Posted November 30, 2009

Many of the Littles from Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Chicago that have sat on Santa's lap over the years are now 13-14 years of age or so, and many look even older. Some now tower over Santa, but dutifully sit on his lap, carefully so as not to break the old guy's leg. This happens not without some prodding at times, but that whole sitting on Santa’s lap is kind of the gig. 

      

 

     

The Elves cajole, maybe juggle, mingle and entertain amongst the chaotic throng of kids who have been crazed by Santa, presents, sugary deserts, soda, and music. The jingling of antique sleigh bells accompanies the chaos the whole time.

Once Santa’s voice is hoarse from Ho Ho Ho-ing and shouting out “Merry Christmas” over the din of the assemblage, and he is perspiring profusely from the pillows duct taped to his belly to fill out his natural girth, and once all the kids have received their gift and had a moment with Santa it is time for Santa and the Elves to make their exit.

Until next year.

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Posted November 25, 2009

We are here for but a blink of an eye.

            

 

I am thankful, on occasion, not often enough no doubt, to be here, healthy, able to think (somewhat), to see, to hear, to breathe, to taste, to love and be loved, to raise children, and to create new things that bring wonder and pleasure to others. I am so fortunate, I am thankful.

Our time is short. In that time we have the opportunity to make a contribution to the world and to the lives of others. Now is our moment to breathe deep the smells and tastes, the tickles and touches, all the sensations and the gamut of emotions that life offers us each day, week, month, and year. The good and bad, happy and sad, the warm, the cold, the wet and the dry. Ah, life is so delicious. 

          

And life is all the better when it is filled with toys and games.

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Posted November 24, 2009

So that brings me back to being Santa. I and my amazing team of Elves will soon be personally handing out toys and games to hundreds of the wonderful children of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Chicagoland. Each will sit on Santa's lap, and many have been doing so since they were little, year after year. 

            

 

I love the Elves. Maybe you got that already, but while I, as Santa, am OK, our merry band of Elves, each year, has got to be the best group of Elves on the planet. I kid you not. Kudos and thank you Elves all, wherever you all may be.

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Posted November 23, 2009

Each year for over two decades now I have donned the curly white hair and hat, glued on the beard, duct-taped on the pillows, worn my father-in-law's black boots (that have done double duty on my motorcycle trips for as many years, and for him before that), white gloves if I can find them, more recently wire rimmed glasses, a wee bit of lipstick for the cherry lips and rosy cheeks, and it is HO, HO, HO! time.

Surrounded, and at times protected by a cadre of interesting looking elves, I shake the antique sleigh bells that make exactly the right, absolutely perfect Santa's sleigh bell sound and I start the Ho Ho Ho’s. I have been Santa for the Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Chicago on tour boats, in high school gyms, in smaller restaurants packed beyond capacity, on stage, no stage - I never know what I'll find until I walk in the door.

 

The elves are my kids and my team of toy inventors and designers, each with their own interpretation of what an elf should look like, or what they are willing to wear. Some refuse to wear tights, others, no problem. Some won’t glue on bushy white eyebrows and beards, and others get right into it and look like 500 year old elves. 

 

 

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Posted November 20, 2009

Do you know the feeling you get when you help a little old lady across the street? Feels good, doesn’t it? Except that one time at toyfair years ago, when I helped an elderly woman across Broadway and 5th Ave, and she started talking dirty to me, and wanted me to go home with her. That was a bit weird. But of course, it was New York. And I didn’t. 

 

            

There is something about doing a good deed that creates a special feeling of peace and satisfaction. I think we are hard-wired for giving. We help others because at times in our lives when we needed help, others have helped us. What goes around comes around, and by giving and helping we encourage the cycle of good deeds and generosity of others that we in turn benefit from. Keep it up.

            

 

And sometimes we help others and do good deeds, so that the Good Lord above is pleased with us. It is our responsibility to be grateful and pay back for all the blessings of life that we have been given.

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Posted November 19, 2009 

So, the woman from the plane took the $40 that she got from returning the pair of leather gloves and bought dozens of pairs of $1 Day-Glo Orange gloves. Then, she distributed these gloves to the city's homeless, person by person, pair by pair, face to face.

Many months later she was gratified to find that she would still see homeless people on the street wearing Day Glo orange gloves to warm their hands in the cold of winter.

I was struck how a single woman, all on her own, bravely approaching the untouchables of our society, could and would touch the lives of so many in a meaningful way. She didn’t need a lot of money, or invest a lot of her time. It struck me that any one of us on any given day might be able to do something to bring comfort to others in need, one on one, or by the dozen as she had done. 

 

 

She was a grassroots, seat-of-the-pants humanitarian, and she set an example for me that I have never forgotten.

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Posted November 18, 2009

Vegetarian is to vegetables, as Humanitarian is to X. Define X.

I am very thankful for innumerable blessings and great good fortune. Happiness in life starts from having a grateful heart.

Many years ago I sat next to a young woman on a flight to NYC, probably going to toyfair, and she told me a story of generosity and grassroots humanitarianism that I have never forgotten.

She had purchased a really nice pair of gloves for her brother for his birthday, around Thanksgiving, and for some reason had to return them. They were fairly expensive leather gloves, and before she left the store with the money, she went to the basement, Filene’s legendary basement as I recall, where she saw a table of Day-Glo orange gloves on sale for $1/pair. 

 

Of course they were cheap because who wants Day-Glo orange gloves in the middle of the city? They are good for duck or deer hunting, maybe, so you don’t end up being stuffed and mounted. But in the middle of Boston or NYC? Not so much.

To Be Continued . . . 

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(Part Two)

Ah, Spain! I surely did love working with the greatest Spanish doll and toy company, Famosa, on the Costa Azur on the southern Mediterranean coast of Espana. I made side trips to Chupa Chups in Barcelona, but stayed only a few hours. What was I thinking to have missed seeing that great city? 

 

 

 

As in Germany, Famosa was in a region teeming with other doll and toy companies and was also an area of poor soil. Long, long ago, the people of the region had turned to doll and toy making as a means of surviving in an otherwise harsh and arid region.

I had the clear Mediterranean sea to swim in and a receptive audience in my friend Jaime, who I later learned owned Famosa, and his great team. As with Zapf, the decision was made on the spot as to which of my dolls they would license, and I sold a doll or two during each visit. I never made any money, however, but c'est la vie.

I beat my head against the wall trying to work with another of the great Spanish doll companies, Jesmar. Taking a cab there over endlessly barren desert hills and olive orchards, I was sure I was being kidnapped. It was Jesmar that first alerted me to the fact that our highly successful doll, Baby Sip n Slurp, was a truly great doll. So great in fact that Hasbro brought it back a few years ago for a second successful run. 

     

 

 

The Gendarmes at the airport were not so hospitable, as I was the only international visitor at customs, with bags loaded with odd, even suspicious looking doll and toy prototypes of every description. Groups of bored military-looking officers poked through my samples while stinking of gin, packing pistols, speaking no English, and expressing no appreciation for my attempts at levity. I wondered if I might be spending some time in a southern Spanish jail until Jaime might (hopefully) find me and bail me out.

I surely do miss working with Herr Zapf, Jaime Ferri, and those great European toy companies. Each is now owned not by a person or a family, but have been bought and sold by a succession of international conglomerates with no feel for dolls or other emotionally laden toy product. With the owners gone, so has the soul of the companies gone, and in both cases, the business as well.

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(Part One)

The only international travel I have done, other than being deported from Mexico long ago and visiting family in Canada, has been for the toy business. I have gone from the warm confines of Earls Court and its quaint High Street neighborhood to the more modern and stark Olympia show venues for the UK toy show. I have walked holes through the soles of my shoes at the Nuremberg toy show, down the aisles of every hall, which I have since found out is about 26 miles. It's like running a marathon in dress shoes.

             

 

I have always loved working with European toy companies. When I first started in the industry there was a vibrant toy and game industry in Europe, with each country having its own toy and game companies. Spears, Bluebird and Waddingtons were among the great toy companies in the UK, and are now long gone through acquisitions by US entities. Germany, France, and Italy all had their own booming domestic industries, as well. 

 

I always loved working with Herr and Frau Zapf, owners of the great German doll company of the same name, in particular. They loved our dolls and would make the decision on the spot as to which ones they would license and produce. Those were exciting meetings.

I visited them in Rodental, Germany one year and learned that the valley in which they were located was a hotbed of doll and toy companies. The valley was known for its poor soil, and thus was not good for agriculture. Hundreds of years ago the inhabitants had turned to making dolls as a means of making a living.

While there I learned that those big German sedans can (or used to) cruise the Autobahns at 200 mph effortlessly. As my friends explained, it allowed them to get around ‘macht schnell,’ - fast. 

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Posted November 11, 2009

When the call came in for magazine subscriptions to support the Big Brothers - Big Sisters of Chicago I deferred on the magazines, but inquired if maybe they might possibly . . .

It turned out they DID need a Santa and they DID need a source of toys because their old source was no longer providing for them that year. Funny how that worked out.

So I got to be Santa again, and once a year I bellow out my best Ho Ho Hos, and sit a few hundred kids on my lap who tell me what they want and promise to leave Santa cookies and milk. I hope to impart a few words of warm encouragement and perhaps reinforce the littler ones' belief in the magic of Santa and make the older ones who no longer believe maybe believe just a little bit, once more.  

 

 

Using a patented, top secret technique, Santa recognizes each of the hundreds of children, warmly and enthusiastically addressing each by name. They are always amazed, but of course Santa would know each of them, and all their sisters and brothers as well, wouldn’t he? That little bit of knowledge that Santa has of each of them, that he knows and recognizes them all, makes even the older kids wonder - if only a little, could it be? Or so I hope.

The world can use a little more magic, and that warm dose of Santa and flying reindeer and fitting down chimneys, even when you live in a tenemant apartment with no chimney at all, brings a spark to the eye of young and old alike.

If I still believe in Santa and hope to encourage that in others, I hope you will understand. I am just trying to keep the magic alive, particularly for the children from Chicago's south and west side whose lives might not otherwise be all that magical.

It is an honor and a pleasure to be associated with the Big Brothers - Big Sisters of Chicagoland each year for 21 years and counting.

  

 

Posted November 10, 2009

I am a huge fan of Santa Claus. In fact, I still believe in Santa, and in my mind - at least sometimes - I believe we work for the Jolly Old Elf.

In 6th grade I played Santa Claus in the class play. I was pretty good. I have a good 'Ho Ho Ho.'

My father made a big deal of Santa’s arrival each year, with footprints in the fireplace ashes, and even ashy footprints on the carpet in front of the fireplace. Milk half drunk, cookies eaten - pure scientific evidence. Proof positive that Santa existed and had been in my house that night.

      

 

When I was a bit older, and living on the first floor of a 4-flat, I lay in bed near to sleep one Christmas Eve and I thought I heard tiny hoofsteps on my roof, 3 floors above. Hmmmm . . . I know, pretty weird, but this Santa thing was deeply ingrained in me.

Today I argue with my own kids that Santa does really exist, and in a way, we make it so. It is a wonderful fantasy, and I hope you won’t think ill of me that I cleave to it so. I am, afterall, a toymaker, which is kind of like being a part of the North Pole milieu. 

 

        

So, being in the toy business and having a Santa fixation of some sort, I had for some years been thinking that I would love to play Santa and give out toys, somewhere, for someone, but who, how, where?

To Be Continued . . .  

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Posted November 6, 2009

Q. What trends do you see heading into 2010 that are relevant to the industry and your company?

A. Increased production costs due to new safety standards promise to put great pressure on smaller companies and make toys more expensive while they have a lower level of features, mechanisms, and technologies. We hope not, but perhaps this will lead to less need for the inventive features that we bring to toy products.

As you already know, change is afoot in the toy industry. Profound changes are occurring as I write this and as this holiday season gears up. Toys are losing shelf space in the mass market and gaining shelf space in hundreds, maybe thousands of other retail outlets.

The retailers that add toys, or increase their mix of toys will be very pleased with the traffic and sales generated as a result, and the overall level of enjoyment their customers will experience when they are pleasantly surprised to find toys on the shelves.

Everyone loves toys. Toys are fun. Fun, like play, is never out of fashion, never out of style, and in fact is very good for you and me. Make sure to have a dose of Vitamin F (for Fun) every day. Vitamin F, don’t forget!

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Posted November 5, 2009

Q. Your slogan is "PLAY is important business." How does that philosophy inform how you approach your products and inventions?

A. We try to create products that are truly great - to not just to make a living, but to influence, inspire, and entertain children and adults. Toys profoundly influence history and society. The Wright Brothers were inspired by a toy airplane they received as a gift from their father as children. Frank Lloyd Wright credits his set of building blocks with inspiring him to become an architect and influencing the style of his architecture. There are many more examples of the power of toys to influence those who as adults, change the world. 

 

    

 

Q. How does having a Midwestern location help you in your industry?

A. Chicago is a great in-between location, with the major toy companies now on the east and west coasts. The long winter makes it a bit harder to develop outdoor and water toys, but a lack of sunshine makes work an attractive activity during those chilly months. Illinois is truly a great place.

 

Q. With electronic games pretty much dominating the toy landscape for?the last generation, what type of non-electronic toys tend to stand out?

A. Licensed characters and other entertainment based toys stand out, as do truly new products in established categories - like Bakugan, a collectible card game. These are products that truly amaze, deliver outstanding play value, and become newsworthy - like our TMX Elmo.

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Posted November 4, 2009

I was interviewed recently, and I thought some of the questions were pretty good, and the answers weren't half bad either. Without further ado, I offer these to you for your perusal and consideration.

Perhaps some of these questions might be asked of you, and what would you say in response? 

 

 

Q. What motivated you to start-up Lund and Company Invention??What is the origin of the name?

A. We changed our name some years ago to more accurately reflect that we are inventors and developers of proprietary technologies, rather than only designers. I began the company to do just that.  ?

Q. How does Lund and Company Invention differentiate from its competitors?

A. We create products that others can not. We are the acknowledged masters of mechanisms within the industry. We also service what we sell, assisting our client partners every step of the way as needed.  ?

Q. How has your business sector evolved over the last five years?

A. The traditional toy business is under many pressures, competitive from other entertainment sources, and self induced through missteps and oversights in safety that have resulted in reduced shelf space in mass market retailers and greatly increased product costs. ?

To be continued . . . 

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Posted November 3, 2009

Thank you, Julie Cooper.

I went to my very first Toy Fair in New York City in February of 1985. I was a bit disappointed that a game we had only recently shown to Milton Bradley, and had been scheduled to be at toy fair only weeks later, had since been dropped. Big High, Big Low.

Wandering the many showrooms, I encounterd toy legend Julie Cooper, of Ideal Toy Company. He kindly asked how we were doing, as newly minted toy inventors on our own for the first time. I related our tale of woe and disappointment, ‘Close, but no cigar,’ a brush with fame, coulda' been a contender, but got knocked out in the first round. These were all stories, mind you, about the fact that Milton Bradly loved our game only weeks ago, intended to bring it to Toy Fair, and then changed their corporate mind, dropping the item. (See recent blogs on the power of stories and how they can be confused with fact.)

We were crestfallen, deeply discouraged and wondering about our ability to make it in this biz. Julie asked us, “You came close, didn’t you?” and we said yes. “You were on the right track, weren’t you?” and we admitted that we were. ”If you are on the right track, sooner or later you will be successful.” It made sense to me, and so we've kept at it these last 25 years since.

He was right. If you are on the right track, sooner or later you will succeed.

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Posted November 2, 2009

It’s the stories man, just like the legendary Charlie Byrd said. We go through life making up our own stories about events, believing our stories, and being emotionally invested in them - often to our own detriment.

I am going to be careful about the stories I make up to describe events that occur, good or bad, happy or sad, challenging or rewarding, and about the people I meet.

To that end, the toy industry is in the throes of change. Costs are going up - that is a fact. Retailers are cutting shelf space - also a fact. It is a nightmare, catastrophic! Or is it? To say so would be my story made up about the facts of the changes, and that story can affect my response to these changes. That story can lead to poor choices, or even a sense of hopelessness, rather than encouraging others to focus on opportunity, and how to adapt or change their business model to thrive in a new reality.

Keep the facts in mind and do not be distracted by some story told to you by others, or even by your inner storyteller. Change is afoot and we need to be very clear in our thinking to survive and thrive. These changes will have many and profound benefits down the road, to the consumer, to the toy industry, and perhaps to our own enterprises.

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