A Very Friendly Robot

Long, long ago, I had the memorable experience of heading Playskool's R & D Department for several years when it was located in Chicago. Actually, it was more of a D & D Department (design and development) since little "research' was done in Chicago. "Research" was handled at Milton Bradley's corporate offices in Springfield, MA.

Each year. D & D was to create new preschool playthings with input from Playskool's Marketing Department. Unquestioningly, the most successful project launched during my time in the Department was to replace a clunky, mechanical action Computer with "something new and more exciting".

That "something new" assignment lead to Alphie The Robot; a friendly looking space age character full of beeps, hoops, music, LEDs, and play modes powered by a 9V battery. Unbeknownst to us at the outset of the project in 1977, that original Alphie would enjoy sufficient longevity to become an early preschool brand and appear in nine ideations over its market life from the introductory year of 1978 until 2011!

The "toy gods" looked favorably on the project from day one. An all-star team was assembled to make Alphie happen. There were many key players including:

Michael Meyers who had just joined Milton Bradley as Vice President Corporate R & D after successful product years at Child Guidance and Marx toys. Mike pushed his premonition that Star Wars, then about to burst onto big screens everywhere, would make "space" toys a hot commodity. His years heading significant R & D projects made him the perfect liaison between MB's budding electronics group and Playskool's design specs for Alphie.  Mike's important sidebar contribution was the serendipitous suggestion to name the then nameless toy after his pet cat, Alphie! Suggestion given; suggestion trademarked!

Paul Lapidus managed the talented Playskool designers who were tasked with creating an appealing space creature acceptable to preschool mothers and the internal corporate panel of critical observers. Through the years, Alphie would get several design "makeovers" and dimensional changes, but it was the toy's initial form and functions that won the hearts and minds of the toy trade and huge numbers of consumers.

Greg Hyman and Larry Greenberg had just been retained by Mel Taft, Milton Bradley's Sr. VP Corporate R & D to consult on the company's electronic projects. The timing was perfect. There couldn't have been two more co-operative and knowledgeable external partners. Taking Playskool specs for the toy's functions, Hyman and Greenberg's first step was to provide a "prove-it" breadboard and when approved to then layout the circuitry on a PC board that would become Alphie's microprocessor "brain" in production. Though Greenberg passed unexpectedly in 1992, Greg Hyman shepherded all eight subsequent Alphie electronic ideations as the friendly robot grew into a major Hasbro brand.

http://www.museumofplay.org/blog/play-stuff/2012/04/the-path-to-toy-invention-greg-hyman/

From that tip-off assignment for original Alphie, Greg Hyman went on to co-create and license over 120 state of the art toys including notables like Major Morgan, Talking Barney, Baby All Gone and Tickle Me Elmo. Documentation on much of Greg's toy invention can be viewed at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. http://www.museumofplay.org


Through a generous gift from Hyman and Greenberg to the Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, RI, Alphie appears on a plaque in an examining room to offer a friendly, welcoming face to little tykes daily.

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

Forever Greg "The Inventor"

The Time: The dawn of microprocessors/electronics in the toy business.
The Mission: Put some magic into the Playskool line.
Good Fortune: To meet and work with an inventor team known as Hyman/Greenberg (or fondly called, Greg and Larry).




















Nothing like a royalty check to make inventors smile.

The actual assignment "back then" was to redesign a clunky, mechanical action toy called "The Computer" that looked like something that would have made Fred Flintstone happy. Fortunately, the electronic consulting talents of Hyman/Greenberg were then part of the world of Milton Bradley/Playskool, and they used the power of microprocessors to bring lights, sounds, music and game play into a happy breakthrough playmate that was to become known as, Alphie the Robot. We could not imagine then that the efforts of the Playskool design team, Mike Meyers, Paul Lapidis and the wizardry of Hyman/Greenberg were actually creating a toy that would be successfully morphed for over 30+ years to Alphie 2010. (A sad page in the long history of Alphie was the all-too-soon passing of Greg's warm, funny, and talented partner, Larry "The Colonel" Greenberg.)

Little did I know when Greg's skills spawned the innards of Alphie that I was dealing with a true electronics genius, who fortunately for the industry, chose to focus his talents on creating new toys. Greg has proven that he is an inventor extraordinaire. No inventor I know can claim creation of more than 85 electronic toys that he has placed since licensing Alphie in 1978. And certainly no other inventor can claim a more entrepreneurial start than Greg, "The Inventor", who at age ten in New Rochelle, NY advertised to teach third and fourth graders about electricity in 12 one hour sessions. ( I would have participated in that 1957 offer, but I was already a year out of H.S. and living a great distance from NY.)























The beginning days of Greg, the Inventor

So many years after his flirtation with teaching electricity and invention, Greg Hyman reflects on his early interests in things mechanical and electrical with the question, "How many people can live the dreams they had back in the third grade and actually make money doing it?" The answer, most likely, is those creative minds that share Greg's idols, Thomas Alva Edison, Guglielmo Marconi, and Alexander Bell, and also have similar inventive skills.

What started in 1976 with Creative Playthings' Little Maestro Piano Organ and mushroomed with Alphie shortly after, Greg's creations and those he co-developed with others have added the proverbial "bells and whistles" to a long list of winners including See & Say Story Maker, Talking Barney, Tickle Me Elmo (and a whole host of Elmo extensions), Baby All Gone, Talking Handheld Monopoly, and on and on.









Greg has plenty of Elmo's in his world.

Like most inventors in the tough business of selling ideas, to get to the success level Greg has reached takes hundreds of models and renderings only to have some of the favorites end up as trophies on workshop shelves. He has ridden the roller coaster of toy creation very well by taking to heart the quote of his idol Thomas Edison, "Invention is 1 percent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration". "Greg, the Inventor" has given the industry a lot of great products, but no one knows better than he that it has not happened without a good deal of perspiration that started way back in his third grade.