Why is Toy Fair in New York, in February?

          

It's a good question, and no one in the industry seems to know the answer. It is an enigma wrapped in a conundrum - A mystery.

 

  

         

The Toy Fair tradition is over 100 years old, starting, as I was told by a long time industry friend just recently, in a hotel where buyers would come to many different room to see wares that had been brought back from Europe, which was the source of all toys back in the 1800's. I believe the toy building itself was once that very hotel.

 

 

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Knee jerk responses, ill considered opinions, and unsupported positions based on hearsay or questionable sources are all what led to the CPSIA legislative insanity that continues to grind on and grind up small companies with regulations that are expensive, onerous, and simply wrongheaded. Although well intentioned, the results are not those intended. 

 

 

 

On the issue of cadmium levels in childrens jewelry, something which has always been in jewelry of all kinds, and has never been identified as a health risk, the Chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission has warned against allowing children to play with inexpensive jewelry. That, along with state level legislation may well remove jewelry for kids from the marketplace altogether - all without any science and . . . 

“without the benefit of a review of the test data, which AP and its testing partner have not made public or shared with the companies whose products are named in the story. The CPSC subsequently issued a recall for one jewelry item with "high levels of cadmium," but also did not share data – even with the company itself.” 

 

(quoted from the Alliance for Children's Product Safety and CPSIA, and to view previous "Casualties of the Week," visit AmendTheCPSIA.com)

        

 

 

Were cadmium to be a health problem, it would have manifested itself as kidney disease, which is virtually unknown in children. The result is the toy industry and other related industries being ruled on and regulated on the basis of unsubstantiated claims in the media and politicians' knee jerk legislation, not on the basis of fact, scientific risk analysis, or sound judgment.

        

That almost sounds like craziness to me. Where is the voice of reason? Could it even be heard over the din of today's media-saturated world?  

 

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The media today are not dispassionate reporters, but rather promoters of positions and opinions held by their owners and management. They are sellers of entertainment in the form of news, and will create to sell what others want to buy. I can’t listen to CNN or FOX without wincing at the bias each expresses almost non-stop.  

            

 

In today’s society if seems that if one does not agree with someone, it is not merely a difference of opinion, but the other party must be demonized as intentionally wrong, even characterized as unethical, amoral, or illegal because of the views held, opinions expressed or actions taken. In the face of evidence, far too many of us will still cling to contrary beliefs held dear, even if unsupported by accepted fact or intersubjectively testifiable observation. 

 

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Posted March 25, 2010

There is a restaurant in Spain that has created an entirely new form of Haute Cuisine. New tastes and textures and new foods have been created there using laboratory equipment rather than traditional food preparation tools. You may already be familiar with “Molecular Gastronomy,” as it is called. 

        

  

   

The people behind this restaurant have written a dictionary of terms that are used in this new-to-the-world form of food. They have created the new tools and equipment used in the creation of these delicacies. At their restaurant in Spain they have room for only 8000 seatings in the course of a year, and over 2,000,000 reservation requests from around the world come in each year that cannot be accommodated. This entirely new form of food, of fine dining, has already spread around the world and is well represented here in Chicago. 

            

This restaurant has revolutionized a basic human activity that has been largely unchanged for hundreds of years. It closes for six months each year to do R&D so that they might continue to innovate, and invent still more new forms of food, food preparation techniques, and equipment. It is a research laboratory in the guise of a restaurant. Those of us who live in the world of innovation, invention, and new products could learn a lot from these people. There is genius at work there. 

 

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On occasion one meets a great mind - a person possessed of awesome intellectual firepower. This person is often mild-mannered and unobtrusive while observing and considering the world continuously.  I had a friend years ago with one such powerful mind, but unfortunately he never found a way to put it to use. It's like having a ZO6 Corvette engine in an econobox car body.

            

Others thankfully find an outlet for their abilities and cause ripples of effect and results to emanate from them. One such person was my mentor at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology, here in the great (snowy) city of Chicago. Gone now, (may he rest in peace), Mr. Jay Doblin was one of the great thinkers of the world of industrial design and the greater world of design, as well. He was certainly one of the great modern thinkers in the world of business innovation. 

            

 

For those interested in innovation I recommend a visit to the Doblin website, a company he founded. On the Doblin website you will learn about innovation in the world of business, but of particular interest is a section on Extreme Innovation. 

Elephants are pretty popular. Almost everyone likes them.  

 

 

 

Some of my other idiosyncracies may not be so widely shared, however.  Another such ’fetish’ of mine is backhoe diggers - other kinds of hoes perhaps, as well - but backhoes are my favorite. They are kind of like robots, and we have created many products over the years that are based on, or use a backhoe digger in one way or another. We have never sold one of them. Games, toys, dolls, novelties, plush. I finally came to the conclusion that not everyone shared the backhoe fascination with me, and we quit making products based on that much-loved machine. 

            

I guess we all have our little idiosyncrasies, eh?

 

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I like the word 'Vicissitudes' - it is like a one word poem, a song, so satisfying to speak, it rolls off the tongue. Try using it at least once a week. And call me in the morning.

            

Actually, I wished to address the topic of idiosyncrasies. I have mine, and they make me chuckle at times. I love elephants, for example, and have even considered/dreamed of having one as a pet when I lived along the Chicago River. I had a big yard and a good relationship with the neighbors, so they likely wouldn’t have minded. 'Twas the finest house in all Chicago, like living in a private park. Standing on my second floor deck one could not see another house. The plan could have worked, except that it turns out elephants are very expensive and eat about a ton of hay each day. 

 

            

There was a man in Wisconsin, it turns out, that did just what I dreamed of back before elephants cost quite so much. Since he lived in the country, there weren’t the sticky zoning issues that I might have had to deal with once I actually had an elephant living in my Chicago backyard. But this man bought another, and then another, and ended up with what some consider to be the greatest elephant circus act ever.             

 

 

            

Now, I am perfectly happy as a toy inventor - couldn’t be happier. I even gave up my dreams of being an astronaut, or a bull rider,  or a professional cowboy so that I might continue in this line of work. But if this toy thing hadn’t worked out, having my own herd of elephants would have been pretty cool. Such are the vicissitudes of life.  

 

(There, isn’t that easy, to just slip it into your conversation like that?) 

 

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I had the castle to myself, I was assured. Before retiring the proprietor invited me to the bierstube next door that served a beer brewed and served only in this town, and only for six weeks each year. Some king or pope or some such person was so taken by their local nectar over six hundred years ago that he conferred on them this very special allowance by royal edict. I wish I could be a bit more accurate, but it was a very good bier. 

 

 

            

Did I mention, it was a very good bier? It was also an intimate room filled with drinking and drunk, congenial, toasting-to-each-others'-health townsfolk, some dressed in native Bavarian lederhosen and those funny little hats, belting out Bavarian folk songs. None of them spoke a lick of English, but it really didn’t seem to matter. Bier is a universal language. It was like a scene out of a movie. 

            

So after I was all settled in, I drifted off to sleep only to be awakened by footsteps in the hallway at two or so in the am. I might have heard the rattle of chains or the dragging of a foot, maybe. It had to be a ghost. Castles all have ghosts, I love ghosts, and this is a medieval castle. I thought to myself, "this is my lucky day-or rather night, I guess," and fell back asleep with a smile on my face knowing that at long last I had heard a ghost.  

 

 

 

The next morning at breakfast I found out that another boarder had arrived that night at about 2 in the morning.  Dang. 

          

I'm still looking for that ghost. Somewhere, somehow I hope to encounter one. I have met and known many people who have had supernatural encounters and lived in houses with lively hauntings. But no such luck for me. 

 

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The toy show in Nuremberg Germany is the largest in the world - made up of a maze of halls and tents that puts to the test the vaunted reputation of Germanic design and engineering. I could say it was designed by a madman, perhaps. There is just too much to see, no matter how long you might have to take it all in. 

          

It is the crossroads of the toy industry in Europe and an important venue for the global industry. I always enjoyed my trips to Germany, my accommodations, my pedal-to-the-metal rental car drives down the Autobahn, and my side excursions up into the hills, the Black Forest, and the quaint small towns of Bavaria with buildings unchanged since the 1600’s. 

            

 

 

On one trip I rented a room north of Nuremberg in an old Castle (duh? Castle = old). The cab crawled up the hill on which the castle was perched high above and I got out. When it drove off I stood in almost total darkness. Not a light was on. As I walked onto the castle grounds I listened intently to the crunch of gravel beneath my shoes to be sure I was still on the path - to stray off, I feared, might result in plunging off the cliffs into the valley below. It was that dark.

 

 

            

Thankfully, a car drove up. It was the caretaker of the castle, just back from vacation in Italy, and just in time. He showed me to the stairs and indicated where I would find my room. Climbing the stairs in the gloom of the dimly lit hall, I was momentarily taken aback (perhaps I should say scared out of my wits, to be more precise) at the mounted bear rearing up on its hind legs with outstretched claws on the landing at the top of the stairs. All around me were the heads and trophies of other fierce animal species glaring down at me. While the Black Forest was once a realm teeming with wild game, it now seemed the wild beasts had all taken up residence on the walls of this castle.

 

To Be Continued . . .  

 

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My friend Dr. Wolf grew up in Nebraska, when it was still a territory and had not yet achieved statehood. He grew up in a sod house, made of chunks of dirt held together by grass roots, piled high to make walls - a home made of the prarie dirt with a dirt floor and dirt walls. (I saw one of those sod homes on a motorcycle trip to Sturgis once and it appeared to be one step above a hole in the ground.) Dr Wolf's family fended off Indian attacks, successfully it would seem, as he lived to tell me his tale. Knowing him connected me to another time and place that heretofore had seemed more the subject of movies than the reality of life of someone I knew. 

 

 

            

He loved his work and never quit doing it until he was simply unable to, and died at age 90.  

 

Love what you do, do what you love. Love where you live, and live where you love. 

 

And Love the one you’re with. (Crosby Stills Nash & Young)

            

That’s all for today, folks, 10-4., over and out.

 

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I became friends with one Duke professor in particular, Dr. Wolf, whose specialty was agricultural diseases such as tobacco fungus and corn smut, the bane of corn farmers. Born in 1885, he was almost 90 when we met and was still publishing scientific papers, having published over a hundred at that point, and writing another book as well. 

 

 

            

Dr. Wolf loved his work. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s he toiled in cornfields in the sweltering summers of Texas collecting smut spores that were blowing in the wind. The corn farmers told him he would never collect enough to make a difference, not realizing he wasn’t trying to protect their fields, only collect samples for study. In 1965 he received the North Carolina Gold Medal, the state's highest honor, which recognized him for his research with tobacco. He loved to joke that the medal and $.25 could get you a cup of coffee. I think he was really proud of that medal, however.  

 

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Happiness is working hard at something you love.

 

I love what I do. I may have already told you that. The processes of imagination, discovery, tinkering, experimentation, collaboration, and refinement make our work always new and always interesting. Bringing something new and wonderful into the world is exceedingly challenging and very satisfying. If it was any easier, it wouldn’t be challenging enough. If it were any harder, it would be impossible.

            

 

 

As a freshman at Duke University years ago, wandering the halls of the biology building I would encounter wonder offices full of fascinating and happy professors whose lives were immersed in their work. In one room I'd find a professor whose life work was the study of tree ferns and in another the leading expert on giant water lilies whose floating leaves could support a man. Other professors, the Culbersons, traveled the world as a husband and wife team studying and collecting lichens - curious plants composed of a fungus and an algae co-habitating symbiotically (I think) as one. 

 

 

 

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A great product idea can come from a mere question or observation. We are not always looking for fully formed, thought out, whole cloth ideas.

 

“Can we get a doll to stand up from a seated positon?” became TMX Elmo.  

“Can we do something with electrolysis?” became our Hydrogen Rocket system.

“Can we do something with Billy the Bass?" became Baby Go Boom.

 

 

 

All of these innocent questions resulted in product concepts of great significance for us. 

 

Asking questions such as, “Could a water rocket be turned into a water gun?” (which led to the invention of the Super Soaker, perhaps?) or many other possible questions of that sort can result in tremendously successful products. 

 

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Ideas come from ideas come from idea meetings of course, and often from casual conversations. Ideas come anytime, anywhere, so be ready, be open, and be looking for them. Try to record in some way what occurs to you; thoughts, questions observations, as well as fully formed product concepts. We are always looking for inspirations, intuitions, directions and observations, or questions that might frame or inspire a new product direction. 

 

 

 

Many great discoveries and solutions in history have arrived as a person was dozing off at home, or stepping onto the bus. They can and do come at any time and from anywhere. Like a writer who pays close attention to the people and places he encounters, gathering source material for his next novel, we make it a habit to be constantly scanning our everyday world for objects, observations, trends, and devices that we can share with the team as a possible beginning of a new idea. 

 

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In any idea session, it is essential that you get your ideas into the mix, even if you feel you have to raise your hand to be acknowleged and heard. This was a problem to me as a young designer.

    

 

 

When describing your idea, be brief, be crystal clear, and be to the point. If there is little positive response, it is not likely that you were misunderstood, but rather that there is a lack of interest or excitement in your peers for your idea. Let it go. You will find that little comes from trying to sell your concept or attempt to solicit greater interest through more explanation. If people want more explanation, they will ask.  

 

Selling, or offering further explanation out of the assumption that people don’t understand your idea will frustrate the other participants (who are not dummies by the way, or they wouldn’t be there). It halts the flow of the meeting and kills the creative energy.  

 

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Further thoughts on the topic of idea generation:

          

Get in the zone. I have found that the best creative output comes from a state of intense concentration - of carefully following the thread of the conversation, of making sure that your applicable ideas are inserted into the mix, and of being attuned to the ideas and imagery that come up as the conversation flows. The zone is a high state of awareness of all that is being said and happening around you as well as of your own spontaneously generating ideas. 

 

In the flow of a meeting, we are looking for a flow of ideas, images, and thoughts. No one need be profound, but each idea offered can trigger ideas and thoughts in others. Don’t censor your ideas, but get them into the meeting as soon as possible and where they are appropriate. Don’t hold back. Actively listen and actively participate 

 

Each thought you voice will create more, like a stone thrown into a pool of water. 

 

 

 

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Posted March 8, 2010           

The second critical component of creative listening is to be tuned into the ideas that spring to mind from what you are hearing. We can’t help this, and want to use it. Like a room full of mousetraps, tossing out an idea conjures up other ideas, related and not in each and every person, and we want to make sure we capture and share these random thoughts. You must write them down, so that you don’t lose them and so that you can temporarily forget them and return to what the other group members may be saying. Jot down ideas as they occur so you can continue to be an attendant and active listener.

 

 

Then you need to interject these thoughts, incomplete as they may be, while this topic is under discussion - if the idea is in the same vein. Get them out and on the table at the time because they will be fodder for others' ideas in turn. Like the accretion of layers of ice on a ball of hail, bit by bit, more and more thoughts can be added to an idea until a real actionable concept is formed.

            

If your thought is on another tangent and would distract the conversation rather than serve to elaborate or support the it, then hold onto it and get it in as soon as the topic changes. 

            

In my experience, these are simple, not easy, but entirely necessary processes for a successful idea meeting.  

 

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Some further thoughts on idea meetings for generating new concepts:

       

3. Listening is key. But this is not the kind of listening you likely practice very often.

 

This is the most important thing - each participant must be responsible for being an active participant in the meeting. Being an active and attentive listener is essential. Typical listening often consists of waiting for the other person to stop talking (shut up already!) so that we can say what we have been thinking of and wanting to say. While we are remembering and waiting for them to finish, we often won’t be paying attention to what they are saying, for fear of forgetting what we want to say.

 

        

Active listening is not like everyday listening. It is a skill that can be developed, and takes real work and effort to do continuously. Just because I know how to throw a ball doesn’t make me a major-league pitcher. The difference between backyard catch and world series pitching is very great. So it is with listening. We may well think we do it and know how to do it, but what I am describing is another skill altogether. 

 

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Some thoughts on idea meetings for generating new concepts:

 

 

 

1. The structure and techniques used in a meeting, not surprisingly, can have a tremendous impact on the quality of the results achieved. 

          

2. One-on-one meetings work great because there are no distractions. We are forced to hang on every word of the other person, as it becomes quickly obvious when you aren’t truly ‘there.’ Our cultural mores cause us to be better at paying attention when no one else is around. Like the Bystander Effect when someone is being attacked. Studies find that the lone person is far more likely to rush to help than the typical person in a group, who will expect someone else to rush in for them. This model is often evident in group idea sessions, where participants are comfortable with letting others do the work. It is human nature, but each meeting participant (and that would be you) should try to force him or herself to be active, continuous participants.

 

 

 

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After my first long distance bicycle ride from the tip of Rhode Island to my then-home in Lewiston, NY, just North of Niagara Falls, I wanted to ride across America, but I did not want to do it alone. The trip from Rhode Island was rainy, lonely, threatened by bicycle breakdown, but rescued by a man who picked me up, took me home to dinner with his family, and gave me some dry clothes. And where  did he work? The Local Schwinn bicycle factory. His buddies were all bike builders, mechanics, and in the morning my bike was as good as new. 

 

 

 

Now, that was a miracle and proof that God moves in our lives, if we but look to see. 

            

So, wanting to ride across country, I decided to ask a fellow student who I knew was an avid bicyclist if he wanted to go. I found him in the dining hall, sat down and introduced myself, and popped the question, “You wanna ride across country this summer after graduation?” He said, “Yes.” And we did.

            

Say Yes to life. It all flows from there. And sometimes the best things happen if you ask someone else and they say, “Hell yeah” or just plain “Yes.”

                      

 

 

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Sometimes you have to do the asking, and someone else has to say Yes for something wonderful to happen. Say Yes to life, All else follows from that.  

 

Wanting to run a marathon, and knowing I wouldn’t do the training on my own, I asked a friend if he wanted to run it with me.  He said (can you guess?) YES. And we did. We ran an arduous, wheezing, five-minute stint the first day, and a bit more each day after that. In ten weeks, we ran the Chicago Marathon. I have always hated running. I had never run before, and I never ran since, but will always cherish the summer that I did. 

 

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As I have mentioned, I recently said yes to roller skating, and now I have a new interest and am acquiring a new skill. One could even say I have found a new passion.

 

It would have been easy and a highly defensible position to have said “No.” Had I said “No” I would not now have this newfound interest that I can do and share with others. What I love about it most is that each time I skate, I get a smidgeon better, a tiny bit more fluid. Not many skills are like that, that each time you do it, you see a difference, a small but perceptible improvement. 

            

In the toy design business, we can look back each five years and see improvement in the level of product that we are producing, but it is hard to see any improvement in a shorter timeframe than that. With skating, I can map my progress through every single session.

 

 

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