Shirley Temple

I was on KXRA Radio this morning and someone called inquiring about the worth of her original Shirley Temple doll from the 1930s. According to the Blue Book of Dolls by Jan Foulke it is worth over $1,000. First produced in 1934 by Ideal Toys, the Shirley Temple Doll was one of the few playthings (along with Monopoly) that sold well during the Depression.

What was that toy called...

It’s called The Johnny Astro!

Now Entering Charley's World

One of the perks in creating Timeless Toys was the toys! Some were rare and very expensive. I would buy them on my credit card, have them photographed and then immediately put them on eBay before that credit card bill came due. Sometimes I’d lose money (took a bath on an original GI Joe I overpaid for), sometimes I’d make money (doubled my investment on an early Spirograph…who knew?). Overall, I’d say I broke even.

The plan from the start was to keep some of the neater toys to show off on television shows like Charley’s World.

Blue Bomber vs. Red Ram Pickup

If you’re a football fan you’ve probably seen this commercial starring the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots during the NFL playoffs. I’ve seen it a dozen times and it never gets old. My thumbs get sore just watching it…

In the days before Nintendo gave over-zealous players ailments like Wii Elbow, Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots gave us sore thumbs. When our digits wore out, we used the palm of our hand to squash down the yellow plungers.

I love the ad, but it makes me long for the real sounds of the real game. So I recorded it. Enjoy this cut from the soundtrack of my youth.

Parallel Development

Toy and game inventors can be a paranoid bunch. When I was the gate keeper at Patch Products, a small game and puzzle company in Wisconsin, my job was to evaluate game ideas for consideration. A typical looping conversation went like this:

“Hi, Mr. Walsh, my name is ____ and I have the next Monopoly.”
“Great. Send it in.”
“But you’ll steal it from me!”
“Okay don’t send it in. Thanks for calli—“
“But it’s a great game!”
“Okay send it in.”
“But you’ll steal it!”

These people just didn’t know what to do. I mean who calls me “Mr. Walsh”? Geez.

Something that adds to the paranoia of creative people is something known as parallel development. This is when virtually the same idea gets developed at two different companies at the same time. Spying, you say? Gaming espionage? No.

Game and toy designers are like TV producers — constantly on the lookout for what’s hot. When American Idol hit it big, was it any wonder that other performance competition shows sporting a panel of judges began popping up everywhere? Imitation is the sincerest form of thievery. Similarly, Trivial Pursuit spawned tons of trivia games, Pictionary plenty of drawing games, etc. It’s hard to miss an American Idol or a Trivial Pursuit. They weren’t just products, they were phenomena. Making a gazillion dollars on something will always produce people ready and willing to capitalize on that popularity. I think most inventors realize this, but what they fail to see is that it happens on a much smaller and subtler scale as well.

Ask a professional game inventor and she or he will tell you that almost anything can trigger an idea. In Timeless Toys, inventor Burt Meyer shares the story of seeing a huge display of different colored light bulbs in a store window while walking in Manhattan during Toy Fair and how the sight of it gave him the idea for Lite Brite. Could someone else, maybe another toy inventor at Toy Fair, have seen that same display and thought the same thing? Possibly. But if so, Burt beat them to it.

Say you’re me and you’re flying on an airplane and it’s 3 or 4 years ago and you’re reading The New Yorker and you realize how much you love their cartoons. You say to yourself, “I bet a game using these cartoons would sell.” You put that idea into your PDA for future development because you’re busy with other projects. A year or so goes by and one day you notice that The New Yorker is selling a book of all their cartoons AND have produced a thing called cartoonbank, a licensing program that encourages inventors and product designers to come up with ideas for using The New Yorker cartoons. “Man, I’ve got to contact them about my cartoon game idea,” you say to yourself. But you’re busy with other projects and… you do…nothing.

Well someone beat me to it.

Today I stumbled upon a game review on the blog Doombot, which led me to The New Yorker site and MY GAME! MY GAME WAS STOLEN! Someone hacked into my PDA and stole my idea!

Either that or I was too lazy…

Zip, Bop and Whir

Hot Investing Tip!

The Bruce Museum in Greenwich Connecticut is showing off antique toys in its current exhibition, Zip, Bop and Whir: Toys of the 20th Century. This article from the Greenwich Time demonstrates how a tin toy once worth less than a buck sold at auction for $230,000 dollars!

Gold schmold. Invest in TIN!

Rainy Day Pastime

Over the Christmas vaction this year my daughters and I found ourselves shut indoors on a rainy day. Renting a beach house with the rest of the family has its rewards, not the least of which is digging around to find dog-eared paperbacks or a few old board games. Ah, but then we found the perfect rainy day pastime: the jigsaw puzzle.

I must admit that my girls opted out after the frame was completed. It was a 500-piecer and had a lot of blue sky and greenery that proved to be a real bugger. The cool thing though was that it remained out for the entire six days we were there and became a community project. My father-in-law worked on it. My sister-in-law worked on it. My daughters even came back to it in between trips to the beach. I had forgotten how gratifying building a jigsaw puzzle could be. When the right piece snaps perfectly in place it’s a real tangible feel-good moment. I even developed a ritual of tapping a fitted piece a few times once it was in place as if patting a dog on the head. “Good boy. Now you stay there.”

Having rediscovered the humble puzzle, allow me to recommend a good book by a fellow lover of play. Anne Williams is a member of The Association of Game and Puzzle Collectors and the author of The Jigsaw Puzzle: Piecing Together a History. She is a genuine lover of jigsaw puzzles and has done a tremendous amount of research on her favorite plaything.

Thanks Anne!

BTW, we finished it despite a few missing pieces!

For The Young and the Young at Heart

Copies of my self-published The Playmakers are sold out. Thanks to everyone who supported the book. You know who you are!

Andrews McMeel has taken over the publishing of The Playmakers (and changed the name to Timeless Toys!). I have a limited number of Timeless Toys for sale. You can order an autographed copy of the book by calling us at: (941) 926-8004. Unsigned copies are available wherever fine (and FUN) books are sold, including Amazon.com.

You will not be disappointed! Read what reviewers have said about the book.

First "Monopoly" Game Up on Ebay

Charles Darrow published his first edition of Monopoly in 1934. Known as the “white box” edition in collector’s circles, this rare game is the first commercial editon of the most popular board game in the world. This one on eBay, should bring a pretty penny. Stay tuned!