Interview with Richard C Levy at Toy Fair 2016!

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I'm really excited about our next guest because he is a renowned toy and game inventor Richard Levy. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. Yes, so we have a lot of products here to talk about, but you are seriously a name in the business and I am just so excited to sit and speak with you. Well, my pleasure. Thank you for being here. Thanks for the invitation. Right here in my hands, I hold the toy book for Toy Fair. Yes. And you have an article here, "Life's to Pitch." Life's to Pitch. So if anyone wants to [00:00:48] Richard Levy: learn Richard Levy's ways... That'll be online, that'll be online. It will be online? I think so, yeah. [00:00:52] Speaker 1: Okay, so you talk about in here how to pitch a product, correct? Yep. I think that's the basis of what people here at Toy Fair business-wise. It's like anything. You want to know from the ground up how to take your idea to fruition. Exactly. Exactly. So that's what's all in this article. It's all about that. Yep. Yep. Great. That's amazing. So how are you? I'm doing fine. How are you enjoying Toy Fair day one? I'm doing fine. Monta piacere. Oh, grazie. He speaks how many languages? Six. Six languages. I mean, that's just amazing. Proficient. Proficiently. But still. I can understand maybe two. That's pushing it. Yeah. [00:01:29] Richard Levy: As long as I speak toy and game, I'm okay. Right. There you go. Exactly. So, yeah. How is everything going? Everything's going great. We've got some very interesting new products coming out. We've got new editions of our books and just exciting. I love Toy Fair. I love the toy industry. Yeah. I've had three distinct careers and this is the one that is my favorite. 30 something years? 30 something years in this, 20 or 30 years, 20 something years in film and television and author writing books and stuff. Yeah. Oh, that's great. Now, how did you go from film and television into toys? Just stumbled into it one day with a couple of friends. That's it. Just stumbled in. And knew absolutely nothing about it. Nothing about it. My, uh, and then we did our, my wife and I did our first game called Advertising, uh, which is still out by the way. Really? Still out all those years later. It's now with a company called Alex. It's about the recall of advertising slogans. Okay. And, uh, that was, uh, we got very fortunate with that. Sold a million of them the first year. Wow. And we were off to the races. Did that blow your mind? You know, today it would. Okay. Then I didn't know anything to blow my mind. I mean, a million of anything is a lot. Yes. And it was fabulous. Yes. And we did it as a family. My daughter Betty and my wife Cheryl and I put together all the elements of it and then sold it to a company in Cateco called, uh, uh, company in Chicago called Cateco games. And the next thing you know, it was like the hottest game for that toy fair, adult social interactive. Since you're talking [00:03:05] Speaker 1: about having such a long history in this and it just brought to my mind, is there anything we haven't seen? No. Do you think that there's like a lot of room? There's always something. I believe the toy [00:03:17] Richard Levy: industry is the last frontier for the entrepreneur. Yeah. I think it's, we've seen it all, but we haven't. There's always some new spin. One thing about Americans is they can stare at blank pages and fill it with ideas. No other culture does it better than America. Really? And, uh, there'll always be something new coming along, a new spin on something. Always. Just because of time, age, technology? Yeah, things change. But even with technology and everything else, it all comes back to content, [00:03:47] Speaker 1: doesn't it? Well, look at the retro era that's kind of been happening for a while. You know, we had Care Bears on. That came out in the 80s. Who knew that they would have such a career now, you know? Yeah. Or something being brought back now. The, the Lincoln Logs outside. Like, [00:04:02] Richard Levy: that's something that's so... Well, this is an example. There you go. My wife and I, I don't know how many years, how many years ago was it, Cheryl? 15 years ago? I don't know, 15 some years ago, we did a game called The Velveteen Rabbit. And I was looking at it on my shelf. And I said, this should come back. And I called my friends at Winning Moves, a wonderful game publisher owned and operated by former executives of Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers. And I sent them the old game. Right. And they did an incredible job bringing it back. At revamping it. Yeah. We even have, this is ready, this is on Amazon now. We even have little pieces to show you with flocking on them. Take [00:04:46] Speaker 1: a look at that. Oh, wow. Yeah, look at that. They're textured. Pretty cool. Isn't that cool? I love it. [00:04:53] Richard Levy: So, so I have this with them. And this is, this is shipping now. Okay. And then in the middle of the year, another, you talk about bringing things back. Yes. We did an, my partner and I did an ant farm [00:05:07] Speaker 1: game years ago. Uh-huh. And this is the 60th anniversary. Like the ant farm. Like the thing that was clear and you have the ants walking. This is it. You guys see it? Now, this isn't the game because the [00:05:18] Richard Levy: game is still in development and coming out to halfway through the year from, from this same company. But you see, it's the 60th anniversary of the ant farm. So the game is based on the 60th anniversary of it. No, it's not based on it. It's just tied in with it. Oh, it's tied in. Okay, great. But they're path games for young children. This one, no reading required. And we do a gamut of games. [00:05:39] Speaker 1: Just fun. It's just fun stuff. Just fun stuff. How do you get these ideas? Because they are all over the map. [00:05:45] Richard Levy: Yeah. I mean, you're not like a one track. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's inventor. No, no, no. First of all, a lot of it comes from pop culture. A lot of it comes from my associates, my partners, my wife, my daughter, you know, whoever comes in with the idea. And then we develop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not, I'm not coming up with all the ideas originally myself. Really? But some we do. We know how to identify a great one. Right. And make it happen. And you're pretty good at bringing it to fruition. I have many more scars than metals, but we've had a good track record. But isn't that what they say, that more failures lead to success? Right? Absolutely. You know, you know, WD-40? Yes. WD-40. The WD stands for water displacement. Okay. That's what it does. It's a rust inhibitor. But the number 40 was the 40th try. Is that true? Yeah. True story. Really? The inventor's 40th try. Could have been WD-2, WD-400. Yeah. WD-40. You got to keep- [00:06:39] Speaker 1: Who knew that? I've never heard that before. Keep trying. Keep trying. So I see that you're also writing books. [00:06:46] Richard Levy: So this book is strictly for the toy industry. Now it's available. There's a new edition. It's on Amazon, exclusively to Amazon. It's $9.99. And it's very much up to date with everybody in the toy business today. All the executives at the major, minor companies. Really? It's really state of the art. If you want to be a toy inventor, or you want to understand how the inventing community operates, or the industry and taking it in. This is the book. I don't think there's, I mean, he says with all humility. Right. My partner, Ron Weingartner and I, we co-authored that and I don't think there's anything like it. It's not our book. We reflect what everybody else says. Right, right. Yeah. This must have taken some time. Oh yeah. A little bit. A lot of time. A lot of interviews. And then what about this one right here? Okay. So this, this book, The Complete Idiot's Guide, is also new and a new edition of it. And this has one chapter on toys, but the rest of it is for people that invent anything outside the toy industry. See, so let's go back to that since we have this book [00:07:50] Speaker 1: right here. What, how did you do that? How did you take that first idea? You said you had friends- Oh, the game? I- Yeah, it's not knowing anything about it. I'm so interested. [00:07:59] Richard Levy: You know, in some, in some ways that's the best. Yeah. Because we knew so little about it, we didn't even know there was a toy fair. We didn't know anything. Right. We just came up with the idea and said, let's give it a shot. And, uh, I remember the game advertising. I, I put it in a box and sent it out to a company called Cateco Games in Chicago. That's because everybody else had turned it down. Everybody turned it down. And, um, but my motto is never give up, never grow up. Okay. Just got to keep going. That's great. Keep playing. In my, in my world, there's no no. No just means not now. Unless there's a fatal flaw. So I sent it out and, uh, the president of the company called me and he said, uh, I want to do the game. I said, terrific. I said, it's still not ready for prime time. And he said, well, you have a choice. We can sell a million Fords or wait for a Lincoln. And I said, let's do the million Fords. And we did. And we did. And we did. And the companies that turned it down, one of the big ones came back and asked to buy it from that company and they wouldn't do it. No way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because we've been very fortunate. [00:09:11] Speaker 1: Unbelievable. Yeah. Did you get a bug after that of just inventing and wanting to do more? [00:09:16] Richard Levy: Well, I gave up television. I was a TV producer and I just said, you know, if I can do anything in life and I was going all over the world with film crews and you know, I was for six and a half years, I averaged three flights a week. Oh, everywhere, everywhere. And, um, I just said, well, just if I'm going to do it right, we're going to do it a hundred percent of the time. And it was the best decision, best business decision I ever made. Really? Yeah. Unbelievable. And so I have two more toys here that we want to talk about. Oh yeah. So this is, um, now this is a company called for kids, which specializes in toys for like Disney and this is in Disney parks. This is a second generation. It's so simple, but it's so, it's mesmerizing. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. We're in, in the parks and in the stores with this and a lot of other Disney products that we're doing. And, uh, this is the world's smallest yo-yo. Oh my God. Now this is a marketing concept. The yo-yo of course is there. Yeah. This is, uh, um, my friend Alan Dorfman. And, uh, he had a company called Basic Fun and we had worked together on miniaturized yo-yos. And when he started this line, the world's smallest. That's hilarious. We talked together and, uh, this company's called SI. [00:10:36] Speaker 1: This is hilarious. And you can have that. Thank you. Really? Yeah. I was going to try and do this one. You can have that too. I don't know if I want to embarrass myself. You can have them both. So talk a little bit about, um, being here at Toy Fair. You know, this is the greatest. I, I love [00:10:51] Richard Levy: Toy Fair. Just kicking off for the week. It's, it's energizing. Uh, I feel like an ambassador for the toy industry sometimes at my age and everything else. I've been doing it for so many years that I just, I just love it. And I talk it up everywhere. It's a great career. It's a wonderful industry. [00:11:06] Speaker 1: Do you ever see people or products that you're, you kind of look around and you go, you need to work on this. Oh, I need to work on it. Not you. I'm saying, would you see people throughout the Toy Fair floor that you, you see their product and you think that it's a Ford, but it could be a Lincoln, you know? Yeah, that happens. That happens. Sometimes you say, [00:11:26] Richard Levy: why didn't I do that? But I always feel good. I'll tell you, it's a very interesting industry. The toy inventors. There's a hundred of them in this book. The toy inventors, while we compete with each other, we will collaborate at the drop of a hat. Really? The toy companies, they compete and it's all top secret stuff. And they don't, I'm not saying they don't get along as people, but corporate wise, Mattel and Hasbro and Spinning, they're always each other. But the toy inventors at the drop of a hat, [00:11:56] Speaker 1: the pros will collaborate. I love working with other. They just want people to play. Just get the product out. Yeah. They just want everyone to have fun. I was talking today with Bob Moog, [00:12:08] Richard Levy: who is president of University Games and he has one of our products called Dirty Words. Okay. That was here last year. And he was saying, he picked up one of his games and he said, look, this game sells a thousand copies a year. Wow. He says, and my marketing MBAs say to me, get rid of it. It's taking up space in the warehouse for a thousand copies. What? How do you afford it? And Bob said, you know something? It's making people happy. There are a thousand people out there that I know of, maybe more through, you know, that enjoy playing this game and I'm keeping it in the line. Okay. [00:12:41] Speaker 1: That's cool. That is cool. That's great. That's real. That's what he believes in. That's what he [00:12:45] Richard Levy: believes in. Yeah. It's not just stamping out another product. No, no, you got to get down into the DNA of a product. And, uh, that's what I love about the people at winning moves is that they get into the DNA of a game. They really understand it. They're just not punching out another product. [00:13:00] Speaker 1: Right. So what, um, is a toy or a game that you wish you would have done? [00:13:09] Richard Levy: I don't know that there's any that I wish I would have done. No, no, I'm happy for the people that did it. [00:13:12] Speaker 1: Is there something that's like the, the coolest thing that you've ever seen or something that you [00:13:17] Richard Levy: really, really like? Yeah. Well, one of my, one of my, one of my, I didn't, but I didn't. [00:13:22] Speaker 1: Talk about the one that you, your favorite one that you created. [00:13:25] Richard Levy: Well, I was part of the original team that did Furby. No, really? The Furby. [00:13:34] Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's so funny. I wish we had one right here. [00:13:37] Richard Levy: Yeah. So do I. Okay. Yeah. So it's Furby. [00:13:40] Speaker 1: And what about something you didn't have a part of? Um, oh, there's so many products [00:13:44] Richard Levy: I love that are out there. I look at them and I just say, I don't want to say a product because I'm friendly with. No, that's fine. No, no, I'm very friendly with everybody. So I don't want to just take one out. Exactly. I really respect the work of my, uh, of my friends and the business. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's amazing. [00:13:58] Speaker 1: Exactly. Well, Richard Levy, thank you so much for being here with us. Thank you for inviting me. I hope all of you at home had such a lesson from this guy. And you know what? Start out with the magazine. Life's a pitch. He has an incredible article here. And then he has books on shelves everywhere. And I'm sure you can get them on Amazon. [00:14:17] Richard Levy: This is exclusive to Amazon. [00:14:19] Speaker 1: Exclusive to Amazon. So not on shelves everywhere. But this is. So this is incredible. An honor to meet you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Keep plugging away at these inventions and making people happy across the world. Thank you. Richard Levy, everyone. You guys stay right there. We'll be back with so much more here from Toy Fair 2016.