BugHouse

We believe in the creative genius

We believe in a day when every child grows up knowing they can realize their dreams through their creations. Our mission is to inspire creative play and learning in children and provide the tools for parents to help raise amazing people.

We're Bughouse:
a super fun group of musicians, engineers, artists and writers who believe that they too, can use creativity to sculpt our world for a better future.
Gender Neutral Apps

Gender Neutral

Toys for boys and toys for girls? It's a tradition that creates artificial limitations on the dreams of developing minds. All our products are created for and tested by both girls and boys. We use male and female characters, a full pallette of brights colors and work with parents to identify what parts of our toys they are finding the most fun.

Highest Quality Kids Apps

Highest Quality

We take our time and we do our research. In the latest version of Super Nano Trucks, we wanted to help kids learn how concrete is made and used. We teamed up with the very best: Ozinga, a concrete industry leader in Chicago. We toured the factory, talked to the workers and worked with Ozinga's forward-thinking leadership to produce an app that didn't just achieve our educational goals, but kept the game SUPER fun.

Parent Focused Kids Apps

Parent Focused

For a lot of toy companies, parents are an afterthought. Before a line of a code is created or a plastic part is molded, our ideas are vetted with a group of parents. This gives our creative team a chance to build in features for parents WHILE they're concepting our toys and games. What results is a still fun and educational-as-all-get-out experience for children that also has the tools parents need to regulate their play.

Meet The Founders

John W Ostler and Heather Brown Bughouse John W Ostler and Heather Brown Bughouse

Heather Brown

With a deep background in technology and project management, Heather has spent her career in Chicago helping orchestrate digital projects for some of the world’s most well-known brands: Motorola, Butterball, Harpo (Oprah), Verizon, Kraft, Sears, and Craftsman. Her depth spans native mobile apps, mobile games, website based games, enterprise websites and social networks. She is head of the Windy City Digital Project Managers, a featured member of Women In Toys (WIT), and been highlighted by Google Apps for Business. In her free time she is a professional tap dancer and instructor, helping educate children and proliferating the art form across the midwest.

John W Ostler

John has been building teams that are focused on building the very best digital products. His body of work spans enterprise websites, APIs, social networks, mobile apps, games, augmented reality, beacons and wearable technology for brands such as Hasbro/Playskool, Groupon, Verizon, Field Museum, Underwriters Labs (UL) and Motorola. His work has been featured in the USA Today, Brandweek, The Daily Beast, New York Times, Mashable.com, Fatherly.com, with multiple apps selected by Apple as New & Noteworthy. He was involved in launching some of the first iPhone apps in the app store and helping toy brands and enterprises navigate the mobile landscape. In his free time he is a professional drummer focused on the marching percussion space.