Who Is Luca Netz and How Pudgy Toys Sold 1 Million Units in a Year

Luca Netz is the Pudgy Penguins CEO, and by 12 May 2024 the Pudgy Toys line his company launched in May 2023 had sold over 1 million units and $10 million of goods in its first year. He was one of the entrepreneurs who bought the NFT brand in April 2022, and he also runs its parent company Igloo, Inc.

The mechanism is a code on a plush toy. Each Pudgy Toy carries a QR code that redeems traits in Pudgy World, a game built on zkSync. Each one also pays IP royalties to the holder of the Pudgy Penguin NFT it reproduces, according to the company's release of 12 May 2024. Walmart stocked the line in 2,000 stores from September 2023.

Luca Netz at a Glance

Who Is Luca Netz and How Did He Take Over Pudgy Penguins?

The company's own 2022 Recap and 2023 Outlook post of 31 December 2022 tells the takeover plainly. In January 2022 the holders had a falling out and demanded a change in leadership, and Netz stepped up as one of a team of entrepreneurs. The deal moved slowly because there was no precedent for buying an NFT company, and it was finalized on 4 April 2022.

The post says the buyers got "no more than some smart contracts and social media log-ins" and an empty treasury.

So Netz's team funded its first year itself. The recap says the company was bootstrapped through 2022 while it rebuilt the brand, and in July 2022 it started licensing individual penguins from holders for a toy line with PMI Toys. That licensing step is the root of everything the toys did later.

For the collection itself and the token that came after it, our guide to Pudgy Penguin NFTs and PENGU covers the basics.

How Pudgy Toys Turned NFT Holders Into Licensors

The toy line works because every figure is a specific penguin somebody owns. The Target launch release of 12 May 2024 says all existing and upcoming Pudgy Toys connect to existing pieces of IP, so NFT holders keep receiving royalty payments through OverpassIP. Holders submit their NFTs on that licensing platform to be considered for future toys, and it opts them into automatic royalty tracking.

That gives a Pudgy Penguin a cash flow tied to shelf sales, and you can set it beside the usual model in our explainer on NFT royalties.

The QR code runs the other way. A buyer who scans the tag redeems traits and collectibles inside Pudgy World, an online open-world game that the release says runs on zkSync. If you buy one in a toy aisle, you end up holding a key to an on-chain game, and an NFT holder ends up earning from your purchase. Netz described the aim in July 2024 as a way to "easily merge both the real and digital worlds."

Pudgy Toys Sales From May 2023 to October 2024

Pudgy Toys launched in May 2023 on e-commerce platforms, and the company says the line became a No. 1 seller on Amazon in three categories. In September 2023 it debuted in 2,000 Walmart locations. Walmart then added 1,100 more locations, announced earlier in 2024. Target stocked six clip-on plushies made by PMI Kids' World from 12 May 2024. By that date the line had sold "over 1 millions units," in the release's own spelling, and $10 million in first-year sales.

The release ties the $10 million to the first year and gives the unit count as at 12 May 2024, about a year after the May 2023 launch, and that pairing is what the headline figure rests on.

The Walgreens release of 23 October 2024 put the toys in 2,000 Walgreens stores and said Walmart had grown to more than 3,000 locations. It repeated "over 1 million units" and lifted retail sales to "more than $13 million" since the 2023 launch. The two releases word the sales figure differently, so the roughly $3 million gap across five months is a loose reading. The unit headline never moved, so the count you'll see repeated most is a May 2024 figure the company had not refreshed by October 2024.

Igloo Inc and the Abstract Blockchain Luca Netz Co-Invented

On 23 July 2024 Igloo, Inc. announced it had closed over $11 million in funding led by Founders Fund, with four other investors joining the round. Igloo describes itself as a collection of companies founded in 2024 and headquartered in Miami, and Pudgy Penguins is the largest of them. The money set up Cube Labs to develop Abstract, a consumer-focused blockchain that the release said would soon enter testnet.

Abstract had three co-inventors in Michael Lee, Luca Netz and Lorenzo Melendez. The release says it is built with ZK Stack and EigenDA, and Founders Fund partner Joey Krug called Pudgy Penguins' reach "the best 0 to 1 distribution edge we've seen in the crypto space." The engineers who build Abstract go by pseudonyms, and this profile leaves them that way.

Krug's own label for the chain was "a consumer L2," the design our primer on Ethereum layer 2 solutions breaks down. The logic matches the toys, since a brand that already sells in stores brings the users and the chain gives them somewhere to go.

PENGU Price on Phemex Spot Before the Perpetual Returned

The Pudgy Penguins token PENGU has traded on Phemex spot since 17 December 2024, and that market carries the only Phemex close for the 22 September 2026 anchor. Spot closed at $0.010044 on 22 September, up 14.19% on the day and 46.50% from the 15 September close of $0.006856. CoinGecko's snapshot at 00:00 UTC on 23 September read $0.010032, within 0.12% of that close.

It was the highest spot close since 11 May 2026, and the 50-day average crossed above the 200-day on 16 September. The market still closed 76.8% below its highest Phemex spot close, $0.043208 on 27 July 2025. Turnover on the 22 September bar came to $2.39 million, and our earlier piece on the Pudgy Penguins memecoin rally tracks PENGU around a token release in May 2026.

PENGU futures returned to Phemex at 10:00 UTC on 23 September 2026 with leverage up to 50x and funding every four hours by the contract's interval field. The perpetual has no bar for 22 September, so every futures figure from before that relisting belongs to an earlier listing and stays out of this profile. No primary source opened for this piece ties the week's 46.50% move to Netz or to the toys, so no cause is claimed.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.