Pinball wizards and tiger tails: Long ago in a place … well, not so far away, kids mailed in box-tops from cereal for cool prizes and cajoled dad to put a ‘tiger in your tank’ with Esso Extra for a prized fake tiger tail to tie to the gas cap when he filled ‘er up

Being a kid was kind of cool even before video games, smartphones and the Internet. Really.

What did we do for fun? Well, we played real coin-operated pinball arcade games with silver-colored steel balls and bumper flippers on the side, racking up points and hopefully lighting up the backbox and ringing some bells in the back of some local mom-and-pop greasy spoon often. D. Gottlieb & Co. of Chicago’s Humpty Dumpty, introduced in 1947, was the first game to add player-controlled bumper flippers. David Gottlieb had founded the company in 1927. The predecessor of all pinball machines is acknowledged to be the 19th century Bagatelle-Table, a sort of hybrid between a “pin table” and pool table, says BMI Gaming of Boca Raton, Florida.  “Players tried to hit balls with cue sticks and get them into pockets or slots surrounded by nails and pins.”

We collected cereal box-tops and with the requisite number sent them into Kellogg or some such cereal manufacturer for the stated prize to claim. Sometimes the prizes even came in the cereal box! The invention of a screw injection molding machine by American inventor James Watson Hendry in 1946 changed the world of cereal box prizes. Thermoplastics could be used to produce toys both more cheaply more rapidly because recycled plastic could be remolded using the process.

In addition, injection molding for plastics required much less cool-down time for the toys, because the plastic is not completely melted before injected into the molds. Hendry also developed the first gas-assisted injection molding process in the 1970s, which allowed for  the production of complex, hollow prizes that cooled quickly. This greatly improved design flexibility as well as the strength and finish of manufactured parts while reducing production time, cost, weight and waste, notes Whaley Products Inc. of Burkburnett, Texas in a website article on the history of injection molding you can read here online, should you be so inclined, at: http://www.injectionmoldingchiller.com/history.html

Cereal manufacturers didn’t have a monopoly on cool prizes by any means. Lots of kids cajoled dad to fill ‘er up with Esso Extra in the 1960s so they could get him to also buy a cute and furry fake tiger tail to append to the gas gap. “Put a tiger in your tank” was a slogan created in 1959 by Emery Smith, a young Chicago copywriter who had been briefed to produce a newspaper ad to boost sales of Esso Extra.  In 1964 the character hit his stride with a campaign developed by New York-based McCann Erickson (now known mainly as McCann). He quickly gave Esso (known mainly by its Exxon brand name in the United States since 1972) a highly recognizable identifiable brand in a market where brand differentiation has never been easy. As Esso sales soared and the advertising became the talk of advertising pros, TIME magazine declared 1964 to be “The Year of the Tiger” on Madison Avenue.

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Zoomer Dino-Boomer, Kidizoom Smartwatch and The LEGO® Movie Benny’s Spaceship: Top Christmas Toys for 2014 have more computer power than Apollo 11 moon mission in 1969, expert says

Toad Hall Toys photo courtesy of Jeanette Kimball

The Dream Toys Top 12 list compiled annually by the Gainsborough-based Toy Retailers Association (TRA), representing toy retailers in the United Kingdom and Ireland, considered one of the most accurate indicators of what will feature on most children’s Christmas wish lists, was released in London Nov. 5 and the association says “early indications suggest that 2014 is set to be the biggest for toy sales since 2010.” In the United States, toy sales have stagnated for years at $22 billion annually, according to Anne D’Innocenzio, the long-time national retail writer for The Associated Press in New York City.

But if the UK Toy Retailers Association and London-based NPD Group are right in their overall analysis, expect three of the toys you are going to be hearing a lot about this Christmas to be  Zoomer Dino-Boomer, Kidizoom Smartwatch  and The LEGO® Movie Benny’s Spaceship.

Right in the forefront this year with Zoomer Dino-Boomer is the Canadian toy company Spin Master Ltd., located on Front Street West in Toronto. Spin Master was founded in 1994 in a Toronto garage by  college friends, Ronnen Harary, Anton Rabie and Ben Varadi, who had $10,000 between them. You know the type of entrepreneurial story. Twenty years later, Spin Master is an all-encompassing global entertainment, robotics, toy and digital gaming company, with a design lab in Los Angeles.  It is currently the Number 3 manufacturer in the games category in North America, with double digit growth.

Kids can play with Zoomer Dino-Boomer from Spin Master in autonomous mode via the sensors in his nose, or pick up the control pod to send him on an attack. He shows his moods through his color-changing eyes and can even bust a move. With a price tag before taxes of  $99.97 at Wal-Mart in Canada, Zoomer Dino-Boomer is the most expensive toy on the Dream Toys Top 12 list, but also perhaps the coolest in action. Just remember, cool has a price.

Clive Shelton, owner of Clive Shelton Associates in Bromley, is a chemist and toy safety expert who advises the Toy Retailers Association. He says “there is more computer power in some of these toys than was used in the first mission to the moon. That is the age we live in. They prepare children for their future lives with technology.”

With the Kidizoom Smartwatch “wearable” from Chicago-based VTech, which can store up to 900 pictures, 15 minutes of video and boasts analog and digital clocks, built in games, an alarm and a stopwatch, kids can take photos and videos and use the touchscreen to get creative with photo effects, frames and filters. It includes an alarm, a voice recorder and four learning games.

The LEGO® Movie Benny’s Spaceship is among only three of the Dream Toys Top 12 that are not battery-powered. The name ‘LEGO’ is an abbreviation of the two Danish words “leg godt,” meaning “play well.” The privately held LEGO Group in Billund, Denmark was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen. The company has passed from father to son and is now owned by Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, a grandchild of the founder.  The LEGO brick, its most important product, was twice named “Toy of the Century.” The brick in its present form was launched in 1958. The interlocking principle with its tubes makes it unique, and offers unlimited building possibilities.

Benny may have spent too much time in space with a lack of oxygen, but, hey, he’s also a master builder. Kids can help him construct the spaceship of his dreams out of Lego, then use the control room to open the cockpit, shoot lasers and fire missiles in a bid to evade the Robo Police.

While updated versions of classic board games such as Parker Brothers’ Monopoly, the real estate game invented by Charles Darrow, an out-of-work heating contractor, which Parker Brothers’ began marketing on Nov. 5, 1935, and Mouse Trap, designed by Colorado’s Harvey “Hank” Kramer for the Ideal Toy Company in 1963, continue to do well year after year, experts said that they are more likely to be considered “family entertainment” and purchased as such.

There is much to be said for the charm of board games and train sets, and, indeed, toys –  wood, metal and even plastic – from an older largely forgotten world now.  I made my first visit to Toad Hall Toys on Arthur Street in the heart of Winnipeg’s Exchange District on a Saturday afternoon last Dec. 21 –  just four days before Christmas, and it was simply, in a word, magical.  And by no means forgotten by its loyal patrons.

Toad Hall Toys was established in 1977 by Ray and Ann England and is Manitoba’s largest and oldest independent toy retailer, priding itself, it says, “on our unique selection, old world charm, and friendly and knowledgeable staff. ”

The store, or course, takes its name from Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s book, The Wind in the Willows. Today, the store is run by Ray and Ann’s daughter Kari. “We  offer a vast array of products from over 50 different countries. Our mandate is to provide a unique experience that stimulates the imagination, rather than rotate through the latest mass market trend or fad.”

Indeed so.

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