LEON NEON

1986

     So if you got to this page from Facebook you've already seen this clip. It's from a very funny 'TRIBUTE PAGE' (If you can believe it) that a guy named Matt created to my 1986 Mattel toy...LEON NEON. There's a link later in this blog to his LEON NEON page.

Just so you get a quick idea of how this all worked.: In 1985 my job was to come up with some creative ideas and try to make prototypes any way I could to test and evaluate. Then I'd make a presentation and if the idea was good enough it would be 'taken-over' by engineering and marketing and it'd be out of my hands. I'd go on to other new ideas. Sometimes I'd see bits and pieces, prototype boxes or what have you when I'm walked  thru the building but really I'm out of the loop until one Saturday morning I'm lying in bed watching cartoons when this BLASTS across my tv screen.

I didn't even know they were making a commercial. It was my first Mattel product and it's on TV. How cool is that. 


It started with this new group I was now in...NBC (New Business Concepts). I thought it would be cool for kids to have something like neon for kids to be able to make themselves.

I gathered that the running joke in the toy business was that you added the glow-in-the-dark feature when product line was on it's last legs. That's one way to think about it but what if you made the glow-in-the-dark THE MAIN feature So my idea was a KID-NEON (I called it that), a 'wire-like toy that any kid could manipulate creatively and see glow. In the biz that's considered an activity toy.

But I had no idea if this could be made, and at what cost and if anybody would even be interested. So I showed my idea to Susannah who sent me down to meet Wally Shapiro, a chemist in Mattel's Chem Lab. A Chem Lab. All this was new to me. Whereas back in New York nobody was ever happy to see you if you needed them to do something, Wally was both a pleasure and a treasure to work with. He reminded me about co-extrusion and suggested we start with an already available electrical wire since their industrial coverings would help us satisfy the wire safety requirements. He sent me off to shop and experiment. I bought and bent many different wires, imagining them surrounded with a layer of glow-in-the-dark soft plastic. I got the wire I liked best from a small hardware store in Long Beach. I gave my wire samples to Wally and a week or so later he's calling me to come down to the Chem Lab and when I do here are these fantastic industrial cardboard reels full of different color and wire KID NEONS. These are like some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. 

About this time I realized that the name KID-NEON came out sounding too much like KIDNEY-ON and I changed the name to LEON NEON. It really didn't matter what I called it because Mattel had a special group that came up with all the toy names. 

I might have mentioned that our group shared a building with Mattel's A-V group so one day, after practicing all night to get the bending and the timing right, I asked my pal Clark Dugger to leave a camera and lights (and a footswitch) rolling on me while everyone went to lunch. I sat in the empty studio and I think it only took me a half-dozen takes until I got this. 

 

And finally the 'PRESENTATION' day. Here's where all the people who'll decide on the fate of your toy will decide on the fate of your toy. And here's where, my friend the reader (you) are going to have to use your imagination. The fact is that Mattel's locked-down cameras at that time (1986) weren't good enough to let you see the 'glowing' part of the action so you'll just have to take my word for it. Also the sounds from the audience should give you a clue as to how it all went. Anyway as the lights went out an 'invisible' black curtain blocked the audience from seeing three 'dancers' (designers on our team) sneak in behind it. The center dancers body and arms were totally covered in LEON-NEON, but the two outer dancers only had one hand each covered with LEON-NEON.  When the black curtain dropped the writhing three dancers appeared to be a single lit-up person (that's the first scream) and then, as the music continues, the hands very slowly move farther away from the body than humanly possible (the second outburst). You'll just have to imagine (but it did look cool!)

So it was accepted, taken out of my hands and put thru the Mattel machine that made it into a real product line ready for the whole American enterprise system.

Lord, my product even appeared on the back of boxes of Kellogg's Corn Pops. And it don't get much better than that in this U.S.of A! Better believe it!

Oh, by the way the naming group couldn't come up with a better name than LEON-NEON (and they tried) so LEON-NEON it was AND because it was an extrusion (meaning little hand labor), they could and did make it here in America. And since theyb were making it here, somebody from Engineering called me up and wanted to know where the hardware store was where I bought the electrical wire I used.

It made the back end of the toy 'TOP TEN' one month. It wasn't a big deal at Mattel. It was just a novelty item and lasted one year. But still the best, most creative and honest review can only be found at Matt's X-ENTERTAINMENT page here: 

http://www.x-entertainment.com/messages/628.html

I wasn't sure this was meant for me but it ws laying around so I took it. It's the in-store point-of-purchase display. I couldn't believe this stuff even existed for LEON-NEON.

And finally, because you never know where this stuff leads you, Mattel gets this letter from a Veternarian asking for samples and info on LEON-NEON because it seems to make good emergency splints for small animals. His letter took it's time getting to me but rest assured his cup runneth over.

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MATTEL & ME

Where to begin? There’s a lot more to this story than I’ll have time for here but if I ever want to get to my point let’s start: Back in the 1980’s the President of Mattel, Ray Wagner set up a small group of creative types as a ‘think tank’ or what would later be known as an incubator. These were his words to our little group at our first meeting.

“I want you to confuse the company!

What I mean is this," he continued. “We already have very talented design groups in place to service and grow our existing core brands like Barbie, Hot Wheels and Masters, so if you come up with ideas that fit into their brands, you’re definitely NOT doing your job. What I want to hear is marketing saying This is a great idea.... but what do WE do with it?’ I’ll take it from there. Maybe we’ll form a new division, or maybe we’ll license the idea to someone else.

And think of your mission as ‘fun’, not just ‘toys’. Grow our business. Your group won’t have rules or schedules, and maybe other design groups will be a little jealous of your freedoms, but your group will always report directly to me so your ideas will definitely be heard.” It was more than exciting to be one of those young designers listening to this. It was amazing.

This was a fantastic mandate until about three months later when, in some kind of disagreement with the Board of Directors Ray was fired (and immediately hired by Hasbro). The new president was what we called a ‘bean counter’ who came from finance and his mantra was ‘Back to Basics’. For Mattel, basics were dolls and (hot) wheels and so now the LAST thing the company wanted was to ‘be confused’. Shit.

Anyway, the head of our group, Susannah Rosenthal was able to walk that fine line that gave the company the kind of products they wanted while still allowing us the freedom to explore new and exciting ideas: the future of fun.

Some of those ideas the company actually produced like the Nintendo Power Glove (the first
commercial ‘gesture’ controller and Captain Power, a toy that interacted with regular broadcast television. But Mattel saw these products, not as new directions in play, but more as one-time novelties. Behind our closed doors geniuses like Rich Gold, Novak, Caleb Chung, Dave Hampton, Jeff Corsiglia and others had actually created a working Virtual Reality System and were exploring robotics and the first drones (remember this was about thirty years ago). Nevertheless in the then current corporate wisdom our group was unneeded and disbanded.  We were all let go.

(A small footnote: The following year or so Caleb and Dave came up with a little product called           'Furby’ that became, and still is, a phenomenon, only now for Hasbro)

But that’s all just a precursor to what I want to talk about. One of the most amazing designers in the group was Jurgis Sapkus. He took the little wheel-lo toy that many of us played with as a kid

and from it conceived MagnaMan (code name”MAGOO). As you’ll see in the following video it was part construction set, part physical video game and part racing set. Here’s the actual 1986 Mattel presentation:

Jurgis’ first demo was controlled thru the track. Our summer intern from MIT, Eric Frische, added a remote control giving the player wireless individual control of his (or her) little robotic characters. Beyond being a 3-D buildable Pac-Man, the gaming possibilities were endless.

In our presentations we had the opportunity to also include what marketing called a ‘sizzle’ film showing the coolest features of the product. With Clark Dugger and our great Audio Visual Dept I made this video. I may have gone a bit too far interpreting the word 'sizzle'.

In any event the presentation was a ‘wow’. Our group’s job was to show ‘proof of concept’ and develop something to show kids for testing. You have to understand that we were limited to using off-the shelf components (not custom chips) which made our little prototype  robots heavier and slower than they would be in an actual product. In fact, our Engineering group later made a ‘real’ production version of Magoo and the little robots were smaller, more colorful and zipped up and down that track really fast!

Magoo tested really well with kids. Of course it would, it was so cool. So what do you think happened to it. Nothing. Mattel just decided that it was too expensive or it just didn’t fit into their marketing plans. I’ll never know. The simple fact is that this was a fantastic toy that will never see the light of day.

We’re getting close to my point. I’m still on the list of approved designers who can submit ideas to Mattel on their portal. So here’s what I did. I showed them the videos, making sure I told them this was already their product, their ‘intellectual property'. I made no personal claim to it. I just wanted to bring it to their attention because probably none of the current staff even knew of its existence. I wondered whether this was a product that Mattel might reconsider, but if not, I offered two options. The first was that they license it to some company that might have the desire to market and produce it and the second was that they let Jurgis and I put the video and story up on Kickstarter and see if we could raise the money to develop and sell the product. Of course we’d be willing to work out any financial  or strategic arrangements Mattel deemed appropriate.

Never have I gotten such a quick response from any company. No. Just No. No reason.

I’ve been to Mattel and listened to all the buzzwords about being disruptive and taking chances etc. etc. Here I was offering them a no risk opportunity to cash in on intellectual property they already owned. No risk, all reward. And thinking about this product (exactly) thirty years later makes my head explode with ideas. Sure, now you’d probably use your cell phone to control the games and the Maker movement would probably be designing new trick-tracks to augment their custom layouts and 'characters'.  If I was Mattel maybe I’d have a meeting with Lionel, a company that has conceptually run out of track. I read where the average age of their Railroad Club member was something like 60. This might be their digital future, with royalties to Mattel.

But it's not my call. Not at all.  I just think it’s a crime to let a beautiful piece of intellectual property (and fun) lie fallow. Ray would have understood.