ToeJam & Earl Productions, Inc. (1989–2003), formerly known as Johnson Voorsanger Productions or JVP, was an American video game company founded by Electronic Arts developers Mark Voorsanger and Greg Johnson. Their best-known titles were Orly's Draw-A-Story (1999, Broderbund), and three games in the ToeJam & Earl series (1991–2003, Sega).
JVP introduced the ToeJam & Earl series with the original ToeJam & Earl, followed by Ready, Aim, Tomatoes! (a mini-game for Sega's light-gun The Menacer), and the platformer-sequel ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron. Each was developed exclusively for the Mega Drive/Genesis and published by Sega. With the success of the ToeJam & Earl series, the company was renamed to ToeJam & Earl Productions, Inc. and in 2003 released the third title in the series, ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth, co-developed by Visual Concepts for the original Xbox.
ToeJam & Earl Productions also created Orly's Draw-A-Story in 1996, a educational game for kids ages 5 to 10. Orly's Draw-A-Story was designed for PCs and Macs and was published by Broderbund.
Disbandment[]
After poor sales of ToeJam & Earl III, the company disbanded in 2003. Mark Voorsanger went on to produce other Electronic Arts games for a few years, and then left the game industry to run a coaching business, Skyward Coaching, out of the same building where ToeJam & Earl Productions was located. Greg Johnson continued as an independent game design consultant, then started his own video game development studio called HumaNature Studios, and currently owns the ToeJam & Earl intellectual property rights.