Sounds Like Fun

Toys tickle the senses. The smell of Play-Doh and Crayola crayons, the feel of a Lego block, the glimmering sight of multi-colored Matchbox collection – they can all transport us back to grade school in a heartbeat. For me it’s the sounds of toys that make my childhood emerge from some quiet place back in my brain. I still love to hear the RAZZ from a Simon game, the SWOOSH of the reel advancing on a View-Master, and the rapid TIDDLE of the spinner in the Game of Life.

But the toy that provided the greatest hits from the soundtrack of my youth was undoubtedly the Wiffle ball. With a just a plastic Wiffle ball, a plastic Wiffle bat and an aluminum lawn chair as the instruments, the sounds of summer could be heard from my boyhood backyard. From The Playmakers:

The corner deck and clothesline post marked the foul lines. Anything off the tool shed was a ground rule double; into the oak tree branches scored a home run. Our strike zone was always a lawn chair set up against the side of our house…The clank of the ball hitting the chair and the clack of the bat remain vivid memories of summers past.

It’s fitting that the toy was even named after the “whiffing” sound of a bat failing to connect with a ball. Here’s a great story on the Mullany’s, the first family of Wiffle fun, from the Hartford Courant.

Forget Ball Park franks. It’s not summer until you’ve heard the clack of a Wiffle ball bat.

Bringing Home the Metal

I am hooked on the Olympics. Before the games I had never heard of Paul Hamm, Misty May or Michael Phelps. Now they’re all destined for their own Wheaties box. While the background stories on the athletes are often intriguing, I think the stories that unfold after the gold medal performances are even better.

Dot Richardson hit the game-winning homerun for the US Women’s Softball Team to win the gold medal in the 1996 games and now she’s the Medical Director of the USA Triathlon National Training Center in Clermont, Florida. Eric Heiden won five gold medals in speed skating at the 1980 games and today he’s Professor of Orthopedics at the University of California.

Before Richardson and Heiden, another US Olympian went from Medallist to M.D. and then developed and marketed one the best toy construction sets ever created…

Alfred Carlton Gilbert won the gold medal for the US in the pole vault at the 1908 Olympic Games in London. A year later, he graduated from Yale Medical School. But rather than continuing in medicine, “A.C.” Gilbert decided to focus on entertaining and educating children through toys. In 1913, with a $5,000 loan from his father, he produced his Mysto Erector Structural Steel Builder and in doing so introduced millions of kids to the possibilities of their own imaginations.

Cherry-red Erector sets like this one from the 1950s turned many baby boomers into lovers of heavy metal. At the time of his death in 1961, A.C. Gilbert held 150 patents for his various inventions and had sold over 30 million Erector sets.

Previous Polls

What’s your favorite fad?

100 million sold in one summer made Hula Hoop hard to beat!
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Build your case for the best construction toy ever!

Tinker Toys beat out Lincoln Logs for second?!
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Where would you most like to get lost in Candy Land?

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What line(s) of action figures are the best ever?

Of course the “doll for boys” that broke all the rules and created the category of “action figure” would garner the most votes.

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Which classic Monopoly token is best?

…and the cat ran away with the spoon. Actually the dog ran away with it, fending off a late charge by the car.

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Draw your own conclusions and vote for the best “Art Toy” ever!

I think the smell just overwhelmed voters.

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Which Marvin Glass designed game is the most fantastic piece of plastic?

Not a single vote came in for Ants in the Pants. It’s interesting to note that Operation probably outsells Mouse Trap and certainly outsells the new version of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.

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Which boy from the original 1965 Mysery Date game is the hunkiest?

Wow, times have changed. Although it was a three-way tie for first, we gave it to the Dud.

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Who is your favorite Clue character?

We were surprised that Mr. Green was as well liked as Mrs. White, who we “eliminated” from the voting altogether.

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What’s the greatest toy “ball” ever created?
122 people voted with Super Ball fending off a late surge by Magic 8 Ball. I was surprised by Wiffle Ball’s poor showing.

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After the Ant Farm, what’s the greatest “living” toy ever produced?

The Green Goo That Almost Cost GI Joe His Life

He arrives at toy stores with a conspicuous scar on his right cheek. If you get the sense that this guy has seen the front line long before the check out line, you’re right. Back in 1963, before GI Joe launched a single mission, he earned his stripes in some hard-fought battles. He overcame corporate fear of gender typing (“A boy will never play with a doll!”), prevailed over the lack of funding for his military operation (Hasbro lost $2.7 million in 1962) and had to travel over 8,000 miles to reach Rhode Island (as Hasbro’s first major project produced overseas). Yet the biggest obstacle between GI Joe and the production line was a ghastly pile of green goo.

In 1963, Walt Disney pictures released Son of Flubber, the sequel to their hit movie The Absent Minded Professor. As a movie tie-in, Hasbro produced (you guessed it, “Flubber”), a stretchy, bouncy green compound that acted like, and was suppose to compete with, Silly Putty. With a hot movie behind it, Hasbro had a hit on its hands, selling millions of units. The package read: “Parent Approved — DOES NOT STAIN — NON-TOXIC — HARMLESS.” Uhmm, hold that thought.

In the early part of 1963, complaints about Flubber started to fly into Hasbro. The Food and Drug Administration got involved. Further testing was made. It was not a pretty. Apparently the gooey compound, which was made of rubber and mineral oil, irritated the throats of some children and gave others severe rashes, despite Hasbro’s pre-launch testing of the product. Merrill Hassenfeld, the head of Hasbro at the time, made the wise decision to recall Flubber. In the book Toyland by Sydney Ladensohn Stern and Ted Schoenhaus, the authors described the Flubber fiasco that followed.

Hassenfeld recalled Flubber…and consigned it to the city dump. The next day Merrill Hassenfeld received a call from the mayor of Providence. There was a black cloud over the dump because the rubber would not burn properly. Hassenfeld called the Coast Guard for permission to weight the Flubber and dump it as sea. Permission was granted, but the next day the Coast Guard called to complain that Flubber was floating all over Narragansett Bay. After paying the Coast Guard to sweep the ocean, Hassenfeld finally took the mess and buried it in his backyard. The company was building a new warehouse at the time, so he had the Flubber placed under the site of the building and the adjacent parking lot.

There lies Flubber today, gone but not forgotten. It would be hard to forget Flubber, because the irrepressible material has risen again, pushing its portion of the warehouse and parking lot an inch or two higher than the rest of the property.

So it was on the heels of this debacle that the GI Joe project emerged. With everything on the line, Merrill Hassenfeld tapped his formidable intuition and bravely green-lighted this “action figure” in 1964. The weight of his company’s fate now lay on the shoulders of an 11 1/2” plastic man.

GI Joe may have been less than a foot tall, but he proved more than big enough to carry the load — green goo and all. Happy 40th birthday Joe.

Inventor of Operation to Appear at CHITAG

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Tim Walsh
Keys Publishing
PMB 180 5342 Clark Road
Sarasota, FL 34233-3227
(941) 926-8004
www.theplaymakers.com

Sarasota, Florida (August 6, 2004) – The inventor of Milton Bradley’s Operation game will be appearing at the Keys Publishing booth (#405) at the Chicago International Toy and Game Fair at Navy Pier. John Spinello will join author Tim Walsh in signing copies of Walsh’s new book, The Playmakers, personalizing the Operation chapter for fair-goers on Saturday, September 4th from 11:00AM-12:00PM. In addition, a drawing will be held to award one lucky gamester with an original 1965 Operation game autographed by Spinello!

In 1962, John Spinello was an industrial design student at the University of Illinois when he was given the assignment to design a toy. He scored the highest grade in the class with his electric game where players took a metal probe and carefully inserted it into different holes within an electrified box without touching the sides of the metal-framed openings. If they failed, a bell would startle them. After signing a deal with the legendary toy designer Marvin Glass, Spinello’s game evolved. The electric metal probe that players inserted changed into the now familiar electrified metal tweezers. The surgical theme was introduced and Operation was born, released by Milton Bradley in 1965.

“I know what this is… This is an espresso machine.”

“No, no wait. It’s a snow cone maker.”

“Is it a water heater?”

“No, it’s the prototype of everyone’s favorite Skill Game.”

TV Land to the Living Room is a One Way Street

I caught the Balderdash TV Game Show on PAX TV last night. Based on the hit board game, this show will have a hard time breaking through. The first “round” consumed the first six minutes of the show and consisted of a single question. Six minutes for one question? This is one of the greatest board games ever, but it simply does not translate to TV.

Welcome to the club. The list of hit board games that have tried to make it on television is long. Monopoly, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Scattergories, and Taboo have collectively sold close to a billion units, yet all were better off on the table top than on the tube.

Conversely, the line-up of hit game shows that have successfully made the leap from TV Land to our living rooms is impressive. To Tell the Truth, What’s My Line?, Name That Tune, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and The Price is Right are just a few shows that had successful runs as board games. But by far the two most successful “home versions” were the game of Concentration, which was originally released in 1958, and Password which came out in 1962. Both were originally produced by Milton Bradley and both survived as board games long after the TV shows that inspired them. Today they are made by a cool company called Endless Games, which have brought back a lifetime supply of TV favorites including Beat the Clock, Family Feud, and Pyramid.

Insert blinking APPLAUSE sign here.