ThinkFun’s Josh West and Fuse’s Pete Cartlidge talk Crash Cats

Josh, Pete – Crash Cats! This is a Fuse invention so let’s start there… Pete, where did the idea come from? Did it start life as a logic game?
Pete Cartlidge, Director, Fuse: Crash Cats actually started life as a novelty and collectible around 2018, when one of our designers – Paul Martinsen – started noticing popular YouTube videos of cats freaking out when a cucumber was placed near them.

Ha! I’m the same way with vegetables.
Pete: Ha! But those videos are hysterical… Cats see a cucumber and just jump up vertically – amazing! So that was the inspiration for a fun little mechanism Paul built. He rigged up a cute cat with a hair trigger mechanism – pun intended – built into the cat’s whiskers. When you touched it, even gently, it would spring into the air about three or four times its own height. It was really daft but perfectly echoed the trend. We showed it to a bunch of toy companies – but no one knew what to do with it until we showed it to Josh at ThinkFun…

Perfect place to bring you in Josh! What were your initial thoughts about these jumping cat collectibles?
Josh West, Head of Product Design & Inventor Relations, Ravensburger North America: Well, we had a casual meeting scheduled at Essen and Pete mentioned they were showing something cool… But that he wasn’t sure what ThinkFun might do with it. He shared the video of these spring-loaded cats on little wheels… You could push the little cats like a toy car. Then, if they bumped into something, they popped up. I thought it was hilarious!

Pete: I remember you looking at me and smiling that big grin! At that point, none of us knew how it might fit with ThinkFun, but you felt it could be super fun and contemporary for ThinkFun’s fans.

Josh: Absolutely. I went back and showed it to our Head of Sales at the time, and basically said the same thing Pete said to me: “This is funny, but I’m not sure we could do it?” We watched the video, and he thought it was as funny as I did. I followed up with Fuse and said: “I expect you might have other takers for the idea as a toy, but if it was still available, we’d like to make a puzzle out of it.” It took several attempts with different directions, but we ultimately came up with a great product – Crash Cats!

Fantastic. So yes, from there, Crash Cats became this brilliant sliding block puzzle. You set up the board with various objects – a chair, a pillow, a vacuum – then tilt the board to slide the cats into things so they ping into the air. You win when only the cat with the red helmet remains! So what went into transforming these collectibles into a puzzle game?
Pete: Well, from a super simple and quick ‘get’, the rest of the product took years to develop. Not helped by Covid and shifting marketing and consumer demands. There was a lot to figure out with regard to the engineering of the product and its parts. The cats had to slide well, and the mechanics had to trigger – but not all the time!

I remember at one stage, Josh had our team figure out three different ways to tilt the gameboard so the cats slid well and then the board would return to being flat again. One was so complex we even patented it! After all that, I know Josh and his talented team of designers, puzzle writers and pre-production engineers all put in a huge shift to iron out a million tiny details. Five years later, the cats were finally ready!

Josh: Yes, the cool popping action of the cats was intrinsic to the play of the puzzle. I give a lot of credit to the team at Fuse. One of the early directions was to make a ‘Rube Goldberg-esque’ assembly puzzle where the Crash Cats would attach to a vertical grid… If you solved the challenge correctly, you’d release one cat and all the others would trigger, along with these other obstacles and mechanical details. It was fantastic – a real feat of great engineering prowess!

Amazing!
Josh: It ended up being a great use of the Crash Cat’s function, but it was very costly and tough to produce a variety of challenges. When we tested it, we found that younger players would assemble the challenge – and they liked it – but they eventually just wanted to play with the cats. We didn’t end up going in that direction, but it’s really a portfolio piece for Fuse’s development team. Once we decided to go in a simpler direction, that shift took considerable effort…

Eventually, we ended up creating a variation of the version that’s now available. That was a challenge in itself, but – on top of that – we also decided the new direction would retail for less than originally planned. It was a wise choice, but it took some doing to keep the functionality while lowering the price. We had to trim a lot, but it was worth it!

Wow! Sounds like a mighty undertaking. And a nice example where getting the ‘toyetic’ element right proved just as crucial as the ‘puzzle’ side of things?
Pete: You need both. The ‘sticky’ toy bit is what Josh sees a lot in submissions from Fuse and he knows how he can use his team to build the challenges around it. Hopefully, consumers will be attracted to the cats’ jump-scare feature and want to do that over and over again – but then get stuck into the levels of the puzzle. Like all of ThinkFun’s titles, it’s very addictive and great for all ages.

Josh, you’ve worked with Fuse on several items now. Is there something about their design sensibilities that aligns neatly with ThinkFun?
Josh: Fuse is a fantastic partner. They have a great sense of how to make a quirky idea into a tangible thing that people can understand. This means that we can see the fun and appeal of what is happening with the concept itself – and we can start from the position of deciding how best to present the concept to our customers. It enables us to focus on brain and logic – which is what we do best – because they’ve already focused on the fun and outlandish, which is what they do best.

Pete, on that: why do you feel Fuse and ThinkFun make good collaborators?
Pete: We create games and toys, but we’re very well known for bringing things to life with mechanisms – and making products fun to look at and play with. Our collaborations on ThinkFun products like Gravity Maze, Roller Coaster Challenge and now Crash Cats showcase the best of toy and puzzle development and the best of creative resources in our two companies. The results are products that are fun to play – and fun to watch!

Before we wrap up, this a brilliant example of a product crafted with one category in mind – collectibles – that ended up as something very different. Josh, is this indicative of the ‘lens’ you like to adopt when reviewing concepts and mechanisms – that concepts can be ‘brought into’ puzzles?
Josh: It’s very indicative. ThinkFun products fit into a smaller subset of game and toy, relatively speaking. Our products are a nice blend of logic and deduction, toy-ish features and gameplay. When we’re looking for new concepts, we’re looking for puzzle ideas that are engaging, toyetic gizmos that are fun and eye-catching, and games that have a unique, brainy mechanic. If the idea is only one of these things, that’s totally fine with us! We enjoy the chance to develop those seeds.

It also happens a lot of times that we see a game with elements of what we’re looking for, and we’re happy to alter that to fit what works best for our line. As long as the inventor is game for the collaboration, it always results in a great product!

It sounds like a smart approach – and one that resonates with inventors. Is that why Josh remains so beloved Pete?
Josh: Ha!

Pete: It is! He’s persistent and a perfectionist! Seriously, he has so much patience with the development process and any challenges that are thrown at him, his team and the inventor.

This item’s journey started long before the world changed in the pandemic, but it still made it out the other end relatively unscathed. For an inventor, that’s a rollercoaster of emotions but Josh was great at reassuring us it was going to happen. He never lost the thrill of seeing those cats pop up and was unwavering in his passion to get it over the line. I can’t begin to think about how he managed all the other parts… Josh is a legend!

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