Posted March 3rd, 2009

On doing the impossible.

Impossible is a concept and most often just someone’s opinion, rather than an ‘intersubjectively testifiable observation,’ aka, a fact. It is possible to accomplish the impossible once one believes something is in fact possible. Does that make sense? Believing something to be impossible makes it so. We choose to categorize certain things as impossible, and in doing so we make it true for us. Not for others, just for ourselves.

Conversely, setting aside one’s belief that something is impossible and acting as if it were possible, makes it possible. We once had a cartwheeling doll, and Fisher Price asked if it could be done as a plush animal - a Tigger character. We thought, "probably not," as the weight and thickness of the plush would interfere with the movement and it would not translate.  But we gave it a try and our team made it work. The end result was Tumbletime Tigger - a very successful and award winning product.

Perfecting the mechanism was a big project and we encountered electronics problems that the designer on the project thought were impossible to solve. Because he was convinced it couldn’t be solved, he could not solve it. It took another electonics expert to solve that problem.

Once we had perfected the cartwheeling plush mechanism we breathed a great collective sigh of relief, enjoying a moment of triumph, until we were told by Fisher Price that the Tigger would have to do a cartwheel in the package - to be shelf demonstrable. Surely this was impossible.

Couldn’t be done unless the package was six feet long. No way. But if the product was to come to market, it would have to do a cartwheel in the box. We set about solving the problem, and with Tigger suspended in the box from a pivot on his back we made Tigger do a cartwheel, in the package. The end result was a breakthrough in on-shelf package design.

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