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[tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

Got her real start when Mattel gave her a $25,000 advance to develop 
some toy design.

        
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*
* <http://www.womenintoys.com/board.htm#directors>*Inventor in Toyland: 
Playtime is work for Rowayton entrepreneur*

*By Nancy T. Maar
Special Correspondent*

*November 21, 2004*

When Mary Ellroy took the plunge from corporate life into one of joy, 
creativity and insecurity, she went from a business suit to jeans, from 
a regular paycheck to an occasional payoff.

She went from a well-organized office to a room with a drawing board 
that is so cluttered she usually ends up working on the floor of the 
home she shares with her husband, Marc Liu, in the Rowayton section of 
Norwalk.

Ellroy invents toys and games, working with designers, draftsmen and 
artists to create the final products. Her company is called GameBird LLC.

"Bird is a Brit slang term for chick, or female, and of course, I do 
games," Ellroy said.

Ellroy brought her master's degree in business administration, her 
research skills in product introduction and marketing, and her 
considerable savvy to her own startup business.

She began developing toys in 1989 and struck out on her own in 1993 with 
a $25,000 advance from Mattel Inc., according to her profile in the May 
2003 Entrepreneur Magazine. Since then, Ellroy has invented more than 
100 toys and seen about 15 go to market.

One is a very active card game called Snap, Clap, Slap. As a game card 
is shown, the player has to snap fingers, clap hands, or slap the table 
to score points.

Snap, Clap, Slap is for six players age 7 and up. It is manufactured by 
Ravensburger Spielverlag, the games unit of German-based international 
toy company Ravensburger AG.

The game, which sells online for $8 to $11, develops cognitive skills 
and quick reflexes.

The educational bent of many Ellroy games and toys means shoppers are 
unlikely to see them stacked in the aisles of the local Wal-Mart this 
holiday season. Specialty toy makers "have had to find other venues," 
Ellroy said. Today, they sell online and in catalogs."

Learning and fun

Having seen her success at inventing games, manufacturers now come to 
Ellroy asking her to convert their products into games, many of which 
are educational.

One is Masterpieces Puzzle Co. of Tucson, Ariz., the game company that 
has the World Almanac license. Masterpieces wanted a board game for kids 
to learn about the world.

In this game, the players have a second, third and fourth chance to 
guess the answer if they miss it on the first try, but each succeeding 
attempt lowers the score.

Ellroy had to come up with the game board, the questions and the 
answers. It was a very big job with hundreds of question-and-answer 
cards. The hexagonal board of the World Almanac for Kids game was 
designed to move things along quickly.

Another commissioned game is Great States!, which won Ellroy a Oppenheim 
Gold Seal Award, presented annually by a toy review publication.

Great States is a board game manufactured by International Playthings in 
which players match states with their placement on the map and learn 
interesting things about each one. It sells for $20 at Amazon.com.

She also created Great States Junior for children who are not yet able 
to read.

One of Ellroy's first toys -- her favorite, though not currently in 
production -- was conceived as she was walking down a street and saw a 
rainbow created by a lawn sprinkler.

"Wow! That would be fun!" she remembers thinking, "I've got to do that."

So, she spoke with an optics expert from the inventors club she belongs 
to and discovered that the sun had to be right behind, and the spray had 
to be right in front of, the viewer to make the rainbow. With some help 
from a design expert, her intriguing Magic Rainbow Sprinkler was born.

Unfortunately, it had a short shelf life because it rained for so many 
days the summer it came out, making it impossible to see the rainbow.

However, Ellroy wants to bring it back. "It's a great concept," she said.

Ideas grow wings

Concept is king for Ellroy, who said she starts with the idea for an 
invention -- the design and the logic come later, along with the 
physical look of the toy or game.

"The very first thing is to do research and find out if there is 
anything else like it out there, and find out who manufactures that sort 
of thing," she said.

Between the concept and the pitch to a manufacturer comes extensive work 
on development. That means Ellroy often needs the help of industrial and 
graphic designers to make models or prototypes of her ideas.

She hires a videographer so she can include with her pitch a DVD 
demonstration of how the game is played or toy is used.

"I'm fortunate to be able to visualize what the finished product should 
look like, and how it ought to work," she said, her eyes gleaming with 
excitement as she placed a stack of her own toys and games on her 
kitchen table.

Barry Morgan of Stamford is an industrial designer who introduced Ellroy 
to an agent and now builds many of her prototypes.

The owner of B.Z. Morgan - Industrial Design, who once worked for Ideal 
Toys, makes models, prototypes of toys and games for many creative toy 
inventors. He enjoys working with Ellroy, Morgan said.

"Mary is not difficult to work with, she phones me and says what she 
wants," he said. "We talk, we might meet and draw things on paper 
napkins, and she is very clear about what she wants and understands how 
it should work."

Not all who want his services have such a clear vision, Morgan said.

"I'll tell you what's difficult, a company with a questionable project 
came to me to design a Spider Man character that could walk up any -- 
any -- wall," he said. "Impossible! I worked on that, they got someone 
else to work on it -- no go. That toy never happened."

"Mary has reasonable, workable ideas," Morgan added. "When we have to 
rework a toy or game, it's to improve it, or because we see that it has 
other applications. Ellroy is easy to work with because she has a clear 
vision of what she wants."

Invention can be a lonely business, so Ellroy early on turned to 
like-minded people in the area for support and inspiration.

Ellroy has been active with and is a past-president of Inventors' 
Association of Connecticut (www.inventus.org), which meets at the 
Norwalk Public Library. Another source of help for the budding inventor, 
she said, is the Innovators Guild of Danbury.

These are groups in which budding inventors can air their ideas, get 
feedback, and as happened with her Magic Rainbow Sprinkler, find experts 
in other fields who contribute their knowledge and experience to fellow 
inventors' products.

Family factor

Like so many industries today, the toy industry sees Sept. 11, 2001, as 
a pivotal moment. The increased value Americans have placed on home and 
family since the terrorist attacks have meant a receptive climate for 
family-oriented board games such as those Ellroy creates.

"After 9/11, Hasbro initiated 'Family Game Night' because people were 
not going out so much and families needed ways to be brought together, 
to improve relationships," said Nancy Lombardi, editor-in-chief of Toy 
Book, the premier trade publication of the toy business.

"It was an enormously successful campaign and gave a great boost to both 
the family and adult game business." Lombardi said. "There will always 
be a demand for traditional board games."

Lombardi said it's impossible to know how many toys and games never get 
past the concept or prototype stage and make it to market.

Likewise, it's not possible to predict the longevity of a particular toy 
-- that is in the hands of the fickle consumer.

"Some popular toys are mainstays for decades while others are almost a 
one-hit wonder," Lombardi said. "Barbie has been around for more than 40 
years. The Cabbage Patch Kids were on fire in the 1980s and never really 
left the market."

"Mary's games fare well with the intended audience because many of them 
have been in manufacturers' lines for quite some time," Lombardi said. 
"Another indication of her success is that she is able to make a living 
doing this."

Passing 'Go'?

How good of a living it is, Ellroy won't say exactly.

"I can tell you my stuff has generated revenues in the hundreds of 
thousands of dollars," she said.

Entrepreneur estimated her sales at $450,000 in 2002, and projected $1 
million for last year.

The deals she does with toy companies vary in structure depending on 
whose idea it was and whether it's a commission job.

Also varying greatly is the cost to develop a toy, especially when it 
involves coming up with a prototype and marketing package.

"Not counting time as money, the amount I've spent developing varies 
widely from just about nothing to many thousands of dollars," said 
Ellroy, who self-finances her inventions. "Often ideas are shown to 
companies in sketch form without ever building a prototype.

"As well, I have done 'fake' videos to give the appearance of a product 
actually working to demonstrate a concept to a company," she said.

Ellroy sometimes strikes deals with her industrial designers and 
illustrators that can give them a piece of the action for risking the 
value of their time in developing a toy.

"It sometimes has paid off nicely for them," she said.

Drawing board

Ellroy won't talk about her newest inventions -- negotiations with 
prospective manufacturers are sensitive, she said.

There's also the issue of patents and copyrights, which aren't that 
great at giving toy inventors protection, Ellroy said.

"For non-electronic, nonvideo games, I don't think it makes sense to 
file for protection unless there is a specific mechanical gadget that 
has an unusual function," she said.

"The toy industry is fad- and fashion-oriented, and often the idea is to 
get the product to market as quickly as possible," Ellroy said. "Unique 
devices should be protected, but non-electric, nonvideo game ideas can 
be tweaked ever so slightly (theme change, appearance change, randomizer 
change) and you've lost your protection."

But there's always that Holy Grail of toydom to strive for, that one 
whim that becomes Monopoly -- on the market since 1935 -- or a shiny 
metal spring that has dazzled kids since 1945.

"I would love to have something that goes on and on," Ellroy said, "like 
Slinky!"

/Copyright © 2004, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc./

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