It pays to live next to a toy inventor

[boss]

My nextdoor neighbor and his partner design, develop and prototype toy ideas for major companies (usually with some kind of electronic component). They either invent toys themselves and pitch them at licensing trade shows or they are sometimes approached by the big boys to figure out how to execute some idea the toy company has.

A couple of years ago their Rubik's Slide was unveiled winning some kind of "Best of" Toy Fair award.

Rubik's Slide

A year or so ago, they asked me to hand paint two designs on prototype items they were taking to a trade show to try and sell. the product was shaped like a guitar pick, only larger and when you played air guitar with it, the guitar riffs from certain songs played from of a tiny speaker housed inside in time with your "air strumming". The two songs they had in their prototypes were "Smoke on the Water" and "Sunshine of Your Love". I forgot to take pictures of the painted prototypes, but here are the designs I came up with and painted on them...



Long story short... their idea was snapped up immediately. Last summer he gave me a couple of production samples for my boys and today in Target I saw these...



Pretty cool.

[toys2cool]

that's awesome

[MIB41]

Too cool! Hold on to those!!

[MegoMark71]

That is awesome.

[Saroyan]

That's great!