Was I Missed in Blogland?

In the world of minute-to-minute news cycles, the three weeks since my last blog post seems like eons ago. But those eons have not been spent totally removed from Toyland. There was time spent huddling in Florida with co-author, Richard C. Levy, to plan a second, up-dated edition of our Toy and Game Inventors Handbook. It will be released by the end of 2012 as an Apple iBook with subsequent versions for Kindle, BN Nook, and Sony. We are starting with Apple because the iBook allows us to go beyond text to colorful images, video clips, and audio streaming via hot links.

New to our publishing team is John Michlig who will use the latest tools to make the digital Handbook as interactive as possible. John has been involved with a broad range of creative pursuits in and around the industry as readily shown on his website, www.fullyarticulated.com/. To quote John. "I'm an author/writer, editor, producer, product developer, and marketing consultant. I help tell stories of all kinds..." Just the kind of creative versatility many toy inventors apply to their own endeavors.

Since we will not have the static constraints of ink on paper, here is an invitation to you, Toyland inhabitants. As we did in the Handbook and our previous books, our reporting will again rely heavily on contributions of leading professionals like you. So e-mail me your favorite "toystory" in 3 or 4 paragraphs or descriptions of your hottest links to roweingartner@gmail.com.

We just might plug it into an appropriate section of our updated edition, citing you or honoring your anonymity as the source (in the case of juicy horror stories.)

Naturally, the writing team  reserves the right to edit and use your thoughtful, insightful, and helpful experiences under the famous NY Times motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print". With your input, we will make the new Toy and Game Inventor's Handbook bigger and better!

What's your appTITUDE?

When we wrote The Toy and Game Inventor's Handbook, we decided to include a glossary of common words used in the industry. We were not trying to compete with Merriam Webster but just alert our readers to corporate speak and "buzzwords" to avoid potentially "embarrassing semantic ruptures" in future encounters. The toy world is not unique with specialized jargon. Virtually every business has nomenclature that might be quite foreign to "outsiders" unfamiliar with an industry's own lingua franca.

As we plan to do our e-Handbook, we will update the glossary. The industry has grown since we released our original work and so to has the vernacular to describe its products, its commerce, and its consumers. Nothing underscores this more than the hot use of "app" now applied to the latest genre of playthings. In fact, if Toy Fair 2012 is any indication, very key industry words like play may morph to plapp, toy to tapp and game to gapp.

If you were at Javits, you had to be sleepwalking not to notice all the apps and the quick word-smithing to emphasize app domination of many new products. There were add-on products now called appcessories. Mattel juiced up lovable Barbie and classic Hot Wheels with functionality apps. F-P sees baby learning colors, numbers, animals, etc. from an Apptivity Monkey (bib not included?). There was a karaoke app and the Disney Appclix that "lets easy photo transfer even by children". Some of Hasbro Games classics like Life, Monopoly, and Battleship are getting zAPPed for new play experiences.

But my award for emphasizing new-age plapp goes to Spinmaster who coined a real brand catching name, Appfinity and the uses it across a number of items like Applingz, Appfishing, Appdrive, Appblaster, and Appmates. Apps are everywhere!

I appologize if you think I am ignoring all the other thousands of conventional playthings on display at the Javits bazaar. So many applications on new playthings may merely be a show of the industry's reaction to technology so as not to diminish its reputation as a fad/fashion business and a business that does not want "to be caught with its trends down"! Look around...electronic devices are in everyones' hands, and they are hardly a passing fad. I saw a stat that claimed 52 percent of Americans 18 years and older spend 4 to 9 hours daily on such devices. It is doubtful that teens and under are far behind the digital fixation. This is the time for the industry to have applications apptached to plappthings. I just wonder if large numbers of our playful consumers will respond in big numbers and buy all the products at APPS R Us or in the tapps and gapps aisles at Target or Walmart? We'll know more by next NYC Toy Fair! Right?

Creative Factor @ Javits

Richard Levy and I once again accepted the TIA invitation to be on its Creative Factor program, the opening day of New York Toy Fair, Sunday 2-12. We had to compete with whiz-bang toys, engrossing games, inflatable novelties, and assorted costumed creatures. Unlike past duo performances, we were split into separate one hour sessions of lively talk and Q and A. Our goal was to give the type of helpful information we scribed into our orginal book,  The Toy and Game Inventors Handbook*.   At our respective sessions, it was gratifying to see a full house of inventors, marketers, lawyers who had traversed the lower bowels of the Javits' corridors to reach us.

This year's topic was contract negotiations. We presented from perspectives established for the Handbook of Mr. Outside (RCL) and Mr. Inside (ROW). Those perspectives we each gained from our thirty plus years of licensing and developing  toy and game product.

Richard spun his always entertaining, anecdotal experiences bookended by Starbird in the past to the just announced return of Furby in 2012  There is little to contest in his 10 steps to negotiating licensing agreements. This wisdom has guided him through a myriad of successes enjoyed throughout his career. So everyone listened up!

Here are Richard's 10 Commandments to contract negotiation he shared with an overarching statement that "at the end of the day, deal-making is about relationships, not transactions".

1.  Negotiate yourself. No one will do it better than you and no one has more to gain or lose. It is advisable to have a lawyer as your backup before you ink your signature.
2.  Only use lawyers experienced with toy industry contracts.
3. Two plus two is never four. Exceptions always outnumber rules.
4.  Never fear to negotiate. Never negotiate out of fear.
5.  If it ain't on the stage, it ain't on the stage. Confirm every conversation with a memorandum to avoid misunderstandings.
6. Keep agreements short and to the point. The length of the contract is inversely proportional to the amount of business.
7.  Do not accept standard contracts. Treat boilerplate terms as variable. Nothing is as temporary as that which is called permanent.
8.  When in doubt, ask. Asking dumb questions is easier than correcting dumb mistakes.
9.  Thou shalt not committee. Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough people discuss it.
10.  Have fun. The moment a negotiation feels uncomfortable, I pick up my marbles and go home.

My workshop detailed the paper trail inventors encounter showing a new idea. It all begins with a record of the initial meeting with a company rep.

•  The Tip: Don't show a lot, focus on the best and make it a WOW! event. What acquisitions rep can leave a WOW at the gate?  And once the concept goes internal, it will live or die on its own merits and the enthusiasm of a product champion to fit the concept into the company's marketing plan.

•  The Tip: A company's internal process often needs at least 30-45 days for a concept to be stamped as viable; longer than that, Go for the Option! 
Mr. Inside continued on detailing the POT (post option time) to K (code letter for Contract). The talk walked through the business points essential in a K without a focus on all the legalese that shrouds contractual terms and conditions and creates ump-teen page licensee contracts. (The Toy and Game Handbook covers this topic in Chapter 9, Molding the Deal.)

Richard and I enjoy the opportunity to share what we can with inventors. Good that the TIA and the Creative Factor gave us the forum to do that. As we see it, the more inventors know about the business side to complement their creative side, the better prepared they will be to get fair and equitable terms.

Last we saw of our audience, they were rushing to the Javits' aisles, hopefully better prepared to join the fray!

*We are now working on an updated edition which will soon be in e-book form. Watch for news of its release when available on this blog.

Off to the Big Apple

Like many of you, I will be among the TIA estimated 20,000 attendees at Javits next week. Aren't we excited!?!? I look forward to seeing all those 100,000 products especially the 7000 "never before seen in the world"! I may try finding those 7000 since after Toy Fair, few will be at my local Target, Walmart, and TRU. With such an overwhelming and mind boggling amount of product, I just might settle for locating 174 new exhibitors among the 1200 clustered along the Javits aisles. Have a great Toy Fair!

If you have a minute with everything going on for Toy Fair, check out my guest post on the Purple Pawn, a blog about our industry.

25 Ways to Leave Your Idea

Many will recall that popular Paul Simon song from years back, "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover". Tim Moddie, a spirited entrepreneur, has been around toy and game invention over thirty years. He is an original member of the infamous Twin Cities inventors group, Elvenbasch, with Girsch Design, Leisure Design and continuing for seventeen years as an indee inventor and writer. Needless to say, he has presented many toy and game ideas over the years. Reflecting on marketers' negative reactions to many of those licensing opportunities, Tim came up with a list of twenty-five reasons for rejection of big ideas. Perhaps he should have taken a hint from Simon and put those ways of getting rejection into lyrics for a sad, tear jerking country ballad. Why not try to turn all that sadness into a hit tune?
Behind toy and game inventors dreams of big royalty payoffs is the real world of rejection. It is a commonly known stat that marketers will reject 9 out of 10 concepts shown by inventors. Stretching that statistic to the biggest marketers who see so many ideas, the odds of an inventor concept making it to retail shelves might reach 1 out of 1000. Those woeful numbers aren't sweet music to any inventor.
When I was on the acquisition's side of the table from inventors, I tried to be sensitive to their disappointments by offering more detailed reasons for rejection. It might be a thought on what the concept was missing, or a suggestion on how the idea might morph into a different form, or a way to give the idea a new twist. Looking back on what might have been heard on the receiving side of the table, at best, the inventor might do more work on the idea, at worst, the dreaded rejection was being postponed.
Little did I know that Tim Moodie was keeping tabs when I was rejecting or "leaving" his idea. Perhaps I should have shortened the responses and just given him one of the simpler rejections he had heard from other reps like: "No Fun", "Boring", "Pass", "Next". Here are more of Tim's twenty-five rejections. The words are different but all had the same meaning of rejection:"We've Seen This Before"  "Too me, too"  "Too close to an Internal Design"  " Too expensive" "Too Many Costly Parts"  "Won't Sell at the Right Price Point" "Marketing Won't Like It"  "Doesn't Fit Our Marketing Strategy" "Not a Market We Want to Enter""Is This Legal?" "This Would Be a Safety Problem"  "Not Cutting Edge"  "Can't Put a License on It"  "Won't Sell Enough to Justify TV"  "That's the Dumbest Thing I've Ever See"  "It's a Circus Novelty"  "Too Confusing"  "No Kid Would Do That"  "No Play Pattern"  "I Don't Get It"  "Counter Intuitive"
If you are an inventor and wish to add what you've heard to this list of rejections email it to trmoodie@aol.com. Perhaps it will be included if he ever writes a country ballad.


  

Milton Bradley's Footprint

Milton Bradley, the man,  lived a long life in Springfield, MA. Today, if you had need to locate to that city and were in search of a downtown apartment, you might choose Stockbridge Court. By watching the rental facility's promo video, you would learn that the "distinctive apartments" were once a thriving industrial complex and the headquarters for the Milton Bradley Company. Such is the change of urban land use from a place producing board games, art materials (including the famous "No Roll Crayon) school furniture, and guillotine-like paper trimmers to the distinctive Stockbridge apartments in the heart of downtown Springfield. Indeed, the MB has had a long and storied place in western MA.

When I joined Milton Bradley in 1969, the company had already moved much of its manufacturing from what was known as Park Street (aka Stockbridge Court) to neighboring, suburban East Longmeadow. No longer hampered by "loft logistics" for work in process, production was done in a 1.1 million sq.ft. highly efficient and profitably run facility with a great mixture of several thousand humans and state-of-the-art machines. In the 70s, then CEO James J. Shea Jr. took great pride in running "a fully integrated manufacturing operation where product components came in Door 1 as raw materials and would go out Door 44 as finished goods packed in standardized shipping cartons". Along the way from start to finish, all those games were printed, mounted, die-cut, molded, assembled, inspected, and packed off within timed standards. Game components changed with the coming of Simon and other magical electronic games which diluted the "made in America" imprint to in some cases "packaged in America"-- with components from some distant sources in Singapore, Taiwan, or China.

The footprint of Milton Bradley Company" presence certainly remains in western Massachusetts today though some merely in bricks and mortar. In addition to the Stockbridge apartments, another tenant does business on the 26th floor of Baystate Tower (now known as Tower Square) which was  the location of MB corporate office in the 70s. Later, those corporate offices were moved from the "tower"to a dedicated ground level building ultimately transitioned into an elementary school after Hasbro acquired Milton Bradley in 1985.

And what about that sprawling 1.1 million sq.ft. fully integrated manufacturing wonder today? Yes, it is still on the corner of Shaker and Denslow Rds. employing hundreds in East Longmeadow. If you ever happen to journey to Springfield, MA, perhaps to see the Basketball Hall of Fame, you might include a ten mile trip from the Hall for a drive-by view of the wondrous facility. The size of the plant might give hint to why James J. Shea Jr in days past gave an executive order to "make those games in America"! Will those days ever return? Perhaps. There's that old adage: "where there's a will, there's a way".

Attention Game Shoppers

When a new game candidate was considered for launch into mass market retail, two basic question were always asked of sales and marketing, "How many units will each of the top five accounts order?" And, will all accounts order X00,000 units annually where  X=3, 4 or 5?  Fair questions. Without strong sales forecasts, the numbers just wouldn't support attempts to launch a new SKU onto shelves at Walmart, Target, TRU, and K-Mart (today, the fifth account no longer exists). After all, those retail shelves are the display cases for mass-market consumer eyeballs to view games in the land of "doorbuster sales".
Very often good playing games failed to reach forecasts needed to be judged as having "hit" potential and were returned to inventors. Fortunately, now inventors with new and interesting games are getting the attention of consumer eyeballs not at retail but rather on digital internet displays. One example of such a display is a collection of games selected by Matthew Baldwin as worthwhile for gamers' playtime in themorningnews.com. It is safe to say, none of these games can be found on the shelves of the mass retailers. Potential consumers of any of these games will quite likely order from amazon.com, funagain.com, boardgamegeek.com, or other such e-commerce sites and not deal with a cashier in check out lanes at the mall. So, what does X = for the marketer in the ethernet arena?

Connecting the Dots

Steve Jobs referenced "connecting the dots" in his now famous commencement speech at Stanford University on June 12, 2005. “Connect the dots” is now popularly used to mean serial clues/dots when properly connected foretell a calamitous event. Early in his career, inventor Dr. Howard Wexler found his own way to make a serial connection. After many months of seeking a unique game format, he realized that all games at that time were played on a horizontal plane. Wexler found a way to connect four circular disks or chips of like color onto a vertical plane and Connect 4 was born. Since its introduction by Milton Bradley in 1974, Wexler’s discovery has grown into a top game brand with Hasbro. 
Coincidentally, in 1970, after receiving a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology, Howard joined Hasbro where he invented the very first developmental line of 17 infant toys, called “Your Baby”. This was a breakthrough line, since forty years ago, there were no toys for babies. All previously marketed playthings targeted pre-schoolers. Howard says that while he is best known for Connect 4, he is most proud that he was influential in introducing the world to infant toys.  

Connect 4 and his baby toy line are not the only industry contributions originated by Howard Wexler. During his highly creative and productive career, he has personally invented and licensed over 120 toys and games. But as he admits, Connect 4 is his "Gone with the Wind" largely due to the worldwide acceptance of its fast yet challenging play. Since introduction of the original two-player version, Connect 4 has been marketed as a miniature "travel" edition (Connect 4 Fun on the Run), as a handheld LCD electronic form, as a computer game and most recently as a brand extension called Connect 4 Launchers. Through the years, Wexler has continued to actively assist Hasbro with designs.

Beyond his search for his next WOW! item, Howard has now extended his talents to philanthropic endeavors by helping young budding creative thinkers  in two projects. He will direct an accredited course in Creativity at CCNY where students will learn creative thinking through invention of toys and games with the ultimate goal to license their creation to a company. Secondly, he will partner to lead a program in entrepreneurship at Manhattan's Stuyvesant High School called Toys by Teens where teenagers will be exposed to all aspects of running their own toy company.
Now as throughout his long career, Howard Wexler continues his passion for the hard work of invention knowing it requires days, weeks and months of deliberate, focused thinking. It begins with identifying a specific unmet niche in the marketplace through "connecting the dots" to the type of new toy or game that fills that niche. He’s done it over a hundred times in his career and will very likely do it again. Is there another Connect 4 coming?

Wexler meets Connect 4 sales reps in India.