30 years at Fisher Price: Deej Johnson on I.D.I.O.T. Award winner Paul Snyder

So, Deej: we’ve managed to feature almost all the I.D.I.O.T. Award winners in Mojo Nation interviews… But there are a couple that didn’t get back to you. Is it personal, do you think? Should I try?!
Ha! One of your milder insults, Bill; thank you! But I fear not… In fact, I have to keep reminding myself that – much as we want to talk to them – some of these amazing people have been retired or out of the industry for 20 or 30 years. They don’t want to speak to us – despite, Billy Langsworthy, the charm of the interviewer!

Yes – fair point… Would you want to chat to me 20 years after you left Mojo Nation?!
I don’t want to chat to you now! But with Paul Snyder, there’s still a chance; I’m still hoping that someone that worked with him will step up… Then we can take this down and put up a piece that really does Paul Snyder justice

The Snyder Justice Cut… But as it stands, we know enough about him to fill in some blanks?
Yes! For now, we can talk about him; get a feel for why he won the I.D.I.O.T. Award – then maybe see if we can coax him out of hiding!

And I meant to ask: is he one of those people that’s been out of the industry for a while?
He’s been out of the industry for about 25 years… I believe he’s retired and living on the west coast of Florida. But before he retired – get this – Paul Snyder worked at Fisher-Price for 29 years! He had two roles: first, he was a toy designer himself. Second, he did what we’d now call inventor relations. So he started out designing, then took on the role of scouting the world for toys as well.

And is there an example of a toy he designed? Or one that he found and was proud of?
Yes – we can do at least one of each… And actually, do you recall that I quite often used to ask interviewees, “What was your favourite toy growing up?”

Yes! Good question!
Well, more by good luck than good journalism, we can speak about that! Because Paul gave an interview about it some years ago. It turns out that he loved model kits of ships and airplanes… He also used to take pictures from magazines and turn them into homemade jigsaw puzzles, and he would build marble mazes out of cardboard. Then, when he was six, his parents gave him an electric train set. His parents built it overnight on Christmas Eve. As well as a beautiful train, part of the room was filled with model streets – plastic houses, trees and cars!

Amazing. Do you know when this was?
Yes – sorry, I meant to say: 1950; Christmas 1950. And I’m not into model trains at all, but I have to say this is a really great-looking train! I’ll put in a picture of it at the bottom; it’s a model of 1930’s Union Pacific streamlined passenger train. And that appears to have been an important toy memory for Paul, so I’m kicking things off with that! Then, in terms of a toy that he designed, there was the Play Family Village…

A playset for Fisher-Price Little People…
Right. They were enormously popular back then! It came out in 1973 and sold about 1.7 million units in the first year. And it’s worth saying: since Paul joined Fisher-Price as a Junior Designer in 1970, it’s reasonable to assume this was one of the first things he worked on. It’s really cute! It had a barber shop, police station, mechanic’s shop and firehouse.

How long was it before Paul started looking at other people’s ideas?
That’s a great question, Bill – which is my way of saying: I’ve no idea! Ha! But that might be something we can work out in a minute with the roller skates. I just wanted to mention one particular inventor item that was intriguing to me, though, because of the way Paul framed it… He said it came through as a complete surprise when he was in Japan. He’d looked at a number of items, and not seen anything he wanted to take it back to East Aurora – New York…

Fisher-Price’s head office?
Fisher-Price’s head office. But evidently, he didn’t want to leave empty handed! So he points to what looks like a plush toy up on a shelf and asks what it is. Even as they’re taking it down, they’re more or less saying, “You really don’t want this because it didn’t do well in our country.” It was a soft toy; you squeezed it and it sounded like a toy dinosaur’s roar! Because inside it was what Paul described as “a backwards bellows with foam in.” So when you squeezed it, it made this long roar; this kind of “E-huhhhhhhhrrr” sound!

That’s quite a noise. Can you make it with your mouth as well? Ha!
Ha! I could try; it might not be as good! Well, the reason I know that’s how they sounded is that my neighbour’s children had some of these things. I thought it was a range called ‘Dino-roarrrrr’ but I’m reliably informed they were called Puffalumps. This was in the early 1990s… But yes: that’s how they went: “E-huhhhhhhhrrr”. In any case…. Ha! In any case, after Fisher-Price developed the range, they sold a couple of million pieces.

And the noise – one last time, please!
“E-huhhhhhhhrrr”! I’ll see if I can find a video in a minute; you see if I’m wrong! Also, I wanted to say: the material was extraordinary on those things! They were made of this smooth, shiny nylon – almost like day-glo! So in no way did they look like traditional dinosaurs; they were really colourful, garish, noisy toys. They kind of looked like shell suits actually… Possibly not a helpful reference: if you’re old enough to remember shell suits, you’re old enough to remember Dino-roarrrrr. Or Puffalumps!

Or dinosaurs! You also mentioned a roller skate before we started…
Yes! Another inventor item Paul found became Fisher-Price’s 1-2-3 Roller Skates… Skates that had three settings. Setting one let you lock the wheels so that a child could just walk in them. Setting two let the kid skate forward – but stopped the skates rolling backwards! And setting three was a freewheeling roller skate. Which must’ve been pretty revolutionary at the time. Revolutionary! Pun not intended – or celebrated!

Well, I just googled those skates… Looks like they came out in 1983. And it makes sense, doesn’t it, that Paul was scouting by the late 70s… So moving onto Paul’s I.D.I.O.T. Award… Do we know how Paul felt about winning that?
We don’t, actually. We know it was the 1996 event at Kensington Roof Gardens. That was the year the decision was made to give out five mini I.D.I.O.T. Awards…

Oh, right… Paul Snyder was one of the mini awards?
Right! So his I.D.I.O.T. was given along with a bunch of others… All of whose names are links to interviews here! So the mini-award winners were Paul, Mike Lyden, Mike Meyers, Tom Mason, and Tom Kremer. So no… We don’t yet have a quote on how Paul felt about winning that specifically. What we do have – and I think this is a great way to wrap things up – are two terrific quotes about his working in the toy industry! First, Paul said, “I had more fun than any human being should be allowed!” He also said, “My career spanned 29 years, and every moment felt more like play than work.” – which I think is terrific.

Amazing! That’s a great quote; they’re both great.
He clearly loved it! Which is why I have high hopes that he’ll do an interview with us when he sees this error-ridden, patch-up job that he knows he could do better than! Ha!

Ha! Well, it’s rapidly heading downhill; let’s wrap it up before one of us does the dinosaur noise again.

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