Chapter 1
Toy Inventing and Kit Bashing
His innovative products changed the world, yet he was never satisfied and was always working on the next thing. He was a flamboyant showman, and delighted in cleverly presenting his latest top-secret ideas. He earned the fierce loyalty of his employees, although he could be exceedingly difficult. He was a genius when it came to design, but he didn’t actually invent his most famous products. His personal life was complicated and he was moody, but his products brought joy to millions. And after his untimely death, his most famous products live on and are as popular as ever. Although this might also describe Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, the complicated creator profiled here is toy innovator Marvin Glass.
Marvin Glass,
Titan of Toy Invention
Baby Boomers may not have known his name, but Marvin Glass’s amazing toys and games and their TV-promoted jingles were unforgettable: Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots (“His block is knocked off?!”)…“Open the door to your (ahhhh!) Mystery Date!”…“Operation! (buzzzz!).” Some Marvin Glass toys are distant memories, but many remain popular and still sell today. Glass’s greatest triumph was not any one particular toy or game: Glass perfected the business part of the toy invention business.
Born to German immigrants in 1914, Marvin grew up near Chicago. During an unhappy childhood he created his own toys from cardboard and wood: a toy dog, swords and shields, and a climb-inside toy tank. Foreshadowing a lifelong pattern, his toy creations made his friends happy, yet he remained lonely.
He designed animated store window displays after college and sold an invention for a toy theater to a manufacturer for $500. When he learned the company made much more from his idea ($30,000!), Glass realized what he must do in the future: license his designs and earn a royalty on each one sold.
An inventor named Eddy Goldfarb showed his invention, Yakity-Yak Talking Teeth, to Glass. They struck a deal: Goldfarb did the inventing and Glass did the selling. Glass sold the design to novelty maker H. Fishlove and Company of Chicago, and the comical wind-up chompers became a hit in 1950. Glass promoted other Goldfarb creations—and himself in the process. Goldfarb told me: “Marvin was a great, great salesman. He should have been in the movie business!” Goldfarb left Glass to create hundreds of toys on his own, like Mattel’s Vac•U•Form and Schaper Stomper mini-motorized cars. Goldfarb was the true pioneer of the invention part of the toy invention business.
Glass created a lavish, top-secret toy studio in Chicago worthy of Willy Wonka. Instead of Oompa-Loompas he hired talented designers, inventors, sculptors, and model makers. Lathes and mills were painted in bright colors. Chagall paintings and Remington sculptures filled the waiting rooms at Marvin Glass and Associates (MGA). Every new toy or game idea was kept absolutely hush-hush. Soundproofed windows and triple-keyed locks prevented corporate espionage, all monitored by closed-circuit surveillance cameras. Work-in-progress prototypes were locked up in a safe every night. Was Glass’s paranoia justified? Probably not, but the mystique of such dramatic flourishes only added to the perception of visiting toy company executives: these ideas must really be something! According to writer and toy inventor Richard C. Levy, salesmanship is “not what you have—it’s what they think you have.”
And what ideas they were! MGA’s new toy concepts had clever features that often created all-new categories of toy and games.
Children’s board games had been a sleepy product category with such staid offerings as Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders. “Bored” game was right. MGA changed all that with their innovative “skill and action” games. Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots took its inspiration from an arcade boxing game, but was miniaturized for tabletop action and added a telegenic gimmick: landing a solid push-button punch on the robot’s jaw popped his head up with a revving buzzzzzzzz! sound.
MGA’s game-plus-toy hybrids (gamoys in the toy biz lingo) transformed the flat game board into three dimensions. Mouse Trap was inspired by Rube Goldberg’s comic. It was masterfully rendered with styrene gears, ramps and chutes, springs, rubber bands, and marbles. The game play wasn’t much more than ritualized assembling of the toy contraption. No matter. The real fun was activating the chain reaction of mechanical gizmos that ultimately dropped a cage over a mouse token, ending the game. A huge hit in 1963, it sold virtually unchanged for over 40 years. MGA attempted to clone Mouse Trap’s success with two sequels, Crazy Clock Game and Fish Bait Game, but the timing was wrong and kids didn’t bite. That’s the fickle toy biz!
Robot Commando was a great example of a Marvin Glass toy. The exciting 1960 TV commercial showed a giant, motorized robot that listens and obeys. Say, “Forward!” into the mouthpiece control and the robot goes forward. Say, “Fire!” and he shoots missiles from his domed head or flings balls from his spinning arms. Wow! What boy wouldn’t want a robot that responds to verbal commands? But it’s not what you think. MGA’s clever design featured a wired remote control with a Bowden cable (similar to the gearshift control on a 10-speed bicycle). When you twisted the knob to move the pointer from Forward to Shoot, a stiff cable pushed or pulled to mechanically shift gears inside the robot. At the same time, the vibrations of your voice sympathetically jiggled a metal contact, which connected the battery power and energized the motor. You could say, “Fire!” but if the knob pointed to Turn Left the robot turned left. Dramatic, successful, and artfully deceptive, Robot Commando was not unlike Marvin Glass himself.
Toy manufacturers like Ideal, Hasbro, and Louis Marx lined up to get a peek at MGA’s latest inventions. The string of hit toys seemed endless: take-apart, put-together robot Mr. Machine (1960), slap-action card game Hands Down (1964), toss-the-hot-potato game Time Bomb (1964), glowing, colorful peg-picture maker Lite Brite (1967), free-wheeling Evel Kneivel Stunt Cycle (1973). You couldn’t turn on a TV, open a Sears Christmas catalog, or go into a kid’s bedroom without seeing an MGA design.
Although Marvin Glass’s name and logo was on the box, others created the inventions inside. Inventor Burt Meyer developed Lite Brite and Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, and, along with Leo Kripak, created Mr. Machine. The idea for the game Operation originally came from John Spinello, who accepted Glass’s offer of $500 and an unfulfilled promise of a future job. Gordon Barlow and Meyer co-invented Mouse Trap. Carl Ayala came up with Whoops fake vomit despite his boss’s initial disapproval.
It was a high-stakes, high-pressure business. His secretary of many years, Pauline Camberis, says, “I loved working for Marvin. He was very difficult at times, but he was that way with most of his employees. Marvin was also very generous.”
All this success enabled Marvin to indulge in a luxurious lifestyle. He had a chauffeur to drive his clients around and a personal chef to cook them gourmet meals. His remodeled Evanston, Illinois, carriage house residence appeared in a 1970 Playboy magazine photo layout, complete with a cocktail table with built-in hi-fi controls (swanky!) and party guests in the sauna and whirlpool (swingin’!). And yet, Glass remained disappointed with himself. He was famously profiled in The Saturday Evening Post as the “Troubled King of Toys.” His first ex-wife said, “I think he was born to be dissatisfied. That’s why he can keep on creating.”
Marvin Glass died in 1974 at age 59. His business partners kept the firm going, inventing and licensing toys and games, but MGA finally closed in 1988. Many of Glass’s partners and employees have spun off to work on their own in the toy invention business, Marvin Glass’s greatest creation.
Steampunk Safety Goggles
Toy inventors need to quickly turn their ideas into prototypes in order to test a new concept before investing a great deal of time. Rather than draw up detailed plans and laboriously machine custom parts, they just adapt parts and mechanisms from existing items to slap together a rough-and-ready breadboard model. You learn more about what you need to do faster just by doing it!
If a model maker needs to build a visual “looks-like” model with intricate details, like a space vehicle, they often kit bash parts from a completely different model: the rear-end differential from a hot-rod car model becomes the pressure tank and thruster engine on a rocket ship!
Try this easy project! There’s no wrong way to build it. Whatever you like, goes. With a little bit of scrounging and a touch of paint you can transform ordinary safety goggles into something dangerously cool: a steampunk-themed pair of goggles complete with sci-fi gizmo gears along with Victorian-era gold work and turn-of-the-century tech graphics.
You’ll need some simple hand tools—saw, drill, sandpaper—plus a hot-glue gun and black and gold spray paint. Gather up some interesting bits and bobs and, of course, a pair of safety goggles. I used the big, one-piece design that fits over my glasses. They have big surfaces on the sides and top for attaching steam-punky stuff.
No need to follow a detailed plan; create your own design. Just drill or cut the parts, as needed, and hold them up to the goggles. Try out how they look in various positions, then hot-glue them in place.
I turned these safety goggles into a fun, fake, night-vision goggle costume. A pair of eight-sided, threaded, plastic plumbing connectors became “night vision” scope tubes. I hot-glued a handful of plastic gears from a broken toy on top, together with a number dial from a disposable camera for some interesting scientific-looking details. The bulb and reflector scrounged from a penlight, along with coiled wires and bogus connections, complete the night-vision look. I added a cylindrical storage compartment by rolling a piece of thin plastic inside some plastic rings and hot-gluing that on top in the center. The definitely unsafe green cellophane lenses are optional.
For a more Victorian feel, I included some scrolled chrome buckles for the strap and Photoshopped a few labels to make dials and gauges, as well as an appropriate nameplate. (Look in the appendix for some clip-and-use graphics to use for your own project.) To finish it off, I sprayed a little flat black paint here and some gold paint there. Voilà!
Footstep Sand Stampers
Here’s an easy project for summer fun: hack a pair of flip-flops so they make designs in the sand as you walk. Just add a bit of Sugru® to your sandals and start stamping!
First, clean the bottom of your flip-flops thoroughly with some vinegar and water to get rid of any grease or loose dirt. Dry off the soles completely so the Sugru will stick and stay on. Open the pack and knead the Sugru until it’s pliant and soft, then form the shapes you want.
Make shapes by first rolling out a small snake, then press it onto the sole of the flip-flop. Spread the bottom out and press down firmly for good adhesion. Don’t make tiny details (you won’t really see them in the sand)—think simple and bold shapes! Make letters, numbers, emoticons, symbols, and designs, but whatever you make, remember to make it backward, like on a rubber stamp!
Press down all around the edges of the Sugru. Form a triangular cross-section to maximize adhesion and eliminate any undercuts for best results. Let the Sugru cure for 24 hours, then go sand stamping!
Works best in moist sand. I got great results, even with a tired, old pair of flip-flops and some almost-expired Sugru.
What design will you make? Happy sand stamping!
Hummingbird Feeder Hack
This quickie project is a good example of kit bashing: improvising a new use for an old toy. Interestingly, after this piece was first published, I saw an updated hummingbird feeder design at the pet store. It has a similar moat already molded right into the plastic cap!
Our backyard hummingbirds were not happy! A continuous trail of hungry ants was climbing right into our hummingbird feeder, fouling the sugar water and keeping the hummingbirds away. The ants were not deterred by folk remedies like bay leaf barriers, and pesticides were out of the question. Ugh—what to do?
My bin of old toy parts yielded the answer. I used the cap from a vending machine gashapon toy capsule to make a water barrier. To make one of your own, drill a small hole in the cap. Attach the inverted cap onto top of the feeder with a bit of Sugru or bathroom caulk. Add some more all around the center hole on top, as well. When set, it holds the cap on and seals up the center hole where the hanging wire goes through. Reassemble the feeder, hang it back up, and fill the cup with water. The cap makes a tiny water moat that the ants refuse to cross. The hummingbirds are now back to enjoying the ant-free feeder—sweet!
