Q: Do you consider yourself as an ordinary guy or is there something special in you which you felt helped in becoming a toy inventor?
I have always had a knack for coming up with out of the box ideas or looking at things a little differently from my friends. I wrote jokes for a local morning radio DJ while I was in High School and jumped from there to writing for comic book companies like Marvel, D.C. Comics, and Disney comics. Most of my writing experience was with a humor magazine called CRACKED for 10 years. I was always looking at the world from a different angle to see the funny side of a situation. Plus, I like the challenge of trying to figure something out.
Q: How and when did you start inventing? Did you start with Toys straight away?
One day at my “gotta make a living” job I came up with a simple device that would cut the time it took to do a certain job that I really didn’t like from 2 people and 8 hours down to one person and 20 minutes. I showed it to my supervisor, then the plant patent lawyer. Within 2 years the “Super Sleever” was on the shelf and being sold. It saves my employer 3 million a year in waste reduction. I get a royalty from the sales. This got me thinking on other devices. My next device was a tool for helping repair ball valves called the Ball Valve Buster. You can see it at ballvalvebuster.com. It is now on sale nation wide.
Q: So that’s how you started inventing. What made you think of Toys.
These successes got me thinking of other areas that I could try, like toys. Toys have always fascinated me, from their construction to what makes them fun. So, I started looking at the toys on the shelf and trying to come up with something I thought would be fun. I had several ideas that were okay, but none that really stood out to me.
Q: How did you get the ideas for Knockout Hockey and Power Pitch Horseshoes?
We have a local AA hockey team called The Augusta Lynx that I enjoy watching play. While watching the game I was thinking what else could you do with a hockey puck. It wasn’t until a couple of days later while watching a Buggs Bunny, Daffy Duck cartoon that I got an idea. (Yes, I watch cartoons. I still read comics too). Daffy opened a box and was slugged by a boxing glove on a spring. “Knockout Hockey” was born.
Q: Can you tell us a little more about Knockout Hockey.
Knockout Hockey is a two player table top game. Each player has one boxing glove attached to a trigger handle. As you squeeze the handle the boxing glove shoots forward. You use that to punch the hockey puck towards your opponents’ goal. The game comes with foam attachments for your table to set up the boundaries of the playing field. They attach easily to any table.
Q: What about your second toy invention.
Power Pitch Horseshoes is a jazzed up version of horseshoes where the player can use their post and base to catapult their horseshoe towards their opponents’ post. It can be played indoor or outside due to the foam construction. It can even be played like the traditional horseshoes and just hand tosses the horseshoes, but once they use the catapult I don’t think they will want to hand toss them anymore.
I got the idea for “Power Pitch Horseshoes” walking through Toys R Us looking at the different toys they had. I saw a horseshoe set and thought what you could do to put more action into it and make it something that could be played inside or out.