Posted September 30, 2009

"The finest eloquence is that which gets things done; the worst is that which delays them." -- David Lloyd George

 

Some people make things happen, others don’t, and still others actually keep things from happening. I often use a quote from my mother, who used to describe such individuals this way, “They make a better door than a window.” Which is to say, they are closed and not open. They prevent access rather than allow in light - they're not open to the world and all its possibilities as a window would be. 

            

I have had the pain and frustration of working with those who are better doors than windows. I have had the joy of working with those who are windows, open to possibility and even active collaborators in the creative process of imagining how products we present them can be even better than what we show. 

            

One such door was commonly known as Dr. N****, and for years, he prevented much of anything from happening, for us or the company he worked for. Somehow the company survived and he was replaced. There have been others. And more than simply not creating possibility, they can actively inhibit the creative process and business success for all parties involved. There is no eloquence in that.

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Posted September 29, 2009

For those of you on the edge of your seat, asking the question, “Did I complete the Great Circle Motorcyle Tour of Lake Ontario over Labor Day, and the multi-year quest to do the circle tour of each of the five Great Lakes?" the answer is yes I did, I am pleased to report. It was five blue-sky-and-sunshine perfect days and 1600 windblown miles. They are indeed, great, beautiful lakes - true inland seas. My next trip? Vancouver, Canada to Cabo San Lucas, MX.

 

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Posted September 28, 2009

The Fourth Quarter Frenzy is about to begin, we hope. We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and it is not a passel of trains coming down the track.

We are on track to license more products for 2010 than ever before in a single year. I don’t think it’s coincidence. Companies are licensing product again. It seems to be a last minute frenzy the likes of which I have not seen before - and not a minute too soon. 

            

Come and get ‘em! We have fresh concepts, hot from the oven. Magical, mystical, and addictively fun to play with dolls, plush, collectibles, games, vehicles and more. Step right up, don’t be bashful, bring something home for the kiddies, or for your marketing team today. And check out our flashing neon lightning bolt special. Buy one concept, get the other at the same price. Kinda like a blue light special, only different, and yellow, kinda.

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Posted September 25, 2009

The advance on the Hydrogen Fuel Rocket was over a million dollars. Actually, that is not true, but it was a quick and sizable advance. Our hydrogen rocket system sold for years until the factory flooded and the tooling was lost. (Dang it. Never had that happen before.) It introduced a brand new technology to the toy industry, was nominated for a Toy of the Year award, and I believe it was the first consumer product of any kind to produce and utilize hydrogen as a source of energy, or more technically, as a means of storing energy for instantaneous release.

 

photo by Jurvetson (flickr) 

Some of our products are licensed to the first company that sees them and others take many years to find a licensee. We have thousands of product concepts in prototype form that we have yet to sell. Some of them we will never license, but many others we will find a home for in a year or two, though it may be a decade or more after their creation.

You can run, but you can’t hide. We will find you and sell you a product. There is no escape.

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Posted September 24, 2009

Another day we were looking for a new way to launch a vehicle, to store energy - but not a flywheel or a spring. Suddenly we hit upon making hydrogen from water (H₂O, as you may recall from 7th grade science class. I was the one that sat up front with the thick glasses and pocket protector. I love this stuff.)

We tried it, running the juice from several D-cell batteries through water, just like in science class, and using a barbeque grill spark mechanism to ignite it, and BOOM!!!! It explodes. Wow, or rather “Eureka!”, as one is supposed to exclaim at such moments, "That was cool." What can we do with this?" we asked ourselves. 

            

We had been here once years before, and not answered this question, or maybe we had failed to ask the question at all. This time it seemed instantly obvious: a rocket! In an afternoon or so, we had the world’s first hydrogen-powered toy rocket, and within weeks we had it licensed to Estes, a company known for selling black powder rockets pretty much since the Chinese first invented them. It was the quickest we ever licensed a product.

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Posted September 23, 2009 

One fortuitous day we wondered what extreme laughter would look like. The world has all kinds of other extreme things, extreme sports, etc. So why not extreme laughter?  

We combined Baby Go Boom with Baby Get Up and Go, mashing them up with several of our other mechanisms and actions into one version of a red furry famous plush character, and it was indeed pretty cool and very funny. Not immediately, but after a while, they loved it.

            

It had every laugh action from every slapstick movie and Saturday morning cartoon that I had ever seen, almost. Belly laughs, bend over laughs, falling down on the ground laughs. But not thigh-slapping laughs. As I recall, the toy company wanted us to add the hand slapping the thigh - a very nice touch. Then we were challenged to make it work with a simpler and less expensive mechanism, which we thought was impossible, but we went ahead and did it anyway. The result was spectacular, and laughter was heard ‘round the world. 

  

It took years of study, experimentation, and a good dose of luck to create this mechanical mystery. 

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Posted September 22, 2009

Then we wondered if we could make a doll that could roll over, stand up, and walk, and we created Baby Get up and Go, shown at Toy Fair along with Somersault Sara but never shipped out to stores. Each year we posed several challenges to ourselves: “I wonder if I can make a doll do . . .”  and each year for about five years we created doll and plush mechanisms that did more and more.

Each one was a new, patented mechanism. (We have the tooling for some of these dolls if anyone out there might be interested) Since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, we were delighted (no, not really) when we learned that somewhere in China someone is making and selling our Baby Go Boom doll, unlicensed, unauthorized, and of course, uncompensated. Because of that we cannot license the doll to anyone outside of the US - they can simply buy it cheaper from some pirate vendor. Har, har, har, why shiver me timbers - Foiled again!

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Posted September 21, 2009

From Baby Go Boom we developed Hop Along Katie, a doll that jumped and spun on a pogo stick and rode a stick horse while singing the Lone Ranger theme, again in my daughter's voice. As a follow up to Baby Go Boom, we used the same mechanism and tooling for a second doll with a new set of actions and play patterns. Our goal was to make it cheap, easy, and fast for the same company to bring a second feature doll to market. 

    

Not so fast, however. Our client did bring the doll to market, they just didn’t license it from us. Rather, they took our idea and our prototype to Toy Fair where it was very well received, manufactured and sold it without ever paying us a dime (an oversight perhaps, or just common thievery). Then they filed bankruptcy, taking our money and our dolls with them. Curses!

            

Such is the life of an everyday toy inventor. Into each life a little rain must fall. This was our first, but not our last painful experience with losses at the hand of a trusted client.

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Posted September 18, 2009

Baby Go Boom might have become a famous red plush character, too, had we not already licensed it as a doll. Boy, was that a mistake! The makers of famous red plush character toys did keep this mechanism in mind for the future. (In a novel, this might be considered foreshadowing.)

            

Rosie O’Donnell made fun of our sweet baby doll on her show, letting her mutant Chihuahua loose on it and cackling that our beautiful doll, with my daughter's voice and laugh in it, looked like it was having an epileptic fit. 

            

 

I knew in that moment that Rosie was done as a TV celebrity. She had gone over the edge, and as a result she received many complaints from organizations and individuals regarding her tasteless and crude humor at the expense of the epileptic community. 

            

To add injury to insult, in September of 2001, when Baby Go Boom first hit the shelves and was selling like hotcakes, tragedy struck our nation on the 11th day of that month. Suddenly a doll with the word ‘boom’ in her name was too painful to bear, and Baby Go Boom was done.

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Posted September 17, 2009

A prime example of the invention process would be the genesis of the mechanism that enabled a red furry character to bring laughter to millions. This little guy walked away with the TIA award for Toy of the Year, and can be listed in the Guiness Book of World Records for the fastest selling toy of all time. 

            

It all started years earlier in a one-on-one idea session (the best kind I have found) with one of our veteran designers. We were studying Billy the Bass. (Shout-out to my buddy Joe who invented Billy and brought him to market)

            

From his neutral, fish-like position Billy the Bass bends in half, and looked to us like a doll sitting up. Our young genius inventor colleague went back to his desk and created a mechanism for a doll we later sold as Baby Go Boom, with my daughter's voice on it. The doll wobbled unsteadily, and then fell on her bum. 

To Be Continued . . . 

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Posted September 16, 2009 

Consider our classic game Fireball Island. Marketed by Milton Bradley in the 80’s, today it is the subject of at least two websites devoted to it exclusively, and considered by some to be the best board game of the 80’s. The initial inspiration was a 3D vacuum formed map that I imagined could and should be a game board the minute I saw it in a catalog. (Catalogs are great sources of new product ideas by the way.)

            

The process of turning that inspiration into a successful product took a bit more time and effort. I sculpted a 3D game board surface of clay with my own hands and struggled with it a long time before having the (now obvious in hindsight) idea to use gravity as the ‘mechanism’ or ‘technology’ in the game. 

We vacuum formed our own board, painted and decorated it, and played it again and again - it was the most boring game I had ever played. Something was missing. 

            

A good friend (R.I.P. my dear friend) suggested I include ladders and obstacles, which ultimately became bridges and caves. Suddenly it was addictively fun to play. Why, I may never know. A game is a machine for human interaction, and the recipe for a good game comes in a multituide of variations. What makes a game fun will likely forever remain a mystery. 

             

If you have never played Fireball Island, you are in for a treat. It is an exciting game to the very last roll. It turned out far better than I had expected, and it was one of Lund & Company's first big successes.

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Posted September 15, 2009

How does one invent toys and games?
                      

There's no single or simple answer. I was at the Brookfield Zoo recently and in the gift store I saw several classic zoo store toys, bought them, took them back to the office and on Monday morning we turned at least two of them into product prototypes that our client loved that very same day. No muss, no fuss.  

Rarely, however is it that quick or easy, but the process of buying an existing product and destroying a perfectly good toy to make something new is one we practice almost every day. Near our offices long ago was the world's #1 Toys R Us, and we were convinced that it was all the toys we bought and destroyed, along with other toy inventors in the area doing the same thing, that made that store #1.

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Posted September 14, 2009

There is the sense of awe every inventor feels when something comes to life for the first time, and every time thereafter. One feels a sense of joy when a new creation becomes a source of wonder to others, or makes them unable to stifle a laugh and a smile. TMX Elmo was one of our most elegant mechanisms and created infectious laughter wherever and whenever anyone played with him. 

           

There is pride every inventor feels when a prototype ends up looking like a final production piece or a work of art. Each prototype we create is just that, a vision made real, each a valuable work of art to be archived and cataloged like pieces in a museum, then shipped to viewers and decision makers around the world. 

           

There is a sense of pride every inventor feels at accomplishing something no one would have thought possible, and no one else would even attempt. Some of the most satisfying moments are when we create something even we would think impossible - but we do it anyway. 

           

The business of inventing is not for everyone, but for some few, this is the only thing they should be doing.

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Posted September 11, 2009

I love inventing. It is exciting and fun, and extremely challenging every day, year after year.

          

The processes of imagination and creation is fascinating to watch and participate in. We get to see wonderful new toys take shape first in our minds, then, sometimes, as sketches, as then as models which prove we are not crazy and that what we imagine can actually be done. Usually. It is in prototyping that imagination first becomes reality. 

           

There is an exciting sense of discovery when we see something for the first time, something that perhaps no one on Earth has ever seen, such as our Hydrogen Fuel Rocket, an entirely new toy technology, and the first new toy rocket system in 50 years. We have several discoveries of that sort in our offices right now, each looking for an application and a home. Just like an animal shelter, we are always looking for a good home for our inventions and discoveries.

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Posted September 10, 2009

For most people who think that they would like to be a toy inventor, I would tell them to run, not walk, away. Being an outside inventor, creating products on speculation, not knowing if, or what, or when you will ever sell something is the last thing in the world most people would want to do for a living. The frustration of being told "no" day after day is too much for most people to endure. 

           

But for a precious few this is the only thing in the world they should be doing. For those who can learn to love the word “No” and be motivated by it to be better, smarter, faster, for those who have an insatiable need to create, explore and tinker, to experiment and to discover things that amaze themselves and others, this is IT. This is the thing, the very thing, the one and only thing that they should be doing. For that few, it is in their DNA, and their reason for being. I am one of those.

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Posted September 9, 2009

As inventors, everything we do is speculative. No one pays us for anything until they like it enough to invest their own hard-won dollars, often millions of dollars in the case of a TV advertised toy, to develop and bring to market one of our products. I think my father-in-law viewed my profession as something like being a Mississippi River Boat.
 

Not having enduring brands that generate income for us reliably year after year, we have to start all over every year to create new products that can be licensed just to sustain ourselves another year. The life of our products is typically 6 months. On shelf in the Fall, and closeout in January. Repeat. For 30 years and counting.

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Posted September 8, 2009

Every time someone asks what I do for a living and I tell them that I am a toy inventor, the response is always the very same: “That must be fun, playing with toys all day,” or “Just like in that movie with Tom Hanks?” (Big is the movie they invariably reference.)

           

Generally, however, I tell people that a year in the toy industry is like seven years in a dog’s life, if you can do the math on that, to help them appreciate just how darn difficult it is to do what we do. Poor me. 

Well, yes, I am here to tell you that it really is fun, exciting, challenging and all-in-all the very best way in the world to spend my days, to make a living, and to make a contribution to society. After 30 years of inventing, developing, and licensing toys, I still love it. Mine is a great industry creating great products that have a great impact on children and therefore on adults and the world.

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Posted September 4, 2009

I found a great article in the New York Times recently by Stuart Brown on the decline of active play in children's lives and the beneficial, even essential influence of play on human development. Without play a child cannot grow up to be a normal, healthy adult. 

            

And of course, toys are an agent of play and the normal, healthy development of the human spirit and psyche. 

            

A University of Michigan study found that Children now spend half as much time playing outside, as they did 20 years ago, and instead they spend on average over 6 hours each day with electronic media, and in front of some kind of electronic screen. Not outside and not playing with toys.  

            

I am concerned about that, as I'm sure many are. In the article Brown makes the case that there is a connection between less time playing outdoors and the great increase in childhood obesity, ADHD, childhood depression and other social maladies in school age kids.

            

Can it be that toys and play are just what the doctor ordered for a healthy, well adjusted child? If that can be shown, then we, the TIA, and our industry should be shouting from the rooftops the importance, the critical and extraordinary benefits children reap from simply playing with toys. 

            

As Brown suggests, we need a “Change in public consciousness about Play - to show that it is not trivial or elective.” This change in public perception and awareness on the critical importance of play can and should start with the toy industry, toy companies, and other toy industry practitioners. 

            

Play is important. Extremely, critically, essentially important to the health of a child, and the health of the adult each child will become. Toys engender, inspire, and enable play.   

Toys matter a lot.

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Posted September 3, 2009

Business is War.

            

A conversation overheard between two top toy company execs was recounted to me recently. They were talking, commiserating, or maybe even complaining about another top toy company executive who, unlike themselves, was the founder and owner of his company. Unlike themselves, he built his company single-handedly. Unlike themselves, he put himself on the line, his personal assets at risk every day, every week, every quarter, year after year. He bet the farm every day. 

          

He did what they did not and likely could never do. He had the fire in his belly that allowed him to enter the battle himself and personally lead his troops on the line. He had to have that fire to create the company that he did. 

            

He didn’t inherit, but rather created his position and his company. He is not the most personable individual, some would say - litigious even. Not surprising really. No one cut him any slack or handed him the reins.

            

It takes a warrior's heart to build a company from scratch, against far larger and established rivals, and to survive in good years and bad the vicissitudes of business. It takes a belly full of glass shards. A warrior's heart does not necessarily make one the nicest person in the eyes of others.   

            

It is easy to critique and complain about others, but we have not walked in their shoes and maybe we couldn’t even if we tried. 

            

Survival is a battle, business is war. I love a good fight. Always have.

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Posted September 2, 2009

My friend, noted toy industry observer and consultant Richard Gottlieb, is predicting sales in the 4th quarter to be up by 1%. Let’s hope so. Toys are too important for sales to be in continued decline. At some point sales will be most likely be up, particularly as he notes, in light of such dismal sales last year at this time. 

            

As toy inventors and as an industry we need to create incredible, fresh, interesting, must-have products. We need to be responsible to our consumer constituency and deliver the extraordinary, regularly and reliably. 

            

We need to get the word out about what toys are, and why they are important. We need to tell the story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the set of blocks that inspired his revolutionary architectural style, the story of the Wright Brothers and the toy airplane they were given as children by their father that was the seed of their interest in and becoming pioneers of powered flight. That is the power of toys to change the world. 

            

We need to get the word out about what the toy industry is doing that is newsworthy, from the philanthropy of the Toy Industry Association and companies such as Hasbro, on down to companies like Lund and Company and our work with Big Brothers and Big Sisters for the last 21 years. We need to spread the gospel of toys, that toys are known to inspire adults to change the world through their life’s work. 

            

Toys allow exploration of this very real (not virtual) world we inhabit during our lives. Playing with toys, we explore action-reaction, gravity and other physical laws, the understanding of which are necessary for a lifetime of navigating a world filled with peril. Playing with toys, we develop the ability to imagine and to create.

            

Toys are important tools of development, as well as agents of change. Play matters. So for many reasons, let's hope sales are up again in the 4th quarter. Buy toys, they are an investment in all of our futures. 

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Posted September 1, 2009

Now, the rest of the world insists that the metric system is far superior to our English system of miles and inches, ounces, feet and pounds. I certainly think that a gallon is a gallon and there shouldn’t be an Imperial gallon that is just a little bit bigger. 

            

I am sure they are right, of course.

            

But why then don’t they advocate for Metric dates and times? Why not go to a day divided into quarters, and each quarter into 100 segments? Each 6 hour period would be a quarter of the day or ChronoQuartometer (or some such), and each quarter day would be divided into 100 periods we might call ChronoCentometers. So when 25% of the day has passed, at 6 am on August 26th, we might designate as  Aug 26.25, and midday, which we might still call noon, would be Aug 26.5. And so on. 

            

Make sense? Pass it on. Lets get this done, and move on to the next thing. 

            

But why do we all naturally divide pies and cakes in halves, quarters, sixths and eighths, rather than in 10ths? Personally, I love the British measures of foot, derived from the length of a foot, a stone (approx 16lb) as a measure of weight and of obvious derivation, and a hand (about 7”) as a measure of height in things such as horses. It ties us to our medieval roots where scales and rules were hard to come by, and our own anatomy and the natural world around us were used as measuring instruments.

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