Howard Wexler -- Toy Inventor Interview

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: As a freelance inventor, I endeavored, of course, always to come up with a stunning idea. As an inventor, you want something that is breathtaking, that you could convince a manufacturer to manufacture. So I was thinking about a game that would be different than all other games. Now, that was the thought I had. How could I make a game that was different than all others? And nothing really happened. I just kind of walked around, went about my business. And maybe a month later or whatever, the idea came to my mind that what if the game were vertical rather than horizontal? All strategy games always played on the horizontal plane, like checkers, chess, Parcheesi, whatever. What if it were vertical? And as soon as that thought came into my mind, Connect Four was born. Because then what I had to do was, well, how do I make a vertical strategy game? So that's when I needed something to work this game out. And so I found a bunch of tubes and these are the tubes and I took these tubes and I set them up and I've got some ping pong balls and I colored ping pong balls red and black, didn't matter what one color or the other. And I started to set up these columns and I put one ball in and I assumed the role of my opponent and I put my opponent's ball in and then I put, once again, I made a move and I started with three columns and put in a bunch of balls. And then I entered another tube and I put another ball in and I'm saying, well, I've got two in a row here and I got a possibility of something on the vertical and then maybe I could even work for the, to the diagonal. And I just kept on doing this. Now, of course, this was before there were home computers. So it was all by trial and error. I just kept on adding tubes and balls and so how high did I go? How many tubes would I use? How many in a row should there be? And of course, I didn't bother with relatives and friends at this point. At this point, I just played against myself and I kept on working on that until I felt I had the right number of tubes and balls, if you like. And it turned out to be seven of these tubes and I went six high was the maximum and you had to get four in a row in any direction. And when I thought I had the game, I would call in relatives and friends and said, you know, did you play this game with me? I would play. And my greatest concern was that it would be a stalemate, that it would be a draw because it just seemed that that might very well happen. And if that happens, it's the death of a game. I mean, to play a game and then after all your efforts, it's a draw. It didn't stalemate. I was amazed by it. So we kept on playing and liked the game very much. And then I said, well, how am I going to sell this to a game company? I couldn't have all these tubes and all these balls. It would be too cumbersome to play. So then what I did was thought of checkers. And I made a grid, as you can see, which is what Connect4 is today. And I made this grid, put checkers down. You can see it's the exact same principle of my tubes and balls. And what I did was I thought that once you had all these checkers in and we wanted to play another game, it wouldn't kind of be cumbersome to just turn this whole thing upside down and spill out the checkers. That wouldn't be magical at all. We're always looking for that little magic, you know. And so what I did was I devised this mechanism. So what I'm going to do down, and this is the first model of Connect4. Our release mechanism was to pull this thing towards us and all the checkers would come down. And this release mechanism, believe it or not, is one of the reasons why it became as popular as it is today. [00:04:57] Speaker 2: Why do you think that is? [00:04:59] Speaker 1: I think what happened was, when I was making this strategy game, I thought I was inventing a game for the adult market, from like seven years all the way up to professors, you know. And it turned out that with the release mechanism and the idea that checkers were put in this grid, that little kids, three years old, would just go ahead, gravitate to this game, put the checkers in any which way. Just have fun hearing the checkers go down and filling up this grid and then releasing and having all these checkers come down. And you know, it's interesting, I started as an educator. In an education we call this a fill and spill phenomena. If you ever see little kids play, when they're very, very young, toddlers, they build up blocks and then they knock them down. They build up things and they knock it down. Well, it's really the same principle here. They're building and they're releasing them and seeing all these things come down. So, and the simplicity of the game, it's four in a row, not hard to explain. So, little kids started to play this at age four and five. Now, you had a game that wasn't just for adults, but it skewed all the way down to little kids, where really the big market is in this kind of game and toys. You know, if you could capture those young children. So, it became something that people just brought to parties. A child had a party, you know, five years old. Hey, I'll bring a Kinect 4, you know. And that's one of the reasons why it became so popular. Another is that it plays so fast. That is when, after you're playing with it, say, hey, let's play another game. Boom. Release mechanism, checkers come down and you're into another game. So, you could play a bunch of games. You don't have a whole big set up. You could play a game in four minutes, five minutes, three minutes, whatever it takes. And little kids could play against mommy and daddy. Because daddy gets home from a busy day at work, he's really not concentrating on the game. His son, daughter say, hey, dad, let's play a game of Kinect 4. The little one is concentrating. Daddy's got his head somewhere else. The little one is going to beat daddy at this game, which is a fun thing. So, you know, I could go on and on why I think it became popular. Another reason is because it's vertical. So, when people are playing this game and you've got other people in the room, they don't have to look over anybody's shoulder to see how the game is progressing. They could sit across the room and say, hey, you made the wrong move for crying out loud. You know, they could be nosy bodies from across the room. The other thing is because it's vertical, you find it in all these films. And when you go to see a movie, you see it in the movie if they need a game to be played. Because it photographs so well. Because it is vertical. So, we see it in a lot of movies that you go to see. We see it in a lot of TV programs. And that all, you know, does well for the game. [00:08:27] Speaker 2: That's great. Yeah. Tell me about your... Tell me briefly about your background. And how that helped you come up with toy ideas, in particular, Connect4. [00:08:41] Speaker 1: Well, my background perhaps helped, but in an odd way. Well, I happen to have a PhD in educational psychology. So, people would say, oh, well, educational psychology, no wonder you invent toys. No, that really isn't the reason. It's more perhaps that I was an undiagnosed dyslexic. Because as a kid, I've always found reading difficult. As all dyslexics find reading difficult. So, when my dad bought me an airplane kit to put together. And you had to read all these instructions. And you got all these slits, slats of wood, these balsa wood and such. I couldn't read all these instructions. It was just overwhelming. So, what I did was, instead of making an airplane, I made a boat. So, I think that was my beginning of being creative. You know? Of making something else. And I think, as a dyslexic, I also looked at the world a bit differently. And I think that, in an interesting way, helped. But, what happened was, after I got my PhD, I kind of felt that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life as a scholar. And I felt that I always wanted to be the best at what I did. And I saw an article, and it said, the psychology of toys. And I know that I was always inventive as a kid. Always inventing something, taking things apart. So, I said, I wonder if I could invent toys. And I took the summer off. And I was completely naive. And I looked at the TV, and I said, oh, they had a spy program on. I'll make a spy game. Little did I know that the people who were in the toy business knew about the spy program a year or so before. So, they already had a spy program or a game in the works. So, when I came around knocking at the door and saying, hey, I got a spy, you know, game, they said, sorry, we're doing that, you know. And incidentally, the doctor helped me get through the doors. Because when you call up a toy company, very often they'd say, sorry, you know, we don't want to see you. But I said, this is Dr. Wexler. And they said, Dr. Wexler, what the hell, we got a doctor coming to see us. I think that that really helped me at least get my foot in the door, you know. So, at any rate, I did a bunch of games that summer. And three of them were bought immediately by a company called Pressman Toys. They bought three of my, and they were educational, psychological games. And I actually worked for Pressman Toys for a bunch of months. And then realized that I really needed to work for a larger company that would really kind of use a lot of my ideas. So, Hasbro, at the time, was in town. And I called up and I said, hey, look, I'm a psychologist. I think I could help you. They had a nursery school called Romper Room that was on television. I said, I think I could help you as a psychologist. And I'd like to learn a little about the toy business. So, gave me the job. Went to Rhode Island. And for two years, I learned all about the toy business. And that was a wise thing to do. Rather than say, well, I invented three games that was already produced by Pressman Toys. I'll become an independent inventor. I said, no, I don't really learn about this business. So, my two years at Hasbro, I really learned about the business. And if you ask me what I am proudest of, it's something that nobody knows about me except the people inside the business. And that is, I introduced baby toys to the world. In 1970, at Hasbro, I did a line of infant toys called Your Baby: Growing to Meet the World. And because I was a PhD in psychology, I was able to go to Brown University, get the latest research and such. And I invented a line of 18 developmental baby toys. Now, this is interesting. In 1970, you went into a toy store. You did not see baby toys. There were no baby toys. It began at preschool and up. So, it was the first line of infant toys. And what I did was, I looked at the development of a baby through two years. And I invented a toy to enhance the development of those months. So, I said, well, the first three months the baby is going to do this. I'll invent a toy which will help the baby along in that development. So, that is what I'm proudest of. And, of course, after that year, all the other toy companies copied and went into the infant business. And, of course, now we have a big infant toy business today. [00:13:45] Speaker 2: Let's get hold of some of that stuff. Yeah, yeah.