Starkville company Glo teams up with Sesame Street to sell new early child development toys that help young children and those with autism

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – One business in Starkville can show you how to get to Sesame Street.

It was April 5th when the Starkville-based company Glo launched the new line of their innovative bath toys known as Glo Pals after a deal with Sesame Street.

A small splash and a burst of light are all it has taken for the small business to make ripples across the world.

After finding early success selling their liquid-activated Glo Cubes, one phone call from a grateful mother changed everything.

“She had gotten a Glo Cube and the first thing she thought about was her 4-year-old son, who was autistic and terrified of the bath,” explained Glo vice president of business development Anna Barker. “She called us because she wanted us to know that (using the cube) was the first time in months that he had taken a bath without crying.”

That’s when co-founders and Mississippi State alumni Barker and CEO Hagan Walker made the switch to selling the early child development toys.

“It helps children with the development of their cognitive skills, fine motor skills, color recognition, problem-solving and color sorting,” Barker explained.

Which also happens to be what their new business partner has been doing for more than 50 years.

“Sesame Street is this really remarkable, huge company with this 40-year history of a legacy of helping kids grow smarter and kinder and stronger,” Barker said.

Since the launch, they’ve been flying off the shelves.

“It’s been a month and for more than half of that we’ve been sold out,” Walker said. “Because everything’s exceeded expectations.”

And while everyone loves Elmo, it’s their new character Julia, they are even more excited about.

“Sesame Street recently released Julia, who’s their first autistic Muppet,” Barker said.

And Glo is one of the companies they trust to put her in children’s hands.

“We kind of get to be one of the first companies to get to license her and really put her message out there and use her as a way to celebrate the autism community,” Barker said.

Glo has sold three million products in over 30 countries but for Barker and the numbers they care about most are how many children they can help.

“To be able to play a very small part in celebrating that community and helping provide the resources that Sesame Workshop has to them, I think is a really remarkable thing to be a part of,” she added.

Both Barker and Walker say their Sesame Street Glo Pals are also brought to their customers by the letters M, S and U, crediting State’s business school for getting them to where they are.

They said customers can expect more of their favorite Sesame Street characters to be available in Glo Pal form in the future.