Toy time is holding steady, but kids are spending more time on digital, and toys need to adapt.

If you don't integrate the technology in a way that's actually fun, the kids don't stay with the play pattern.

Consumers have a different path to purchase. They don't shop less than they used to; it is just that the footsteps went online. You have to think differently in how you engage with users.

Generation Alpha has very different expectations for the entire world. Everything that's going to happen in their lives needs to be visual, on demand, adaptive, in demand, and we have to find a way to embed that into our toy experiences.

I wanted to study at the Art Students League in New York when I was young, but I didn't have the money. Then I was fortunate enough to become Johnny Cougar Mellencamp. At the time, I thought I'd make a couple of records and get back to painting. It never dawned on me that I'd be 64 years old and still making music.

Every milieu has something ridiculous about it - film-making, the music world, painting - because people who take themselves seriously become funny pretty quickly.

It's a very hard thing for all of us to accept ourselves at all the different stages - the horrible side, the wonderful side, the adorable side - and who you are as a grownup. And then to bring what you learned as a child to that grownup: that is the magic of creativity.

I just love performing so much, and I threw myself into every musical theater production that was going in my home town and at school. And then, I went to the National Youth Music Theatre, which was really a galvanizing experience for me when I was 17.