The PR Wizard of Play

What does it take to turn a handful of plastic bricks, a maddening little cube, and a wide-eyed kitty into international cultural phenomena?

Barry Schwartz knows — because he was there.

At 95, the legendary toy industry publicist takes us inside the fast-talking, idea-charged world of mid-century New York, when a handshake mattered, television could ignite a national craze, and one audacious pitch could change everything.

This is not simply a story about toys. It is a story about timing, instinct, and imagination — and the man who knew how to make the world stop, look, and play.

Today's episode is brought to you by the Joan of Arc Scroll Medal, a beautiful brass alloy medal, designed by award-winning artist, Pat Benincasa. This uniquely shaped medal is ideal for holiday or as a special occasion gift!    Visit www.patbenincasa-art.com

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Transcript

Pat:

Fill to Capacity, where heart, grit, and irreverent humor collide. A podcast for people too stubborn to quit and too creative not to make a difference.

Pat:

Hi, I'm Pat Benincasa and welcome to Fill to Capacity. I'm so glad you're here. Episode 141, "The PR Wizard of Play." My guest today was inside the PR machine that shaped mid-century American childhood, post-war optimism, the rise of mass media and TV advertising, the consumer boom, and New York at the epicenter of the marketing universe. He was in the room translating all of that into LEGO bricks, a plastic cube, and a Japanese kitty that took over the world. At 95 years young, after 60 years in toy industry PR, Barry Schwartz doesn't just remember this history, he made it. This is Fill to Capacity. Welcome, Barry. So nice to have you here.

Barry:

My God, how do I live up to that introduction?

Pat:

You better start mister!

Barry:

Okay. Well, e- epicenter. Okay. So the Wizard of, I keep thinking of the Wizard of Oz. However, when you pull back the curtain, there I am. Not doing it with smoke and mirrors though, really doing it.

Pat:

Well, I have a lot of questions for you. So, Barry, take us back to the beginning. How did a young man end up in toy industry PR, mid 20th century New York? And what did that world look like back then?

Barry:

Well, it's kind of strange because I got into toy industry PR almost by accident. My first job, I have always been a writer, going back to elementary school and high school, then college and so forth. I was always writing something, short stories, even popular songs, parodies of things, poetry, name it. And so that kind of naturally evolved into going into the PR industry. And my first job, uh, was with an agency and they were heavily into consumer goods. And our client was Samsonite Luggage. And we had a lot of fun with Samsonite teaching people how to pack, how to travel right, how to travel light, and so forth and so on. Then one day, here I am, just a kid, a pup, and I'm sitting at my desk, and I get a call from the president of Samsonite Luggage, who had just returned from a scouting trip to Europe where he was looking for a possible factory site where they were gonna make Samsonite locally in Europe to avoid the shipping costs from the United States.

Barry:

It was and still remains the number one luggage brand. And when he was over there, this fellow's name was Bud Shwayder. When Shwayder was over there, he saw some kids playing with these little bricks over in Belgium and in Germany and so forth, and asked about it. It looked fascinating to him. And he was told it was something called LEGO. And so unannounced, he flew up to a little town outside Copenhagen, Billund, Denmark, walked into the LEGO.  office, introduced himself, and said, "We can make those for you in the United States." And they said, "Really?" He said, "Yes, because our luggage is injection molded. And your bricks are injection molded. So we just have to, you know, convert some machinery and we have some extra factory space. We can make them in the United States." And so a deal was made. So I got a telephone call from him, and he says, "Barry, what do you know about toys?" I said, "Well, I have two little children.

Barry:

They play with them, but that's about it." And I said, "Actually, when it comes to playing toys, like building things and stuff like that, I'm absolutely inevitable." And he said, "Doesn't matter. You're now in the toy business." And he introduced me to LEGO. So sent me, uh, several dozen bricks, you know. It wasn't even packaged yet in the United States. So he sent me some of, of the Danish product. And in doing so, when I played with it, I was absolutely intrigued. I said, "This is so simple. It's brilliant. You can actually put three or four bricks together and make something, and then you can take it apart and make something else again." And they had a wonderful slogan that translated from the Danish, "Makes anything the mind imagines." And that was essentially true. And so we set about trying to publicize it. Well, you know something, Pat?

Barry:

Hmm. It wasn't an easy sell.

Pat:

I wanna get into that, but before you get into that, I want you to paint a picture for my listeners. New York, in that era, was its own ecosystem. Agencies - Very much so. Media, retail. Will you paint us a picture of what the PR world actually felt like day to day?

Barry:

Completely different from today. Number one, no email. No cell phones. Guess what? You actually had to go out and meet people face-to-face. What a concept. I was never much of a drinker, but there were occasions where you had to have a cocktail at lunch just to make nice. But it was a people-to-people kind of industry. And a lot of that meant building on relationships, building on friendships. And I'm happy to say that a lot of people I worked back with in those days remained friends for many, many, many years. So in the PR world, just like the advertising world, although believe me, we are not anything like the Mad Men of the TV show. But in the PR world, it meant building an element of trust. You had an editor you wanted to work with at a print publication. You had a producer you wanted to work with on a radio show or a TV show.

Barry:

You had to build an element of trust. They had to trust you. You had to trust them. It was a two-way kind of street. So then if you built up that trust and it took a while to do so, you couldn't be pitching all the time. In a sense, you'd have to pitch yourself to be a believable person. And once that's done, then whatever story or program or product or personality you wanted to promote, you had that element of trust already built in. And in doing so, then when you finally came across the plate with a pitch, you had an open mind, an open eye to hear or see what you were trying to sell. That was the essential feeling. But it was a people-to-people business. Unlike today, when it's very difficult to reach anybody on the telephone where it's texting, where it's emailing, where it's messaging, where it's this, where it's that.

Barry:

And the one element that I loved more then, than I love now is that the public itself, your ultimate customer, the people who you wanted to buy your client's product or whatever it might be, believed in the media. They knew that if they saw it in the newspaper, it was good. If they heard it on the radio, it was good. If they saw it on television, it was good. I like that. I wanna buy that. Today, that part of the industry is completely fragmented. There are these things called the influencers, although I question how much influence they really have. But influencers with due respect for them. But the media is almost not quite a sideline. It remains very important, but it isn't the only game in town. So you have to reach out in so many ways. You have to have an online presence. You have to have a digital presence.

Barry:

You have to do all kinds of things. Sometimes it's done with intense effort. Sometimes if you're lucky, it grows organically. But that's the major change in the business.

Pat:

Well, I wanna go in a different direction based on what you just said. I wanna set the cultural stage of late 1950s to '70s America. That was the height of American manufacturing pride made in the USA. Wasn't just a label. It was a statement of identity. The post-war boom had made America the industrial powerhouse of the world. You know, Detroit was king. American steel, American cars, American everything. American movies. Foreign imports were viewed with real suspicion, especially Japanese goods, you know, post-World War II. Yeah. And outsourcing didn't happen until the late '70s and 1980s. So here you are into this made in America world. You introduce Danish bricks, Hungarian Rubik's cube and a Japanese Hello Kitty. Not one of them, you know, made in America per se. And all of them became cultural phenomena that swept the country and the world. What on earth was your playbook for making America fall in love with something that wasn't homegrown?

Pat:

How did you do that?

Barry:

Part of it is attributed to sheer luck. Part of it is attributed to planning, almost accidental planning. And part of it is attributed to really, really deep planning with major fingers crossed. And it applies to all three. Because I put all of those into your never know category. You never know if that idea, that product, whatever it is you're trying to pitch out there, will light that spark and make people sit up and pay attention. For me, fortunately, they worked. And they all, each of them you mentioned LEGO., you mentioned Rubik's Cube, you mentioned Hello Kitty, each started with a different kind of approach. But the Project had a strong foundation. And then building on that foundation, it started to take off. And each of them in their own way, a slightly different approach for each of them.

Pat:

Now, I'm curious, of everything you've launched, which toy's success caught you the most off guard? And looking back, what do you think it was that made America reach for it? Was there one toy like, "Holy cow, this thing is huge."

Barry:

I would have to say it's Rubik's Cube, but in a very, very close second would be considered LEGO.. Although it took a longer time to build. Rubik's Cube was pretty much an overnight success. LEGO.  was not. Hello Kitty was somewhere in between the two of them. And the, the approach is different on that, really by design. So, you know, where to begin? Uh, you wanna start with LEGO.? You wanna start with Rubik's Cube? You wanna start with Hello Kitty? What was the basic idea that made this takeoff? And then how was it implemented? So which would you prefer, Pat? Well,

Pat:

Of the three, let's go to Rubik's Cube because I remember a day didn't pass that everybody was talking about it.

Barry:

Yeah. Okay. So the genesis is kind of interesting. We were representing the Ideal Toy Company at the time. An Ideal Toy Company is a long, long time American manufacturer. Their most famous product at the outset was. Are you ready for this? The Teddy Bear. That's how they went into business. Really? Yeah. The, the folks who founded Ideal Toy Company heard that story about Teddy Roosevelt.

Pat:

Teddy Roosevelt. Okay. Here's a little more backstory. A Brooklyn candy store, 1903. Morris and Rose Michtom were Russian immigrants. They spotted a political cartoon in the Washington Post. President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear tied to a tree during a hunting trip. He considered it un-sportsman-like. And the Michtoms saw an opportunity. They sewed a small bear, put it in their shop window, called it Teddy's Bear. America fell in love. Morris and Rose went on to found what is now the ideal toy company. And over a century later, we are still buying teddy bears.

Barry:

And the president of the company decided, hey, that. They were making plush toys anyway. And they said, "Why don't we do something like that?" And so they created a teddy bear. Sent it to the White House. This is the first licensing deal in memory. They sent it to the White House and Teddy Roosevelt said, "I like that. And you're gonna name it to Teddy Bear?" I'm paraphrasing what he said. And they said, "Sure. There were no licensing strings attached to it whatsoever." Okay. So here is the ideal toy company, and now they're a major firm. They're in all kinds of things, vehicles, dolls, you name it. And every year in New York, there's something called the Toy Fair.This is an annual gathering of all the manufacturers and retailers come in from all over the world. Go to the various toy showrooms and see what's being promoted in generally for the upcoming holiday season.

Barry:

It's usually done in February or so. There's a great long-term planning involved and so forth. That's changed now. Showrooms are kind of a relic of the past. So now it's held at major places like the Javits Center in New York where you have all the manufacturers gathering there. So now, pre-Toy Fair, I'm sitting with some of my colleagues in a conference room at Ideal Toy. And someone comes in, a project manager for their puzzles and games division. And he said, uh, "We have something that's coming out of Hungary. Something invented by a professor, Ernő Rubick by name. And let me show it to you." And he shows it. It took him about 15 to 20 minutes to solve the puzzle. And we're all watching this with great fascination. And everyone says, "Gee, this is a great product. And what, uh, is your projection on how many you can sell these?" Well, I said, "If it really takes off maybe 100, 150,000." Hey, we all said, "Yeah, it's a great looking product, beautifully designed." I said, this guy, this pup in the room, raised his hand and said, "I have a question.

Barry:

You wanna show this at Toy Fair? Now, Toy Fair, the retailers are coming in. They have X amount of time to see your product line. You have lots of products to show. Rubik's Cube was only one of them. How are you gonna demonstrate this?" "Well, we'll show them how it's solved. "I said," If it takes you 15 minutes to solve it. "I said," They're gonna walk away after about five or six minutes. "Oh, what do we do? Everybody looking around the room. And that's where public relations kicked in. So quick thinking, we came back with an idea. We figured this is a toy that's suited to, number one, young people, to, to minds that are engineering, mathematical, problem-solving kind of minds. And we said," What can we do as a relatively quick fix? "We had a lot of samples available. We put together a list of 25 math clubs at universities in the New York, New Jersey, New England area.

Barry:

And mind you, this is long before email. Got on the phone, found out names, made a quick pitch on the phone, and we said," We will send you a new product that we're being tested. It's quite complicated mathematically and so forth. It takes dexterity and a keen mind. If any member of your club could solve the cube in under five minutes, we would like to invite that person to the New York Toy Fair and demonstrate it. Mind you, this is before, uh, anyone could shoot such a demonstration on, on your telephone, whatever. So this was being built on trust, really. We got back replies from about eight or 10 schools saying that they had people who could do it in as little as three or four minutes. We said, "Deal." So we brought a few of them to New York and they demoed it there.

Barry:

The toy buyer's eyes just lit up. They said, "This is fantastic." And then immediately when we saw their reaction, and then the guys who came from different schools without trying to top each other who could do it faster, immediately the idea of contests kicked in. And it's visual. So immediately, we came up with, at that point, maybe five or six, uh, young men. There was one young woman. And they started demoing it. In those days, the toy business, that was before places like Toys-R-Us and so forth. The toy business was essentially, department store business. Every department store. I mean, yes, there were a lot of mom and pop stores and so forth, but it was essentially department store. We got in touch with the promotion people at the department store. Hey, we have something fun for you in the toy department. We told them what we wanted to do.

Barry:

And they said, "Yeah, why not?" Builds a crowd. After that, it grew virally before such things grew virally, organically, whatever term you wanna apply to it. And it worked. And it just took off. They, they, they could not keep up with manufacturing. It became a life unto itself. To the point in that first year, there were some 11 million cubes sold. Wow. We knew we had arrived, and I wish I could find it. I mean, this is going back a long time. But I got a call from the art director of Time Magazine, which in those days was the place asking if they could do their own version of Rubik's Cube because the world was kind of screwed up politically at the time or whatever. And so they wanted to show the world as a Rubik's Cube where all the pieces didn't match.

Pat:

And what time period? What year was that around, you think?

Barry:

Oh, wow. '80s.

Pat:

Okay.

Barry:

Yeah. And it was interesting because then we were deluge with people saying, "Okay, uh, we wanna write a book on how to solve it. We wanna do this. We wanna do that." Where it became to the point where, the three-minute or four-minute dream, that was nothing, that was to be laughed at. Now, how many seconds could it take you? And when you had something like that, then we had contests in every major mall in the United States you could think of, because it was an attention getting. And it was a natural for television. Any local show, you name it, wanted it because it was visual and it was fun. And it didn't require any major explanation.

Pat:

Also, it was portable. It could fit in your hands. You could take it anywhere.

Barry:

Yeah. Now, are you ready for this, Pat? I never saw one. I never saw one. Really? I threw many against. No, I'm very bad. I threw many against the wall. I have dents to show for it. But no.

Pat:

Barry, your genius lies elsewhere. Now, I wanna flip this in a different direction. Was there a toy you championed that you believed in deeply? You thought, "This is it. This is the toy." But the public just didn't catch on in the way you had hoped?

Barry:

There were some board games that shall remain nameless. I've always been a board game person. I just love the idea of board game play, and I have a lot to talk about on that subject. And there were a few. I, I said they should remain nameless because you probably can buy them somewhere in a dustpan someplace, whatever, where I thought, "Gee, I love playing this thing. It's gotta be an immediate hit." And it wasn't. Okay. You know? But, uh, conversely, there are board games that I have seen and played that just also took off like a rocket. And in very unexpected ways. One of them is, uh, something that became quite a national buzz, almost by accident, really. But no, more, more by design. We were representing, at that time, a small company in New York called Maruca, which was essentially in the toys and novelty business.

Barry:

They were making, you know, little bitty things, nothing of any major consequence. And the president of the company was up in Canada on a visit. And he met a professor at one of the universities in Canada who had invented a game and showed it to him. And, uh, the president of Maruca was intrigued with it. And so he bought the rights. And it had a very odd name. It was called A Question of Scruples. Yes. A fella in, by the name, uh, Henry Makow in Canada, Canadian, invented it. And, uh, he taught philosophy and he thought, "Why not ask questions? You know the basic premise of the game." And, and it was asking, you know, silly questions, like, "Oh, you got, uh, too much money, uh, from the bank that, that you hadn't asked for. Would you go back to the cashier and, and tell the cashier that they made a mistake?" Or something about a tip at a restaurant or things like that.

Barry:

But, you know, other things of greater, uh, interest morality-wise. They showed me the game. I said, "I love this. This is just too good because it raises a question of larger issues." So we reached out to 100 lifestyle editors at newspapers around the country, sent them samples of the game, and we said, "This is not just a game. This is a larger issue, but it's great fun playing." To the point where we firmly believe you don't even have to play the game to its entirety because midway through playing the game, people involved in playing, and it's, it's, you know, it's much better, not just two people, but better four or six or whatever. They're gonna be arguments, they're gonna be laughs, they're gonna be ever, it becomes its own party. And sure enough, every newspaper that we sent it to loved the idea, and they ran with it with feature stories.

Barry:

So on that same vein, I figured take a chance and go big on television. At that time, the Johnny Carson show was, you know, like the show in the evening. So I figured I'll have some fun. So rather than send a game because I knew the producer pretty well. So I said, "I'm sending you a few cards at a time. You play with them. What do you think?" He came back to me after getting the, the second or third group of cards, and he said, "This is fine." He said, "There's a game based on this?" I said, "Sure." So I sent him the game. That was the end. He said, "I'll let you know if something happens." Right? The Carson show, I didn't watch all the time. Was on too late. I had to get up for work the next morning.

Barry:

So one morning, I am awakened by a telephone call, like 6:AM, and it's the president of Maruca. He said, "Did you see it? Did you see it? Did you see it?" I said, "See what?" He said, "The Carson show last night." I said, "Oh, no. I mean, I, I sent him some stuff about the game." He said, "Are you kidding? We had 12 minutes on the Carson Show. He played the game with the audience. This company was a small company. They had limited manufacturing capability. Within one week, he had orders for 500,000 games. He couldn't make them. So he called in all the stops, made all the games he could possibly make, sold them out completely. In the meantime, every magazine wanted to run pieces on it. It was everywhere. And other TV shows wanted to do stuff. It became a phenomenon.

Barry:

With even some editorial writers at magazines, this game raises serious issues about who we are as a, as a country, et cetera, et cetera. And then he got a call, uh, from the folks at Milton Bradley who said, "You can't make that game fast enough. We can. We'll buy it from you." And my client walked away with a multi, multimillion dollar deal.

Barry:

Then there was another game we had some fun with. And you talk about role playing. I think right now, role playing is like almost the key driver in video games and, you know, all kinds of digital things. But role playing really started in board games. And one of the first in that category was a game called "Murder To Go."

Pat:

What was it?

Barry:

"Murder To Go." And it was, it was created again by Ideal Toys, which in those days was a division of CBS Toys, a client of ours. And Murder To Go was essentially a murder mystery game that you could play with your friends in, in your home, wherever. And someone committed a murder, let's go about solving it, with all kinds of clues and so forth. So how to promote a game like that. We came up with a very strange idea. This was, again, pre-Toy Fair. We said, "We have to attract people's attention to come to the ideal showroom and see this game in action." So what we did in the dead of night before Toy Fair, we went to I don't know if you're familiar with Manhattan, but Madison Square Park, which is in the 23rd Street area around 5th Avenue is right across the street from where the Toy Center building used to be.

Barry:

And we got body outlines made, and we put them around the park, almost as if a mass murder had taken place in the park.

Pat:

So, Barry, let me, let me stop you there. For my listeners, when there's a crime, a murder, the police would come and chalk the outline of the body. And that's what you're talking about.

Barry:

That's it. That's it. So while we were in the process of doing this, it was like midnight or one o'clock in the morning, and there was a group of three or four of us doing this thing with a note inside saying, "If you wanna know more, come to the ideal showroom, blah, blah, blah. And, and you'll see what this is all about." As we're doing this, all of a sudden, we see light shining on our faces and it's the police.

Pat:

Oh, no.

Barry:

Yeah. And they said, "What are you doing?" Well, we explained them trying to laugh. And you know something? They laughed along with us. They said, "Oh, this is so good. This is so good. Okay, leave it there. Leave it there." I frankly think it would've been more of a story if we got arrested Yeah. We did. The next morning, dozens and dozens of people were attracted by this to come to the showroom and the game played so beautifully that it became a great hit. Yeah. Uh, to the point then that as a fun thing, we staged another event where we played the game at the police precinct where the cops came from who didn't arrest us.

Pat:

Oh my gosh. You know, my dad always told me a car is only as good as its wheels. And he said, "Any product is only as good as its PR."

Barry:

Well, I would like to sanctify your father. He's a very, very wise man.

Pat:

Yes, he was. Now, one of the reasons I was really looking forward to this conversation, Barry, is because we're talking toys, but we're really talking about a broader cultural overview - Yes. Of the time. And the post-war years unleashed a consumer explosion. TVs beaming advertisements into American living rooms, telling families what they needed to be happy. And then the invention of credit, layaway, deferred payments - Yeah. Suddenly everyone could have a car, an appliance, a house, or a vacation. So desire was being manufactured as fast as the products themselves. And so into that moment, what did the toys tell us about what American families wanted for their children?

Barry:

Well, I think the most important element, it's one of the things that frankly disturbs me today, is that the toys we were talking about. I've been talking about games. I've been talking about LEGO., uh, which is basically a construction toy. Rubik's Cube, which is a game unto itself, but is also a competition who can do it better. Or a game like Scruples or other games that I could mention, uh, the, my favorite strategy game called Othello, for example, came out of Japan.

Pat:

Othello, Black and White Discs, a board game in the 1970s, so simple, a child could learn it in minutes, so deep, it could take a lifetime to master. Othello was built on an old Victorian game called Reversi. The object, flip your opponent's pieces to your color. Every move changes the board. Every move changes the game. Othello became one of the best-selling board games in the world. Oh, and Barry Schwartz brought it to America.

Barry:

Another example. The commonality of all of these things is that in one way or another, they brought people together. And in some of the cases, it enabled children not only to play, if you're talking about something like LEGO., for example, the child by himself or herself can have an incredibly imaginative, creative time making something, but mommy and daddy can join in too without rocking the boat. So essentially, it was a question of togetherness. What brings us together as a family, as friends arguing about questions of scruples. As friendly competitors as, uh, who can solve Rubik's Cube faster? We haven't even talked about Hello Kitty, but about little girls, essentially. I hate to be sexist about it, but primarily little girls comparing what they have and what they don't have when you happily reach that point as a manufacturer. The commonality of all of that is togetherness in one way or another, which  to large a degree today is missing among young people where I see faces glued to a screen rather than actually building something or making something.

Barry:

So, which is why I'm so delighted how, you know, uh, LEGO.  is probably the, the number one toy, not only in the United States, but all over the world, because people share that kind of thing. It's a sense of community. And toys, when they work, toys and games when they work, bring that sense of community into play.

Pat:

I think another piece to what you're talking about, radio stations, TV shows, there was a time when everybody waited for the Mary Tyler Moore Show, or Dallas, Who Shot JR? Cheers. ER. The Sopranos, just to name a few. You name a show that was really hot. You just planned your day around it. And with radio stations, kids would grow up with their favorite song and they'd stay glued to the DJ and the station just to hear that song over and over. It was shared. So the next day coming back to school, kids would talk about the music. They would talk about the TV show. Now, everything is individualized. If you want music, you select your own. You stream your own. Yeah. Yeah. If you wanna watch something, you will select your own and stream your own. You can stream and binge to your heart's content.

Pat:

And it's a trade-off. We're like in these cultural bubbles instead of having this collectivity of an experience.

Barry:

Well, to that point you just made, Pat, consider this, that every city in the United States not from little bitty towns, but every city with a television station, and that would cover the entire country, had not just one, but sometimes in a larger place like New York or Chicago or Dallas or whatever, two or three Saturday morning television shows with a live host and they would show cartoons. Yep. But they would do fun stuff. Yes. You know something? That's one of the things that helped LEGO.  take off because we would send every station some fun thing to do with Lego and they would do it so that we knew on a given Saturday morning, there would be 80 or 100 or 150 TV stations somewhere in these United States showing something with LEGO.  and it wasn't advertising. It was pure editorial.

Barry:

It wasn't pay for play. The only thing we were giving away was a set or the bricks or whatever.

Pat:

You're heading towards my next question. You witnessed the toy industry from the inside for six decades. At some point, there was a major or fundamental shift in how toys were introduced and marketed. And I wanna ask you, did movies and TV franchises play a role in that shift?

Barry:

Very much so. Because then entered the whole world of licensing where kids became enamored of X-Men or Spider-Man or Batman. And for every one of those movie franchises, drum role, <laugh> there was a toy line attached. And you know something? It worked because here was one medium of entertainment, motion pictures, and kids would see their favorite character or characters doing something. And lo and behold, mom and dad could go to a specialty store or in those days, then a Toys Are Us or, you know, whatever. And then increasingly places like Walmart and Target and so forth, and buy that Spider-Man toy, buy that Batman toy, buy Masters of the Universe, buy any of them because they were there. At the same time, that was only one element of the toy industry because there were, you know, many, many popular toys. I mean, uh, you know, we mentioned LEGO.  eventually became a movie, but it was a hit before it became a movie.

Barry:

But at the same time, that added another dimension to the spread of the toy industry, to the growth of the toy industry, because they just weren't playing with the basics and with the new exciting novelty toy or this one or that to come along. But they were playing with something that came out of a movie. I mean, Toy Story is a perfect example of that. It's a story about toys that come to life. And what kid wouldn't be attracted to this character or that character? Yeah. And now, hey, it's a franchise, Toy Story two. The toys in Toy Story now have grown up. Kids still wanna play with them. And then there's also an element of nostalgia. So taking a, an item like Tickle Me Elmo. So Tickle Me Elmo, a huge sensation. It just caught the public's fancy, blah, blah, blah. Became a huge hit, then remained a steady seller, although not a monster hit after seven years.

Barry:

Now, they're coming out with a new improved version of Tickle Me Elmo because of technology. It can do more things. So parents out of nostalgia, when they bought it all those years ago, are now buying it for their kids. Yeah. So it becomes an intergenerational thing. And that's wonderful for the industry because that's the way an industry continues to grow.

Pat:

Well, also, you're, you're raising an interesting aspect to this where you talk about board games and card games, things that brought families together. I wanna go into a different direction that the way children would play, you know, if kids were playing in a sandbox, give them a shovel, a pail, and next thing you know, they're building cities, they're doing roads, or they're making make believe. I mean, they're scripting everything. They're just going to town with what this magical, what, six foot by six-foot plot of sand is giving them. And so kids could be left alone to play. And if you look at toys like LEGOs, they can build things, take them apart. They can imagine. Now, the role of imagination in toys is huge. Because of the Rubrik's Cube, you have to figure out you're engaged mentally.

Pat:

You, you're right there. So there are toys that engage the mind. There are toys that you physically have to construct and take apart. Yeah. How do you think imagination and toys have changed? Or has it changed?

Barry:

It has changed, again, to a large degree, I'm unhappy to say, because of the kids' fascination with the phone in front of them. I am not denigrating the importance of video games or things like that, but they don't require that much imagination. They acquire dexterity and certain trains of thought. Bravo for them for doing that. But they don't really foster imagination. They do, to some degree, foster competitiveness where the kids say, "I can play this game better than you can. Let's play it side by side and see who gets, uh, to the finish line first." They can do that. But it is not imaginative play. It is not essentially creative play, which why a toy like LEGO. LEGO.  came to the United States in the '60s. When you think about that, it came to the United States in the '60s, and here we are 60 years later, and it's hotter than it ever was.

Barry:

It has grown along with the times. It has become, to some degree, even more sophisticated because now my God, you can build a spaceship and a pirate ship and all of that. Sometimes I have a little bit of an issue with that because it takes away the basic element of take it apart and put it together again. Because once you've done one of these new Lego designs and, and, you know, built a magnificent end product, do you really wanna take it apart and start all over again? No, you don't. You wanna keep it as, as your prize. But to the essential thing, go back to Lego for a minute. You know, who were the first early users of LEGO.  back in Europe? Architects. That's where it started to take off in Europe. Yes. Really? Kids loved it, but architects came to the conclusion that, "Hey, I'm building a model of something.

Barry:

If I don't like it, I don't have to destroy it. I just take it apart a little and put it together again." That's what led to our first idea for how to make LEGO.  happen here. Because as I told you, uh, earlier when we started talking, when we first showed Lego to our friends in the press, they said, "Yeah, that's nice. You put some bricks together and take them apart. Big deal." And we said, "You don't understand. You know, you can make a dog, you can make a house," whatever the kid wants to call it. They said, "Yeah, it's nice." So here's where the idea kicked in. Thinking about architecture. If we could do something dramatic building LEGO.  and using the architectural approach, then maybe we have something. So again, prior to email, prior to any of that, I cold called the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

Barry:

They are leading architectural school. And I got in touch with, uh, almost immediately the head of their architectural design department. A fellow named Bill Brager. He passed away a few years ago. What a wonderful man. And I told him what we had in mind, and he had heard of LEGO.  given its connection to some bleeding architects in Europe. And I said to him, "Bill, if my client, Lego, Samsonite, sent you a huge number of bricks of you tell me colors, whatever." I said, "We'll go with the limit, whatever you want. Could you have your students, as a design project, build the city of the future for us?" And he said, "Gee, that sounds like a good idea." One month later, after shipping him a ton of stuff, I get a call from Brager and he said, "Do you have time to come down to Brooklyn and take a look at what we've done?" Sure enough.

Barry:

I go down there. And there in one of their studio rooms was pretty much like an eight foot by 10 foot on a platform, city of the future built out of LEGO.. Wow. Now mind you, this is before Lego was mechanized, so things had to be moved with a little pulley and things like that. It was incredible. I took some pictures, showed them to producer friend of mine at the Today Show, and he immediately said, "Yes, we wanna do that." And I said, "Fine. When can you send cameras down to Pratt?" He said, "Oh, no. We want it in the studio." <laugh> So the, the thing had, didn't have to be taken apart completely, but it was removed in sections, delivered to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and one early morning. And we were on the Today Show for about 10, 12 minutes. And from then, the phone never stopped ringing, because then people got it.

Barry:

I was getting calls from magazines. "Oh, could you give us a model of this? Can you give us a model of that? "And LEGO., back in Denmark, they had a whole model building, section there where they had people just building large models of this or that, which we use to our advantage here in the States, because we would have fashion shows and things like that with the model of the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty or whatever has props, and it worked. As a funny aside to that, about three weeks after that Today Show major hit, I'm sitting in my office. I get a telephone call and a very gruffed voice says to me," Hello. "Schwartz? "Yes." I said, "Who is this?" "Norman. "I said," Norman who? ""Norman Mailer." And I said, "Norman Mailer?" I could barely get the words out.

Pat:

Norman Mailer, American writer, journalist, filmmaker, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, 11 bestselling books spanning seven decades. After World War II, there was barely a moment when Norman Maylor wasn't at the center of American literary and cultural life.

Barry:

To this day, I have a copy of “Naked and Dead” in my library here. He said, "I saw that thing you did on, on Today's show. I wanna do one myself." So we sent him a load of stuff, and he built a smaller version of his city of the future, and that was on television.

Pat:

Wow. What a reach.

Barry:

I just love that. The only conversation with Norman Mailer.

Pat:

That's enough, believe me. Wow. You just have so many wonderful stories. Now, at 95, you're consulting in an industry that never stops moving. What keeps you at it? What is

Barry:

It? Finding new things. Very, very simple. I'm at the happy point in my life. Number one, I made up my mind a long time ago, never to retire because why? I've been blessed with good health. Uh, my God, I only gave up tennis a couple of years ago. And so to do something like that keeps the mind click - keen. Yo wake up in the morning and say, "Hmm, what do I wanna do today?" So in that sense, I'm always looking, always searching. And because I'm known in the industry, you know, I, I walk the halls of the toy fair at the Javits Center every year. And, you know, I'm saying hello to a gazillion people. You know, that's fine. But I'm always looking for stuff. Three years ago, I'm walking those same halls, and I see a couple of guys playing with something. And they're holding a little thing in their hand, and it's shooting out strings in different shapes.

Barry:

You, you know what silly string is? When we shoot it at you, but then a sticky gummy, it sticks with you. This was a string that doesn't stick to you. It's a string that's tied to the instrument they were holding in their hand. And they were doing balloon shapes and, and all kinds of fancy tricks with it. So I went over and talked to these guys and I said, "Tell me about this. Who are you?" It turned out two young fellas, both engineering students, one studying in Georgia Tech, the other one from Brigham Young. They both live in Atlanta. They were casual friends. And the Georgia Tech guy had a class project. It was a physics lab. And they were told to create something that you could hold in your hand that could somehow demonstrate velocity. And he came up with this idea and it worked well so that he won the class prize for best project.

Barry:

Then his friend who was visiting on leave from Brigham Young saw this and said, "I think we can make a toy out of this. I'll cut to the chase." They made a very primitive design and posted it themselves <laugh> online. They got a million hits. People want to know, "What is this?" Well, they didn't even know what it was. They gave it a name. They called it Zip String. All one word. Z-I-PString. They booked a spot on Shark Tank. They got offers from two of the sharks that they ultimately turned down because of due diligence. They decided even though a very generous offer was made, they figured they could still do it on their own. And that's when I met them. And we started to show it around. To the point, because again, it demonstrates so beautifully. There's a little bit of a learning curve in it, but then once you learn how to do it, you can create your own tricks.

Barry:

You could compete against other people. It had all of the elements of a hit toy. It is now three years later. They have been named two years running by the Good Housekeeping Institute, no less, as the must-have toy, not just the toy. Whoa. The must have toy because they've done now three different iterations of the toy each time, you know, grading it up in difficulty. For the holiday season, they've received every award you can think of from the Toy Association, the manufacturers, both independent retailers and major retailers alike. They're the number one toy at FAO Schwartz. That's no relation to me. And the two nicest guys in the world. And they're my kids. I love them.

Pat:

Well, that speaks volumes about you, Barry. You're just so open to new things. And as we're at the end of the hour, I, I just wanna say you sat at one of the most extraordinary intersections in American history. The golden age of PR, the mass media explosion, and the play life of an entire generation of kids growing up. I mean, what a remarkable life you had. And you, you just keep going.

Barry:

Not ready to quit, Pat. <laugh>

Pat:

No, and nor, nor should you. I mean, the fact that the story of the Zipstring illustrates. I mean, you're always on the move. And I love that about you. And one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on. I mean, here you are, you meet these two guys, you start talking, and next thing you know, it's the must-have toy, Barry. <laugh> Well, I wanna thank you for bringing all of this to Fill To Capacity today. What an honor having you on today. Thank

Barry:

You. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm humbled and <laugh> it, it's been so much fun just rethinking those days. Patti, I've always said, "Grow all along with me. The best is yet to be." Allright?

Pat:

Oh, I love that. Thank you, Barry. And thank you listeners for joining us today. Take care of each other. Bye.

Barry:

Bye-bye.