In the movie ”Big,” Tom Hanks portrayed David Moscow, a 13-year-old boy magically transported into the body of a 30-year-old man who gravitated, quite naturally, to the toy business. In real life, Moscow would be just what Judy Ellis is looking for.
Ellis heads the toy design program at New York`s Fashion Institute of Technology, billed as the only program of its kind in the world. It will graduate its first class in June, awarding 18 young people baccalaureate degrees in the specialty. Given the stagnation in the industry, all are likely to be snapped up by toy manufacturers desperate for fresh, creative input.
Ellis said successful toy designers (posts filled in the past by defecting engineers, graphic artists and even architects) are made by ”the child within.” She confessed to harboring one herself.
”I`ve always been a kid at heart,” said Ellis, who is unmarried and has no children. ”I love children, and for me it`s important to work in an area where I can make a difference. I can`t think of anything more exciting than working on toy products, because that`s an opportunity to make a difference with people who really count: the little people.”
In her spartan office at the fashion institute, Ellis has her own toy
”box.” Jammed into floor-to-ceiling shelves along one wall, it is a colorful mix of dolls, plush animals, trucks and other delights picked up by her students on assigned shopping sprees that would be called field trips in other academic disciplines.
It also contains toys the students designed (a ”shy baby bunny;” a plush, pink pig with a prominent navel; a fuzzy cobra) and Ellis` own Paddington Bear (”my security blanket,” she said).
Ellis is a gentle woman with a voice as soft as her teddy bear, but David Miller, president of the Toy Manufacturers of America, says looks are deceiving.
”Judy Ellis, under that sweet facade, is one of the toughest ladies walking,” he said. ”She has done a great job of instilling the kind of artistic discipline that`s necessary in order to be a good professional.
”We`re in bad times (in the toy industry), but that`s when new design is even more important. Where her students are concerned, we`ll place all of them.”
Since 1988, when the craze for electronic games began, sales in the competing retail toy business have plateaued at $13.4 billion per year. With the current recession, the financial future is no brighter.
Ellis taught advertising design at the fashion institute when, in 1989, giant toymaker Mattel came to the school seeking to sponsor competition for the invention of new toy products.
Ellis was handed the project and quickly developed it into a two-year college course taking the student from such subjects as the history of industrial design, child psychology and the math needed in the creation of games to lavish workshops patterned after those the toy company Hasbro Inc. uses. They are complete with drill presses, band saws, plastic formers, lathes and milling and sewing machines.
Her curriculum puts maximum emphasis on construction safety and ”the culture we live in and the social trends we`re dealing with.”
”The role of the toy has changed because parents don`t have as much time with children as they used to,” she said. ”A child really bonds to that toy, and you want to be sure the toy is going to be nurturing and supportive.”
Back to old values
Surprisingly, GI Joe and his miniature warriors get high marks with Ellis in that department.
”If there weren`t war toys, little boys would be making gestures with their hands and going, `Bang, bang,` ” she said. ”There`s nothing wrong in play activity with an action figure, especially now. If a child has a parent who`s not there, it`s probably very healthy.”
But Ellis said, to her relief, the times seem to be changing back to some of the old family values that preceded the all-consuming double-income drive of the 1980s.
”It`s been too much, too fast, too easy for too many people,” Ellis said. ”The yuppie era was not a particularly positive period, and I think values are ready to go back now to what they were. We`re beginning to realize that a parent has a very important role, and that`s going to be reflected by what we see in toys because the industry has to respond to what buyers want.” ”Our focus is on toys that will enhance a child`s play environment and take them on an adventure and be supportive and educational without being preachy,” she said.
Out of that training, Michael Montalvo, 23, of West Hempstead, N.Y., created his Dweezil: a mischievous plush creature designed especially for little boys, and the capstone of the portfolio he will offer to potential employers after graduation. Like most of the students in Ellis` school, he beams when he talks about his creation.
”The Dweezil is a different version of plush,” he said. ”Most girls take a liking to plush, but not many boys. The Dweezil has a little devilish humor. He has that smirk on his face; you wonder what he did.”
Montalvo, who entered toy design with a degree in fine arts and illustration from the fashion institute, already had served an internship with Hasbro and is an odds-on favorite to find permanent employment there. But even though top toy designers can earn six-figure salaries and kingly bonuses if they invent a marketing hit, Montalvo said the sheer joy of the work is his reason for doing it.
”I`m a young-at-heart type of guy,” he said. ”I go to toy stores constantly. I play with kids. I`m sort of a kid myself.”
Hard work
But designing toys isn`t all fun and games. It is hard work, and with Ellis struggling to hold the student body below 20 per class to facilitate a low student-teacher ratio, getting accepted in the program is about as easy as entering MIT.
The would-be toy crafter must have either an associate or bachelor`s degree in art or design, and each is rigorously screened and tested for aptitude and dedication to the field. Once accepted, students spend long hours in classroom and lab, then longer hours still prowling toy stores, trade shows and playgrounds where they study children at play.
For Evelyn Smith, 22, of New York City, the experience gave rise to a portable combination diary-doll-and-bed playset emphasizing the pajama party. ”As a child, I really liked pajama parties, so I put the two things together,” she said. ”If little girls go out and buy the dolls it will really give them a reason to get together for pajama parties, and a diary just goes with that. You show each other what you`ve written.”
Smith`s dolls, like the famous Barbie, will have lots of hair because, Smith said, ”hair play is a favorite with all little girls,” and she said any toy must provide opportunity for imaginary play rather than ”just having everything there.” Consciously or otherwise, Smith seemed to be applying the proposition to her own adult career.
”Play is supposed to open up doors, not restrict the child,” she said.
”I started with a degree in graphic design and worked in the field for about a year and a half, but graphic design just didn`t fulfill me, creatively. I have this need to work in three dimensions.”
”That`s what makes this group of kids so exciting,” said Miller of the toy manufacturers association. ”Their play days aren`t that far away from their school days and their professional focus. They have encyclopedic minds about toys. It`s incredible.”
Miller said that formation of the fashion institute program in toy design was a matter of natural evolution and that the manufacturers group gets about 2,500 calls annually from would-be toy inventors seeking to market their wares.
”If you go back to the cave man, you`ll find toys,” he said. ”Toys are an integral part of the growing process, and some of the people who study toys and play call it `the second educational system.` Everybody is interested in toys. They`re part of the fabric of our lives.”
For toy manufacturers, shackled by two years of flat sales, the
”fabric” also can be a multimillion-dollar gamble. Invent an equivalent of the 75-year-old Lincoln Logs and you`re in the money; go with a fad like dinosaurs, as several toymakers did two years ago, and you may be staring at a bankruptcy court.
”There`s a joke in the toy industry,” said George Dunsay, formerly in research and development for Hasbro and now a consultant at the school for toy design. ”It took 100 million years for the dinosaurs to become extinct, but the toy industry did it in 10 months. Kids just got tired of them.”
Ellis said that sort of gamble can be avoided if the toy designer simply takes his or her craft seriously.
”The toy is about play,” she said, ”and play is children`s work.”
