Awards for the Fords: Max Ford’s heartfelt thoughts on the family’s two I.D.I.O.T.s

Max, thanks for doing this! Let’s dive right in. You pretty much grew up in the toy industry, so this question might carry quite a bit of weight… What was your favourite toy growing up?
You know, I checked this with my mum once because I always thought it was G.I. Joe… But then I wondered! So I asked my mother… She said, “Oh, it was those little soldier action figures…” So even my mother confirmed it.

There we go! I also have it in my head that you’re a big collector of LEGO minifigures. Have I got that right? Or did I make that up?
No, you’re right… They’re all in a cabinet in my toilet.

The LEGO’s in your toilet? Are you shitting bricks?!
Ha! Well… The toilet here is known as the toylet: T-O-Y-L-E-T. Shall I take you on a tour?

Ha! Toylet! Love it! By all means…
Here we go… This is where I’m up to on the last series. This whole cabinet opens up; it’s double thick. Somewhere behind here… There’s a whole other row behind this. It’s complete; all the series from the blindbags. I don’t know how many that is…

Too many, some would say – not enough, I’d say! What’s the appeal of the minifig to you, Max?
I think what’s so remarkable about them is that they’re so adaptable to all the licences. LEGO’s done a fantastic job… So often, you see toys come in and go out and breathe for a season or two depending on their TV show. LEGO’s created a collectible figure that could work with every license that’s ever been made – but it predates all of them!

Absolutely! So true…
And as a fan, I’m just as excited about the Harry Potter release they do in the bags – or boxes, now – as I am about the man dressed as a banana.

No argument for me… I wrote a short opinion piece on the minifigure. I could’ve written twice as much; it would still only be the tip of the iceberg. Now look: I was originally going to talk to you in the context of your winning the I.D.I.O.T. Award – but your dad, Roger Ford, also won it! So maybe we should start with him. Am I right in saying he had a hand in Connect 4?
Yes, dad was the head of design at MB Games before Hasbro bought them… So yes, he was involved in the engineering design of Connect 4. For example, he designed the original teeth that made the counters grip together…

The studs and dimples that made the sound?
I don’t remember them making a sound! Do they make a sound?

DON’T they make a sound?! A sort of ‘viiiiiiiiiiiip’ as they drop? I actually thought that’s why the dimples were there!
Maybe that was part of it. Mainly, the stacking I thought…

Well, you’d know better than I… Maybe they don’t go viiiiiiiiiiiip at all? Maybe I’m in the multiverse! In any case, Connect 4 was very satisfying… It’s satisfying to stack the counters. It’s satisfying to drop them. It’s satisfying to release them underneath! There’s no part of Connect 4 that isn’t satisfying, which is – presumably – the genius of the original design!
I think so, yes. And I still play a lot of Connect 4; my daughter Hetty is fantastic at it. But we use the travel version because we take it to restaurants… I still have the original set we had as children. I’ll check it out. I’m sending you a picture of my daughter playing Connect 4… That should come through. Our rule is that if you get five games in a row, you get a dot stuck to your forehead.

Got it… Okay! So in this photo, that dot says she’s beaten you five times running?
Yes. She was my Padawan in training but she’s getting really good at it.

Mmmm. Proud of her, you are! So at what point, Max, did you start working with your dad?
I joined my father’s company aged 21. I wasn’t planning to. I was working in PR, and a friend offered me a job as an estate agent in Mayfair…

Mayfair in London? Strewth… High end!
Right! I’m pretty sure I’d’ve been a more successful man today if I’d done that.
Anyway, I was so proud to tell dad I’d been offered this role. But dad, I remember very well, said, “No son of mine will be a fucking estate agent!”

Oh! Really?! Most fathers would’ve said, “No son of mine is going to play with toys for a living!”
Yes! Ha! He had an opinion on estate agents, it seems. He must have had a dislike of them, I guess. I don’t know why; I never really found out. But he took me in.

Took you in? Like an apprentice?
Well, yes. Actually, what I’ve come to appreciate lately is the word ‘master’, as in mastery of a profession. My father had mastered the design of toys – or games specifically, I would say. When he took me in, I don’t think he knew – even when he died – that the five years I worked for him was an apprenticeship for me. But it was clear to both of us that there was a great opportunity to learn, right up at the top level with people he knew…

Such as?
We’d be meeting with Alan Hassenfeld, Ben Varadi – all sorts of really rather cool people. As a 22-year-old boy I was there, quiet and listening and learning. My dad gave me an awful lot of tools, let’s say… I don’t think my dad appreciated, though, that what happens when you become a master is there’s not really anywhere else to go.

Is there not?
Not really. You either have to zen in the practice of the field, or to teach! Well… We never talked about it, but I think he got quite a lot out of teaching me how to do this. And I like to think today that it gave him a lot of joy to show me the way. From his company, I moved to Holland to run the development team for Upper Deck. Dad got quite a lot of joy in checking in on an almost daily basis on what I was up to and trying to advise and help. I think he got quite a lot out of it, which I’m grateful for – if I gave him that in return for what he gave me.

Which, from the sound of it, is a very great deal.
Right. And going back to something you said earlier, dad was – among all other things – an I.D.I.O.T. Award winner. I think for a lot of my career, especially after he died, I had a slightly egotistical goal to be an I.D.I.O.T. Award winner myself. When I was younger, it was a real ambition of mine; to be validated by one’s peers and above. I remember fantasising about it, actually.

That’s a very honest statement…
It’s just moments of slight vanity, in fact. Then I realised – when the award actually happened – that I’d gone past that, really. But I think actually getting the award was a bit of a shock. I didn’t expect it.

Well, no; so much so that you weren’t at the Inventor Dinner to collect it! Is it impolitic to ask where you were?
No, not at all! I planned to go – I do love that dinner – but then I made a decision not to go to London Toy Fair… Simply because Nuremberg would tick all the boxes.

Oh, I see! You weren’t in London at all…
No. Gary Pyper and I were talking the day before the fair. He was on the Inventor Dinner board. He said, “See you in London.” So I said, really in passing, “No, I’m not coming.” The next thing I knew Simon Skelton was calling me to tell me I’d won the I.D.I.O.T.

Crikey. Do you recall where were you; what were you doing?
When I got the phone call from Simon? I was with a friend, eating fish at a stand by a canal here in Holland. Simon explained I’d won. I think I said, “Fuck, really?” “Yes, you’re the I.D.I.O.T.” I was like, “Oh, shit.” Because there was still time to get on a plane and fly to London for the dinner. It was the same day, but I could’ve made it. But that would have been very vain.

Gosh. I imagine that must’ve been complicated for you, Max, given how much – earlier in your life – you thought it might mean TO win?
That was what was interesting… I was faced with the moment of deciding: do I get on a plane? To do what? Score this vanity goal? And I called my adviser, Aad Obbens. He worked at Jumbo for decades… I called him, and said, “What do I do?” He said, “Get on a plane and go.” And I said, “I don’t think I want to.” Because getting on a plane specifically because I’m going to win an award felt really odd. I just wasn’t jumping up and down about it. I was perplexed and going like, “Really?”

I hear you. I can’t imagine processing that.
It was a bit frustrating that the goal was gone. I wasn’t ready for it, I think. It was something I was working towards. Maybe I feel like it was awarded prematurely… Because look at other people that have won it, like Adi Golad, say. I mean, Adi Golad built Goliath, you know?! So I went from wanting it to not wanting it, and it was rather weird…

Anyway, that told me that the ego had gone – and that terrified me too because what happens when you’re not driven like that anymore? Then I thought, well, if I get on a plane, then I’m being vain. The whole thing threw me off, actually. In the end, I just decided almost to ignore that it happened because I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve the award – except try to make a living. I haven’t made the waves that others have. I’ve just been here a long time I guess. You’ll have to see what the powers-that-be say behind my back!

Oh, they don’t talk to me… I know my place! But this has been a real revelation, Max, because I didn’t know how complicated a subject the I.D.I.O.T. was for you. One thing that does cross my mind, though, was that – because you didn’t collect the award – you didn’t give a thank you speech…
No… But there’s only really one person to thank, isn’t there? I mean, I could’ve thanked my friends, and the people who supported me, but my father gave me everything. He gave me a great childhood too – oh, I’ve got goosebumps… Even today, I meet people who remember him in the industry and nothing but great stories, nothing but an honourable man. His secretary was with him – and moved company – for 35 years.

Wow.
Dad was just the embodiment of loyalty, and a gentleman, and – with that – this incredible creative who, remarkably, left a stamp on the game industry. It’s forgotten by consumers, and not known by many in the industry… But I have the privilege of having known my father not just AS a father, but also a man who worked, and knowing his work relationship is a whole other part of his life…

I had the privilege of traveling with him too, and getting to know him, learning from a master. Then – having mastered, to a level, what he taught me – to have had the honour of remaking the products that he made. I’m confident he’d be interested in and proud of what I did, so that’s great.

So, yes… There is only one man to thank and one person to thank. I could’ve collected the award, and I could’ve done an acceptance speech, but it would just be praise to him and a chance to say it’s an honour to have won the same award that he had, even if I still feel unworthy of that… My entire career is down to one man. My life is down to one man.

And now here I am, relaunching Hotel, and there are things that I do to memorialise him. I’ll show you a couple of examples. On this game, Don’t Wake Dad, the alarm clock says 22:12 in the 24-hour clock. The date of dad’s death was the 22nd of December. Then, for the new version of Hotel, the banknote needed a fake code…

Like a serial number?
Exactly, exactly. It starts RF151241. RF is for Roger Ford; 15/12/41 is his birthdate… And then 221207 is the date of his death. I put him in there to remember him. Because what else can I do? I can’t show him this stuff anymore. I wouldn’t be doing it without him. I don’t think I’m bad at what I do. And I’m grateful for the award, but don’t need it to tell me I can do it… I think it’s just okay to be grateful and put the vanities to one side.

This has been surprisingly moving, Max, you’ve really caught me off guard. It’s clear what your dad meant to you and I’m so grateful that you’ve shared that. To wrap things up with your dad, then: he also won the I.D.I.O.T. Award… Do you know what it meant to him?
I do, yes – absolutely… It meant a great deal to him. He was very proud of it. And actually, I grew up seeing that medallion on his bedside. I remember, before I worked for him – because he was quite an early winner; like number two or three or four…

Third, I think
Third. Well, I remember seeing this thing when he went to the Inventors Dinner… Him dressing up and wearing it when he left the house. It was a hell of a thing; this medallion around his neck like some sort of Lord Mayor piece of jewellery. It was a big thing for him.

After he died, one of the things I got from the house was this small, beautiful wooden tray. He kept all his cufflinks and things in it. I don’t have a need for that kind of tray! I think it’s got my Rennie Relief and hayfever-relief tablets and things sitting there. But it had his much-treasured I.D.I.O.T. Award in it.

Fantastic. Listen, Max – I can’t thank you enough for your time. It’s been very moving… I hope that lifts off the page; I hope I can leave all the heart in because it’s one of the most heartfelt interviews I’ve done.
Well… I’ve been getting goosebumps all the way through this, Deej. So thank you for bringing me in touch with that. I don’t get to say it often. I’m glad we had the chance to talk.

Thank you, Max.

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