What are Scott Neitlich's credentials for talking about the toy industry on Spector Creative?

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: hey welcome to the spectra creative channel on youtube and whether this is your first time here or you're a longtime viewer this is kind of a uh well sort of a special episode because i want to address sort of who i am and why i've been talking about toys and the toy industry and egyptian hieroglyphics and crazy cat videos okay well i haven't done as many cat videos recently so my name is scott knightlik and i have been very very fortunate to have had an amazing career in the toy industry for the last 23 years almost 24 years and making all these videos about the toy industry i realize i've never really explained my credentials i've been talking about the industry and some insights but i haven't really actually spelled out why i'm a credible source to be giving out this information i mean why should you listen to me i'm just some you know crazy guy in a red shirt right all right well obviously you know you google me and there are quite a few different sites that have interviewed me and i've really tried to make myself available to anyone who wants to talk about toys because i love talking about toys it's one of my favorite things to talk about so why is it that i'm constantly talking about toys and my time in the industry well i've had such a blessed life and experience and i'm so grateful for getting to work in the toy industry because i am also an active collector and my passion is really what drove my career i feel like i've been lucky i feel like i've been blessed and every company i've worked for i have learned so much and ever since i started working in the toy industry in 2005 i haven't stopped all right so let me give a little background of who i am and how i got there so after high school i matriculated to the university of california at santa barbara ucsb one of the most beautiful places in the multiverse it is awesome i was a double major there in film and media studies that was my first major but then i uh sophomore year i also added communication so i graduated with a double ba in uh both both majors and i wanted to use these majors to essentially become a writer with film i emphasized screenwriting and in communication my emphasis was persuasion i thought that i could well my original my original sort of dream job was to go into writing and to write tv commercials i thought if i could write the coolest super bowl commercial that would be the highlight of my career and the apex of you know being able to write tv commercials well that's not the way my career went but i couldn't be more grateful for what has happened so i did get hired out of college as a writer i wasn't expecting to go right into writing tv commercials i knew i needed to build my portfolio and i'm very blessed that allergan the large pharmaceutical company hired me as a copywriter to work in their advertising department so i did things like this print ad for lumagan which is a glaucoma medication as well as md forte which is a skin care medication cream line i could tell you more about glaucoma and skin care than you probably ever wanted to know i worked there for four years and kind of became an expert in glaucoma mainly what i wrote though while i did get to do some print ads was material for drug reps the people who go into doctors to show them why one drug should be better than the other and in order to write this material i had to become very familiar with what are called empirical studies essentially i had to dig through studies and be able to extrapolate talking points that could be used to point out why one medication prescription drug is better than the other and i hadn't realized at the time that this skill set of being able to navigate fine print was going to translate to the toy industry which really was it was a dream job but it wasn't really something i thought i could do i grew up in southern california i was born in connecticut but i moved to california in third grade with my family when my dad got a job out in california and we would see the mattel toy headquarters off the 405 every time we drove to los angeles so when i was at san diego comic-con one year yeah i know this was a booth i worked on not the one i approached but i couldn't find a picture of it from 2003 2004 uh i was able to connect with mattel and i was hired as a writer for mattel and i so i left allergan for mattel and moved up to los angeles from orange county now i didn't start off as like a mattel spokesman or anything like that i started off as a writer in their hot wheels group that was my first job at mattel in 2005. specifically i worked on the sort of the basic hot wheels cars and play sets and i got to name them and come up with the bio copy i even got to name a few basic cars like this one was straight pipes which was designed by larry wood who is a living legend of hot wheels designers so getting to name one of his cars was like amazing i couldn't believe i was working at mattel i even got to work on a hot wheels action figure line called modifighters i did a whole video about that experience on the channel i'll link to it here so that was really cool well as fate would have it i wound up transferring into the marketing group and got to work with amazing people like bill beneke on the dc universe classics line mattel had recently gotten the master license for dc and needed someone who knew a lot about the dc property and i as a comic nerd totally knew a lot about dc comics and working with the line and dc and warner brothers i got to see a lot of really cool toys come to fruition like the first ever commandee figure now the reason i moved over into the marketing group was i pitched the idea to management about doing a direct-to-consumer collector line as a collector myself i basically explained upper management that i was spending a lot of money on collectible product but none of it was on mattel product and management liked my idea and moved me into the marketing group mainly to work on the dc line and then i was going to work on maddie as sort of a uh an extra project and it blossomed and grew and we got to do a ton of cool projects like that hoverboard you just saw as well as giant box sets that complemented retail lines like this legion of superheroes pack and sort of by default i wound up becoming a spokesperson for the line it wasn't my intention but as i said i'm also a toy collector so it's kind of like the hair club for men i was also you know i'm also buying the product i'm selling and my passion for toys just kind of led me to wind up you know becoming the person that was talking to the fan groups the reason i started calling myself toy guru was i needed a screen name on he-man.org everyone used no one used their real names and i wanted a name that would communicate that i was the source of information for from mattel you know i was the official spokesperson so i just came up with toy guru um you know it wasn't something i did for my ego or to make myself into a god which you know everyone knows i am a god just kidding and i did get awesome you know things like getting to be a royal guard in the masters of the universe line and eventually i was assigned a slot in the masters of the universe classics line the 30th anniversary series to create my own character but that's a whole other video for another time it was something management assigned to me when other fans their plans fell through so eventually after about 10 years i did resign from mattel i left on my own because a previous uh supervisor boss of mine had left for jack's pacific a few years earlier and he basically called me up and said hey scott you know you've been at mattel for 10 years but i could offer you a promotion a raise and the opportunity to work on star wars toys and he knew i really loved star wars i actually was working on the star wars hot wheel line at the time but those aren't action figures those are hot wheels and i star wars action figures is my real love so i worked on the big figs line which was various scales 20 inch 31 inch and 48 inch like this michelangelo here and i kind of worked on the line at the height of its popularity and one of my big things was helping the team uh really create branding for the entire line and kind of once again my passion for toys led me to sort of become a de facto spokesperson i wasn't in the pr group but they knew much like mattel that they could put me in front of the camera and i could talk to fans and it came off as very honest and truthful because i was a fan from there i was recruited by a headhunter or you know professional recruiter not someone who collects heads to work for jada toys which is in the city of industry they needed someone to expand their figure line they were expanding from uh cars to both to doing figures and when i talk about myself as being a toy creator or toy designer this is a perfect example because the nano line at jada is a line i designed i walked into upper management and said hey these are my old metal star wars figures from when i was a kid what if we did this you're an expert with with die cast and you've been using die cast for vehicles and you brought me in to expand the figure based die cast business so what if we do mini figures and they love the idea i'm so grateful they were so supportive i mean i cannot tell you how amazing it was working for jada and how supportive they were so yeah when i say things like i'm a toy designer it's because yes i designed this line uh you know i came up with the architecture the size the scale how we were going to do it how we're going to price it how we were going to sell it and package it obviously i work with a lot of talented people i'm not saying i'm taking 100 credit but it did the idea did originate from me i walked in with those figures from there once again the recruiter uh recruited me away from jada and i went to go work for loot crate for a little while loot crate being the company that sells monthly mystery boxes based on a theme like uh you know comic books or sci-fi or anime etc etc and it was a very different experience working for a startup company but really enjoyable because there's a lot of young people um you know just getting started and what i was specifically brought in to loot crate was to work on their loop vault program and help manage it so that we they could sell off extra inventory they still had but still keep it collectible they didn't want their inventory to lose collector value by being sold off at you know rock bottom prices they wanted it to still maintain value all right so after that then my last job in california was entertainment earth i was brought there by actually colleagues of mine who work at entertainment earth who called me up and said hey we're looking for someone to work on our exclusive line while we sell product from other companies mattel hasbro jax jada all the companies i worked for well not hasbro they also created their own toy line which at the time was done under biff bang pow but they were looking to transfer it under entertainment earth proper and one of those lines was pinmates which i absolutely fell in love with i actually pitched this line at jacks of doing something very similar with the old fisher price form factor and when they approached me and said they wanted me to work on this line i was like oh my god that's amazing because i was with a team that pitched this idea at another company and it didn't go forward and you're already doing it i love it so i was i absolutely jumped into it i was so excited and i got to really expand pinmates do some box sets more vehicles play sets it was so much fun to deal with such a cute form factor and basically put all of pop culture in this you know old form factor from fisher price well it was about this time that living in california got difficult traffic cost of living etc and my daughter did not have a place to play so my wife and i sat down and said we need a better plan and we looked all over the country of where we could live and we found an amazing town in north carolina called greensboro we went on vacation there we tried it out and it was just above our expectations in every way so packed up our bags and sort of no jobs no family we moved to greensboro and i got to enjoy the comic book stores and the the dinosaur museum and the water park and you know three 300 000 people and all this and all this beauty it's paradise i even enrolled in uh uh university california sorry university north carolina california greensboro to get my mba so when i moved here i did stay in the toy industry i formed spectra creative as a consultant and i have been actively consulting for the last two and a half years with many many toy companies around the country as well as entrepreneurs who want to start a toy company and helping them design product and find ways to bring it to retail so i've been very blessed that i never left the toy industry yes i left mattel in 2014 but i've never stopped working for a toy company or working with toy companies be it for one or now for myself with spectra creative and i am i'm so grateful for all of the experience i've had for every company that's employed me i love making youtube videos now and because i'm so grateful for the experience i've had it's especially a thrill to be able to share that with others and put out information that as a toy collector i always found you know wondered why it wasn't put out so there you go there are my credentials of how i've been in the toy industry for over 20 years i never stopped and i've gotten to work for many many companies and had many experiences working on action figures selling them in stores online pitching to retail really the whole kit and caboodle from brainstorm all the way to you know on sale and again so grateful for all the experiences i've had thanks for listening and i hope now uh this adds uh some credibility to why i do these videos thanks for watching and i'll see you guys in the comments section