Toys and Hollywood

Recently, Mattel and ABC teamed up to bring toy inventing to prime time television with their new competition show, “The Toy Box”. The concept is simple: inspiring toy inventors present their concepts to be judged by a panel of seasoned toy industry veterans with the hopes of moving onto a second round of children judges who ultimately make the final decision of who's toy Mattel will bring to market.

The toy and industry and Hollywood have a long history of criss- crossing each other. In the past 2 decades we have seen countless classic toy properties brought to the big screen. These days, toy executives have major in-roads into the televisions and film industries. There is a symbiotic relationship that is part and parcel with play and entertainment. The door is open in both directions. Toy companies bring ideas to Hollywood and Hollywood brings ideas to the Toy Industry. Over my 25+ year career, I have meet and/or worked with celebrities like Kevin Bacon, Daryl Hannah, Gene Simmons, Michael Madson, Quentin Tarantino, Run D MC, Jane Seymour, Gary Dell'Abate and the cast of the 2010 Saturday Night Live to name a few. Almost all my experiences were pleasurable with the exception of one.

A few years back, a client of Design Edge signed a deal to launch a line of toys with a particular celebrity who will have to go unnamed. At the time, they were one of the world's most famous and recognizable people on television. The deal first seemed like a slam-dunk. After all, they were a household name- how could this go wrong? Initially, I wasn't part of this particular deal. The client was working with them internally. Everyone was excited and the big executives kept flying back and forth to meet with them at their home in Beverly Hills to work on “their vision”. It didn't, however, take too long before that excitement began to wane. They weren't liking the design that was being developed internally by my client, so they outsourced it to us at Design Edge. We put a lot of work into the project and over a few weeks developed a very strong line around their vision. The problem, however, was that the executives and this celebrity were just not getting along. Apparently they didn't enjoy working with the “suits” and wanted to deal with the “creative team directly”. At the time, I was asked to fly out to their home but, for reasons that I can't recall, I couldn't go at the requested time. Instead, we skyped a few times. We all became excited again over the project. They were getting what they wanted, and so was my client. But, over the next couple of weeks, it became apparent that this celebrity need a lot of hand-holding, which really didn't bother me, personally. We were meeting all challenges and turning out good products, that is until one day it went totally sideways.

I still can recall clearly what happened like it happened only yesterday. The night before, we had worked late on finalizing some of their prototypes for a rather important upcoming sales meeting. We had sent them photographs of the prototypes before we left that night. And they had replied quickly and favorably to them. The very next morning, shortly after 8am, I received a phone call from our celebrity which seemed odd as that would 5am for them. They told me how much they had absolutely loved what was being done and how we at Design Edge had really nailed her vision perfectly. I was personally offered a gift and my family and I was invited to their house for dinner. By all means, it was a terrific and exciting conversation. I reported back to my client and everyone in that office was ecstatic. However, only a few hours later that same day our mystery celebrity called again. When I picked up this time, it was immediately obvious that something was very wrong. Our celebrity was frantic and I could barely understand a single word they were saying and I wasn't able to grasp what exactly was going on. They then spent a few minutes rambling about how much they hated my client and then turned their sights on me. Up until this moment in the conversation, I assumed my client had done something to get them so upset. Then it became apparent that it was far worse and even weirder. I was told “You are not allowed to that”. I was warned “You can't get away with this” and told “People know what you're doing”. I was also accused: ”You can't just go inside someone's head and take their ideas!” At this particular statement I was taken aback, confused and nervous all at the same time. I wasn't quite sure what they were talking about, surely I'd misheard them as it sounded like I was being accused of.... psychic espionage!?! So, I tried to clarify by asking them exactly and clearly what the problem was. I was then subjected to a long rambling accusation about how I “went into their head while they was sleeping and stole the color they wanted for the toy”. I was also told that I shouldn't “steal from inside people's heads.” I kept getting asked “how did I know they liked red?”. I still was in doubt as to what was going on. Was this a joke? Was I on a Punk'd version of Candid Camera? Were they on drugs? Was this celebrity crazy? They then started crying uncontrollably. The assistant then took the phone started yelling at me. My immediate response to that was to say I wasn't going to talk to him and to put our celebrity (“his boss”) back on the phone, which he did. This famous person's last words to me declared that “my evil wizardry won't work in this world” before hanging up. That was the last time I ever heard from them. After all that work and excitement and success. They never even returned a single phone call to my client. A few weeks later they even quit their TV show. Their toy line was never launched, and the consensus was, among my team at Design Edge and also my client, was that we all narrowly avoided the proverbial bullet.