A Celebrity in Our Biz

It's time to say goodbye to the old year and retrospect all the people, events, and accomplishments during the past 365 days which lead to selection of the Top "this", the Best "that", or the Worst "whatever".  Thanks to Richard Gottlieb and the great job he does with Global Toy News, our industry now has the first annual "Global Toy News Person of the Year". Nice going, Richard, to initiate such an award. And certainly a well deserved congratulations to the energetic and creative recipient....http://tinyurl.com/6vb7ptr

Best Wishes to All in T & G World

Wishing everyone happy, peaceful, and wonderful holidays and a healthy and successful 2012. . May you find more time in the new year to: CONNECT, CREATE, ENJOY, EXERCISE, GOOF- OFF, HELP, LOVE, OBSERVE, PLAY, READ, or whatever floats your boat.  I'm saying goodbye to 2011 and will be back atcha in 2012 after I SHOP, WRAP, ENJOY, ENTERTAIN, DRINK, LAUGH, AND BE MERRY!Best 2 U All, Ron W

No Reading Required

A common message on a toy package is "some assembly required". Those words may result in a parent needing a toolbox, an ability to read blueprints, and possess basic engineering skills before the "knocked down" parts assemble to be the plaything shown on the package. A notice of "no reading required" on a game package is the industry's signal to adults that young players need not know how to read cards, spinners, dice or boards to enjoy game play.  

Reading in games, or more specifically, reading to comprehend rules may determine if consumers ever get to the intended play. With the short attention span of today's consumers, lowered reading levels, and desire for instant gratification, players want to open a box, set up the pieces, and get into play with minimal reference to rules. (Methinks this attitude is one contributor to the popularity of I-games where user friendly symbols and emoticons get players into the action without wading through a page or two of challenging verbiage.)

A rules intensive game like Monopoly was fortunate to appear on the market back when consumers were more patient and tech-less. It is common product acquisition belief that if Monopoly was introduced as a rules-laden board game today, it would likely not become a classic. Its longevity may  partially be the result of what Mike Meyers, former Senior VP of R&D at Milton Bradley/Hasbro Games, dubbed the Rules Shepherds Theory. His contention was that one literate and patient person (the shepherd) reads the rules and then explains how to play to two or three other players. These players in turn pass known rules on to other new players, and familiarity grows exponentially through an oral history. Good shepherds, often parents or grandparents, bring the non-reading players into the game with some familiarity with the basic rules without reading all details of play.

Game inventors Tim Moodie and Richard Levy tried their own unique idea to make rules user friendly in a VCR game marketed by Mattel in 1992 called Wayne's World. Since the game already had the electronic medium, their thinking was to complement printed rules with a riveting audio-visual explanation of the rules right on the VCR with the box of components nearby. Their efforts to make the rules MRR (minimal reading required) may have touched on other comprehension issues that could be called SHR as in "some hearing required". Unfortunately, the short appearance of Wayne's World game on the market made it impossible to determine if consumers would more strongly embrace hearing rules rather than reading them. Check out this You Tube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=parXcDqvixQ to see an entertaining effort of one of the first audio-visual efforts to market a game with reduced rules reading.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=parXcDqvixQ

This Dr. Is Always In!

Visits to a Dr. are often not pleasant: something ails, there's an injury, a general malaise. This is not true during any encounters with a unique Dr. who specializes in fun times, happy hours, and things playful. O.K., she is not an M.D. or even a D.D.S., but her unsurpassed knowledge and experience with playthings makes her a prominent figure in our world of toys and games. Stevanne Auerbach has certainly earned the highly respected and special title of Dr. Toy.

I became aware of Dr. Toy's expertise forty year ago in my early days with the Milton Bradley Company. Stevanne Auerbach was chosen to review the Company's product line for games with intrinsically educational as well as entertaining value. The selection was printed in a brochure for circulation to educators and general consumers. That piece was important to Milton Bradley since the Company prided itself on marketing games that were both fun and "Keys to Learning."

Dr. Toy's stature as an expert on play and playthings has grown immeasurably since those early MB days. Our industry boasts of thousands of new playthings launched each year, the majority targeting children. Dr. Toy knows which are safe, challenging, entertaining, and have suitable play value for specific ages. Much of that information has been online since 1995. The site provides company links, parent links, and posts by industry professionals who offer helpful insights on how the industry creates new playthings. Specific products are cited as recipients of the coveted "Dr. Toy's Best Products Awards". Over her long service to the industry, she has recognized over 5000 products be they classics, green, seasonal, or best values for the price. Her publications are must reads for anyone active in the toy and game business.

The devotion and efforts Dr. Toy has directed toward the industry as author, creator, advocate, and promotor of play makes her a real industry treasure. Visits to the Dr's website should be regular and frequent rather than the annual encounters with Drs. practicing more serious specialties.

www.stevanneauerbach.com

www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2011

www.drtoy.com/

Wish Upon a Star

The popular kiddie tale tells of Geppetto seeking the magical powers of a star with his wish. He knew he wanted a boy and with the infusion of some fairy dust and design alterations to iron out kinks and imperfections, he got his beloved Pinocchio. Toy and game companies use a form of wishing to make their dreams come true. They do not look to the heavens and wish for successful new products. They enlist the creative powers of professional toy and game inventors.

My partner, Leslie, and I attended a new conference segment of the terrific Chitag weekend where over twenty marketers presented their 2013 "wish lists" to inventors. During my own years in toy and game acquisition, the Company had changing views about circulating wish lists of annual new product desires .

At first, there was a rather open ended, less directed view to let external creative genius be free to invent without constraints. Hopefully, a new concept would come "out of left field", " be uniquely innovative, excite through whole new designs, and result in mega sales.

This "wish-less" approach morphed into more marketing based wish lists to guide inventor thinking. Wishes were defined for each product category with general specs so new concepts fit price points, themes, media licenses, demographics, and what was hot in pop culture. New concepts would then fit more tidily into Sales and Marketing plans for the retail climate. (BTW, even in this approach, the door was always left open to a big WOW! not hinted on any wish list!)

Today, I'm a firm wish list believer. Companies know best what they can develop, market, and sell in the current tech driven, highly competitive, retail constrained marketplace. When companies give inventors helpful guidelines for current wishes, they will get product concepts suited to their market strengths. That will be a whole lot more productive than using Geppetto's path of pinning wishes on a distant star. (And that's no fib!)

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

An important part of a company's new toy and game acquisitions is trolling the professional inventing community in search of the proverbial "needle in a haystack". You know, the kind of "needle" that has a potentially TV promotable feature that will sell 500K pieces annually for an indeterminable number of years.

Chicago has long been a popular destination for such searches. It is something of an epicenter for toy invention. Many former in-house creatives went independent in the Windy City after Marvin Glass and Associates disbanded in late 1988. One such inventing house borne out of "broken Glass" was Lund and Company, headed by Bruce Lund.

My visits with Bruce were always filled with his unique, whimsical game concepts. Mixed with the work of playing his new product concepts was friendly social chatter. During a chat about sports, I learned Bruce was a Chicago baseball fan. How could I resist not telling him my true baseball story? Through pure fluke, on a summer day in 1960, wearing Cub uniform No.18, I actually pitched my 58 mph fastball in batting practice to the Cubbie pitchers from the mound at Wrigley Field !

Bruce processed this piece of personal trivia in a very creative way. Toward the end of my next visit, he announced that we would continue the meeting on a nearby Chicago Park District baseball diamond. Unbelievably, he had rented all the necessary baseball gear and enlisted his design team to be batters while he positioned himself as catcher. Apparently, he wanted to see if an aged arm weary acquisitions rep could throw anywhere near home plate 60 feet away. Thankfully, the toy gods let all the overage sandlot players escape without injury during our fun time.

Like me, Bruce never became an overpaid big league star in what the sports world insists calling baseball, "the national past time." Click on the Lund and Company link to see a few of the home runs they've hit in the toy world since our silly day on a Chicago baseball diamond. You can see their true talents have produced a long list of awards. Forget baseball; the Lund team is clearly in the major leagues of creating playthings to the delight of millions of kids.

www.lundandcompany.com

Awards: 2007 TOTY Winner Toy of the Year "TMX Elmo", 2007 TOTY Winner Preschool Toy of the Year "TMX Elmo", 2007 TOTY Nominee "Hydrogen Fuel Rocket", 2008 TOTY Nominee "TMX Friends", 2009 TOTY Nominee "Discovery Scanopedia" and more . . . www.GlobalToyNews.com

What's Your Favorite Game?

Everyone has a favorite game. One played incessantly with friends where one never tires of winning or losing so long as there are hours of entertaining play. Richard Levy was asked recently to identify his favorite game as run-up to contributing with other authors on a new book called Kobold Guide to Board Game Design. http://www.koboldquarterly.com/k/kgbgd

What did he name out of the hundreds of games exposed to him over his long career? Parcheesi! Certainly not a technically enhanced game by today's standards but rather one that has been around for hundreds of years. In fact, it continues to be marketed currently by Winning Moves Games.

Here are Richard's thoughts on why Parcheesi is his favorite. http://www.koboldquarterly.com/k/front-page10600.php By the way, my favorite classic board game when playing with grandsons Tommy, James, and family is Sorry. With that crew, the simplistic "move pawns on a path around the board" is transformed into a highly competitive, "take no prisoners", boisterous action game!

So what's your favorite game?