Posted on October 30, 2009

BOOOO!

Did I scare you?

Happy Halloween! Come join us tonight for a spooky blast!

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Posted October 29, 2009

"It’s the stories man, it’s the stories."

Charlie Byrd, the legendary jazz guitar player, loved country music, as have I ever since I was forced to listen to it every day for a year long ago. His jazz music cohorts couldn’t grasp it, and when they asked him why, his answer was, “It's the stories man, it’s the stories.” Country music is full of interesting stories.

            

Life is about the stories, too. Many of the stories are interpretations of fact, and not fact in themselves. Rather they are what we choose to say or believe about an event.

For example, a few years ago we were deep in the throes of extensive home remodeling and renovation. So much so that the family had to move out for several weeks while I remained behind in the dust and detritus, visqueen sheeting of a construction site. The phrase kept coming to mind, “This is a nightmare situation we are in,” but each time it appeared, I forced it from my mind because to admit that thought would make it true. 

          

 

It would become the story I would tell myself and anyone else who might listen about a horrific and nightmarish renovation project that resulted in my family having to move out of the house for a few weeks. Moving out during the construction was the fact of the matter. Anything else was simply the story that I would make up about those facts.

The story then becomes powerful in determining our emotions related to the events, and in turn, on the level of stress we create for ourselves. Be careful about the stories you make up to describe events and people.

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Posted October 23, 2009

Guest Blogger: Jessie Mansbacher, Office Manager, Lund and Company Invention, L.L.C. 

If there’s one phrase that’s constantly bouncing off the walls, from room to room, here at the Lund and Company offices it’s “make the impossible possible.” It’s a philosophy that we all try to live and work by, and it’s even become a philosophy that we play by. 

As the office manager, I may not hold the most creative position here at the company, but I am still encouraged to attack the tasks at hand with the attitude that there are no limitations to what I can do – that the possibilities are limitless. 

This is particularly true for me this week, with the onset of the Halloween season and the rapid approach of Lund and Company’s first annual Halloween bash. I’ve been asked to spearhead the planning of this one, and after a precedent-setting, mind-blowing Grand Opening Celebration last summer, that’s a tall order.

 

As a team we have charged ourselves with creating an event equal in impact to that legendary party (without a live tiger, of course). Can it be done? Will we make the deadline? Will we step back after we’ve put all the pieces together, and breathe that collective sigh of amazement when we see what we’ve created? 

We’ll have to wait and see – but as always, when this team believes the impossible can be done, there’s really nothing stopping us. I think it will be a night to remember!
 

 

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Posted October 20, 2009

At Richard Gottlieb's conference on the Future of Toys, I realized how nearly impossible it is to envision the future, and yet how we all need to do just that. We need to retain a collective memory of the past as a guide to the future, as the past is doomed to repeat itself.

As individual companies and as an industry we were not prepared to deal with the safety crisis that befell us in the last two years, and yet such crises have occurred in the past. The Tylenol scare stands out as one of the most memorable - the Tylenol makers stepped up fast and comprehensively to manage the crisis and survived admirably as a result.

This is easy to say and hard to do, perhaps, but crisis management needs to be a topic for major toy companies. With Walmart and others shrinking their toy departments, we may already be hip deep in crisis at this moment.

This needs to be a conference topic at the next ToyCon. The industry has many possible futures, and we need to prepare for good and bad, status quo and radical change. All are coming down the pike toward us one day.

Any pilot can guide a craft under fair winds and blue skies, but only one such as the heroic Captain Scullenberger can safely navigate his or her vessel in stormy seas and through catastrophic surprises such as the loss of both engines.

      

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I am just back from the Mattel Toy show in LA last week, and on my way to a military hardware show in Las Vegas this week. At Mattel we saw their 2010 line for all their brands, including Fisher Price, and while there we visited Jakks up in Malibu (where I always wonder how anyone gets any work done when their offices look out over the Pacific Ocean, imagining Japan out there just over the horizon) and Spinmaster as well, to see their new offerings for 2010.

At the JIP military hardware show in Vegas this week we will demonstrate for the first time our revolutionary new variable velocity, non-lethal weapon system. Intended for Force Protection, we've designed this system to protect the people. ‘The Big Hurt’ as we affectionately call it, is meant to deter, dissuade and discourage the bad guys, rather than injure or kill, and to eliminate collateral damage which breeds more enemy. The men and women of the armed forces and of the ‘thin blue line’ here at home do not want or need more enemy.

Please wish us luck.

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Posted October 16, 2009

I am now back from the Dallas Show, and while the mood was upbeat, few products attracted much interest. The level of innovation was down, and toy companies are making new product decisions later than I have ever known in 30+ years in the industry. 

The cost of goods, and the best way to keep costs down was a subject I heard discussed constantly. A $19.95 product from a few years ago is $40.00 today, and a $40 product from two years ago is $60 this year. The cost of labor shoots up another 10% each year and the volatility of oil drives up the cost of plastic and shipping. It is a tough time to be a toy company, and as it all flows downhill, the inventors are feeling the pain as well, and will continue to.

The toy industry is a resilient bunch, but I walked out of a number of showrooms in Dallas thinking that all the product looked cheap because it was. So much had to be taken out of the product to get to the traditional magic price points of $9.99 (impossible), $12.99, $14.99 , and $19.99, and up to $29.99. After the packaging and shipping, there’s not much money left to put into the actual product itself, and it showed. If a toy is animated, with a single motor, such as many of our successful plush in recent years, then it is well over $30 in toy stores today.

How does one make product and marketing decisions in an environment like this?

We just keep our head down and try to create great products, new technologies, and mechanisms to excite, delight and entertain, certain in the belief that like applause for a performer, revenues will come if we can work hard to be great at what we do.

Being great at what you do is a cure for all manner of internal and external challenges. I have always maintained that, as my mother would say, “Cream rises to the top.” See you there.

           

 

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Posted October 15, 2009

I am back from Dallas, and ready for upcoming trips to LA and Las Vegas. 

For reasons known only to the publishers and editors, yours truly was featured on the most recent issue of the industry's leading publication, The Toy Book. Everything I know about business I did learn playing with toys, and I assure you if it were a book it would be a very quick read. But I do hope that some of what I have gleaned from 30+ years of invention, licensing, tinkering, and discovery will be of interest and benefit to someone out there who might happen to peruse my meanderings. 

             

God willing, I hope to have another 30+ years of doing more of the same, only better than ever. My hero is my friend Reuben Klamer, inventor of The Game of Life and many, many other well know products, and who is inventing up a storm at over 85 years of age. I only hope to be so fortunate as to be doing the same at his age. 

I will be giving the opening remarks at the upcoming Chicago Toy and Game show, open to the public and brought to Chicago and the world by the indefatigable Ms. Mary Couzin, the hardest working woman in the toy industry. Lund and Company Invention will also be a sponsor of the Young Inventors Challenge at the show.

See you there!

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Posted October 13, 2009

Please accept my apologies. I was incarcerated for a few weeks and unable to communicate with the outside world.  No, actually I was abducted by aliens, but rejected as a suitable specimen. They needed someone more normal. 

But seriously, with the recent JPMA show in Vegas, the Fall Toy Preview in Dallas, the Building Our Future conference in NYC, the upcoming Mattel Toy Fair in LA, an upcoming military hardware show in Vegas and even more meetings to come in NYC, we (as in the royal 'we') have been collecting frequent flyer miles jetting from meeting to meeting, returning home long enough to pat the kids on the head, do laundry, and head out again.

Alas, I didn’t get to go bull-riding whilst in Dallas last week, again. I am thinking I may just have to hang up my spurs, although I never did have bull riding spurs, and that may have been part of the reason for my lack of sticking on the back of an angry bull. Shoulda just invested in a set of spurs. Mighta’ been writing a whole different story here if I had just gotten them dang spurs . . . Yeeeee - Haaaw! Hook ‘em horns!

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Posted October 6, 2009

Da da, did ah…..news flashes! (old fashioned sound effects) 

- Lund and Company Invention's Honey my Baby Pony animated plush pony, a hit in the UK in ’08, has been named by the esteemed Dr. Toy as one of the best of the best new products here in the US for 2009!

 

- Our TMX Elmo technology is being used in a Japanese character toy based on Akiko Wada, which is both inscrutable and incomprehensible to me, although that may be redundant,  I like both of those words, and since this is my blog, I can just go ahead and do that, can’t I? And who would care anyway? It's not like my high school English teacher is reading this. In fact . . . Oh, nevermind.

Posted October 5, 2009

"Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they're great because of their passion"

-Martha Graham           

           

 

We may not be the smartest of the bunch, not the sharpest tools in the shed, and we may not even be playing with the proverbial full deck, but . . .

            

We are passionate about what we do. We wallow like a pig in mud each day in the processes of imagination and creation, experimentation and tinkering, discovery, challenge, and problem solving. 

Our office is more like a laboratory than a design studio. We make things move, bring things to life in new ways, create and develop new technologies, imbue products with personality, scripting and play patterns, rather than just give form or style.

            

What we do is more like a special effects house than a design studio. We make mechanical magic, controlled by electronic magic, and the end result amazes, entertains, and in some cases astonishes. 

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Posted October 2, 2009

I have just returned from Richard Gottlieb’s Building our Future toy conference in NYC. It was a thought-provoking discussion on the future of toys and the industry. I was glad to be a part of it, and I hope to make a contribution to the health and well-being of this under appreciated and critically important industry.

Hats off to Richard for bringing a variety of industry veterans together for a most edifying and needed conversation. The health of our industry in the future may well hinge on such thoughtful discussions, and the new insights and initiatives that arise from them.

With that I bid you adieu, and I thank you for your interest and support. Have a great weekend!

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Posted October 1, 2009

In the world of Aesop’s ants and grasshoppers, we are the ants.

We have worked with many people in many companies over the 30+ years we have been inventing toys. We present to them our new products, our babies, the products of our blood, sweat, and sometimes tears. Each one is precious (to us) - a hand-crafted marvel, a work of art, the result of imagination, inspiration and perspiration. 

            

 

Some of those people to whom we present our products to are ‘doors’, as I described in yesterday's post. Many others of those we have worked with over the years are passive observers of the new products we present, either uninspired by them, or being careful not to offer a suggestion for improvement from which we might benefit. And some glorious few, those with whom we have enjoyed the greatest success, are active, positive collaborators in the creative process. They make suggestions for changes and improvements to our products.

They challenge us. They make our products better. They are a window through which our products pass to their company and to the marketplace. Their work is eloquent, and brings out our best. Though they shall remain nameless, I am sure they know who they are, and I take my hat off to them. They are a joy and a pleasure to work with, and we know we are fortunate to be able to engage in collaborative creativity together, to create the best possible products as well as success for all parties.

And while "Bouncin’ is what Tiggers do best!”, "Creatin’ great stuff is what Lund and Company Invention Elves do best!”

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