How many times have you gone to a party where someone asks, "What do you do?" Our response, "We're toy inventors," draws amazement. "You don't really make a living doing that?" What's your real job? Did you invent Furby or Ticke-Me-Elmo or Beanie Babies? Gosh, that must be fun!" Well, yes, we really do make a living at it. It is our only job, but unfortunately, we didn't invent any of those super toys. It is fun, but probably no more fun than for anyone else who truly loves his job. It's also just as much work as most other jobs, perhaps more than some.

On the surface it appears that all we do is play. Since toys are to be played with, it stands to reason that playing is an important aspect of our work. Most of what we do, however is market analysis. Our market is kids, so that is the market we study. Not so easy when you're an adult as adults tend to lose the child-like sensitivity and enthusiasm of their youth. So, we depend on observation. We look at kids' trends. We look at how kids react to technology, to adult activities and anything else that could effect their tastes. We also delineate between older and younger kids. For 5 years old and over, the toy purchase is kid driven. They are a strong influence on how their parents spend their money. Under 5 years old, the parents have far greater influence. If you look in the stores at the infant/toddler offerings, most of them seem to have an obvious educational value such as eye/hand coordination, color identification, numbers, letters, reading, etc. This attracts parents and meets their sense of responsibility. For the older child, the value is fun. Educational aspects are usually ancillary and covert.

All toys, however, have real value, especially if parents continue to take responsibility for monitoring the play -- even better when parents play with their children. From play, kids learn to practice the life skills to help them get along in the world. They develop confidence with people and technology. They love to show off their expertise by doing things like programming the VCR when their parents can't. It's comforting to remember that they are gearing up for technologies of the next century and will need to know more than we do.

How do we, as inventors, keep up with kids and even stay ahead of them? We have to take all the inputs we get from these diverse areas and try to generate ideas that will excite kids two years down the road. Right now we are working on concepts for the years 2001 and 2002, and we haven't even celebrated the millennium, yet. But, we're not psychic. We do all of our research. We accumulate the data. We generate hundreds of ideas. We eliminate all but the very best, then invest in drawings and prototypes to make the chosen few presentable to the toy companies. With luck, one out of every ten concepts will be accepted by the companies for review. Of those accepted, with luck, one out of ten will be brought to market. We've done all of our homework. The toy company does more homework. Then, the one really important aspect takes over. Luck. Plain old luck. With luck, if you hit a chord with the public . . . success. Otherwise, you're lucky if you recoup your investment. We all hear about the Furby's and Beanie Babies, but their success pales when you realize about 3000 new toys are introduced to the market . . . every year.

Monday morning quarter backing sometimes makes the evaluations look obvious. One year kids like a simple mini plush Beanie. The next year, they like the high tech mini game, Tamagotchi. Put them together and you've got Furby. A simple idea, but as we said before, it wasn't our idea. Nor was it the idea of most of the inventing world. An obvious idea is only obvious after the fact.

So, we continue to do this day after day, as the kids say, 24-7, hoping that luck will be on our side next time. In the meantime, we do all of our research. We accumulate the data. We generate hundreds of ideas. We eliminate all but the very best, then invest in drawings and prototypes to make the chosen few presentable to toy companies . . . . The cycle continues. Yes, we really do play with toys. It keeps us in touch with the child within each of us. We strive to challenge and thrill the children around us. After all, kids teach us that work and play can go hand in hand. We're lucky. We're toy inventors.

[ Howard and Lynn Tarnoff of HRT Enterprises |
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