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?

B There or B Square

There were silly, catchy sayings in the 50's like, "Be there or be square". Apparently, this was an appeal to be somewhere important or you were considered a "square"! Forwarding to 2011, the "there" is definitely, Chitag/TAGIE, November 17-20.

Mary Couzin, the grand creator of this top industry event, promises that this year will be bigger and better than ever. It has something for everyone who has any interest in the toy and game business.

Novice inventors will hear the essentials from in-house execs. Professional inventors will be exposed to the "new product wish lists" of active marketers. Product licensees will get to review new product opportunities from creative licensors. There will be a marque dinner to honor this year's industry "stars". And as a grand finale to something for everyone, consumers will meet face to face with the companies that supply playthings to the shelves of TRU, Target, Walmart, and specialty toy shops.

It is a REAL happening for all who have a stake in the vitality of the industry. So don't be "SQUARE", join me "THERE". See you later Alligators!










For all the information check with Mary Couzin, President, Chicago Toy and Game Group.
Chicago Toy and Game Fair - November 19 - 20 www.ChiTAG.com
Toy and Game Inventor Conference November 17 - 18 www.Tagie.net
The Toy and Game Inventor Awards November 18 www.TagieAwards.com
World's Largest Co-Op of Game Inventors www.DiscoverGames.com

Oops---OP

OP but soon to be D as in Digital

Sadly, The Toy and Game Inventors Handbook, once called "a bible for inventors", is now "OP", as in OUT OF PRINT. That means the end of hard copies. Fret not! Richard and I are exploring Plan B. We see this as an opportunity to leave the printed page and join the digital age. We are exploring e-publishing hoping for a new, popularly priced, digital" inventor bible". Stay tuned, toy and game inventors. there may soon be a new spiffy handbook coming for your Kindle, Nook, or IPad!

Beyond Board Games

When writing The Toy and Game Inventor's Handbook, we asked eighty professional inventors about their creative careers. One question was, "Who inspired you to become an inventor?"
David Hoyt's answer to that question ensured a place in our published profiles and guaranteed that he would one day be a subject on my blog as well. That answer credited me as motivating him to continue as a "toy dreamer" even though he encountered many rejections and "nos" in efforts to license his ideas. (Thank you, David, but my job as VP, Inventor Relations was to cheer lead the company to the inventing community, critique ideas, soothe disappointed inventors, and worst of all--return rejected ideas.) Interestingly, Hoyt's answer went on to cite what the pros know, "Do not look at a "no" as a sign of failure but rather an opportunity to improve as an inventor as long as the faults are applied to future inventions."

And improve he has! He saw that game play can take many forms on a variety of media. Since those early rejections by Hasbro Games of more traditional game formats, Hoyt has successfully developed online games, mobile games, console games, newspaper games, instant lottery games, casino table games, video slot machines games and, of course, board and card games. Millions of players enjoy his syndicated daily games and puzzles found in many hundreds of newspapers around the world. He has seen his very popular JUMBLE "paper/pencil puzzles" published in some thirty books.

Along the way, David learned the value of partnering with other creatives to broaden possibilities of licensing game ideas. He partners with Jeff Knurek to expand the JUMBLE brand. He has co-produced SPLIT card and board games with inventor, Steve Flaherty and PICTURIFFIC with inventor, Jim Keifer. When seeing that media celebrity could drive some of his game play with consumers, Hoyt licensed one of the all time popular TV show hosts, Pat Sajak, for a line of his game designs.

Much of Hoyt's current focus has turned to social networking games. He is part of a team developing game titles for Facebook . PICTURIFFIC is now ready for release. Bringing his creativity and enthusiasm to this newest medium, Hoyt says, "Budgets are bigger, production value is bigger, the play is bigger, everything is bigger. Sometimes it feels more like the movie business than the game business."

Check out all his accomplishments.

http://igamebank.com/PDF/Hoyt%20Puzzles%20and%20Games%202011.pdf

Looking at all of David's successes since weathering my early rejections, I am flattered that some of my advice in some way contributed to his highly successful and productive career as Hoyt Interactive Media.