.
The main character is Squeaky, based on Dixie’s longtime favorite stuffed animal of the same name, which she lost in an airport when she was little. The setup is that all these years later, Squeaky is back and moving into the D’Amelio home in L.A., bringing along his best friend, Roy, a purple penguin.
The teen sisters are major TikTok stars — Charli has 118.1 million followers right now, making her the most-followed account on the app, while Dixie has 52.6 million — and they have large fanbases on other platforms. So naturally, the Squeaky and Roy characters will live on the same services: Their adventures will be shared on Instagram, TikTok and Triller at @squeakyandroy.
Actually, the D’Amelios quietly debuted the Squeaky and Roy accounts earlier this month — and several thousand of the girls’ superfans have already discovered and followed the cartoon pals.
Watch the first video in the Squeaky and Roy series:
ned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram/reel/CP1ON-Cn9Xl/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="13">A post shared by Squeaky and Roy (@squeakyandroy)
Squeaky and Roy were co-developed by the D’Amelio family and Invisible Universe, a tech and entertainment company that creates original cartoon intellectual property for social media.
“When we met Invisible Universe, we loved their vision for creating cartoon characters on social media that can later end up across other media like film and TV,” Charli and Dixie said in a statement to PvNew. “We thought creating our own franchise could be really fun for our entire family and couldn’t be happier with how Squeaky and Roy turned out.”
Over the last year and a half, the members of the D’Amelio family have been working on different projects individually. But Squeaky and Roy is “special because it involves the entire family,” Marc and Heidi D’Amelio, the sisters’ parents, said in a statement. “We love spending time together and seeing everyone’s creativity and passion come to life.”
For the cartoon, the family works as a team in creative meetings as well as shooting video, reviewing material and working with Invisible Universe.
John Brennan, founder/CEO of Invisible Universe, commented, “No one knows the power of social media like the D’Amelio family, which makes them the perfect partner to bring this animated franchise to life.”
“As we’ve come to learn throughout the development process, behind all of the followers is an incredibly kind, creative, fun, and tight-knit family — all themes that will play out in the personalities of Squeaky and Roy,” Brennan added.
Among the family’s other projects, they will be the featured subjects in “The D’Amelio Show,” an eight-part docuseries coming to Hulu in 2021 chronicling “the first family of TikTok” as they “navigate their sudden rise to fame, all the while still staying true to their family values.”
