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bert meyerThe inventive Brain Back Prestigious toys Such as Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, Lite-Brite and Mousetrap have died at the age of 99.
He died on October 30, confirmed by Rebecca Mathis, executive director of the King-Brewart House in Burr Ridge. IllinoisWhere did he live?
Meyer’s works emerged during the post-war boom, a time when plastic molding and mass production revolutionized American Children used to play.
Taking advantage of this change, he designed dynamic toys that remained popular for decades. Mayer’s genius lay in his ability to combine limitless child-like imagination with a practical understanding of machines.
The idea for Lite-Brite came in 1966 when Mayer was walking in Manhattan with Marvin Glass, the owner of one of the largest toy design companies of the time, and the two men passed by a window display containing hundreds of colored lights. According to Tim Walsh, who interviewed Meyer for his 2005 book “Timeless Toys”, the company’s engineers were skeptical that the electric lights could be safely adapted for children.
Meyer, an employee of Marvin Glass & Associates, insisted that it could.
“There are billions of ideas out there, but executing them into a final creative solution is often the hard part,” Walsh wrote.
Mayer came up with a small backlit box and sheets of black paper that allowed children to create illuminated patterns. Lite-Brite was a hit, earning a place on Time Magazine’s 100 Greatest Toys list and in the Strong National Museum of Play’s Hall of Fame. Newer versions are still being sold.
Mayer had a similar role with a design team that re-imagined a heavy boxing arcade game for home use. Company leaders thought development of the original concept halted after a featherweight boxer died of a brain injury, making any toy that would lead to this tragedy no longer marketable.
Meyer revisited the idea with a simple change. “It’s too good to ignore,” he said in a 2010 interview. “Let’s take it away from humanity, let’s make it robots. And we won’t let them fall, we’ll make something fun happen.”
The result was Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, a small game in which players controlled fists of fighters by pressing buttons on a joystick. A player wins by dramatically raising the spring-loaded head, striking the opposing robot’s jaw.
The toy remained recognizable to later generations even after appearing in the film toy story 2, and toy company metal Plans for a live action movie adaptation announced in 2021.
Meyer launched his own firm, Meyer/Glass Design, in the mid-1980s. The company developed several best-sellers, including Gooey Louie, where children picked up the boogers of Louie’s nose, and the Pretty Pretty Princess board game. According to The New York Times, his son, Steve Meyer, ran the business until 2006.
Born Burton Carpenter Meyer in 1926, he joined the Navy and served for two years as an aircraft mechanic. After retiring from toy making, he moved to the suburb of Downers Grove. chicagoWhere he built small planes and could be seen flying them expertly from a nearby private airfield until he was in his 80s.
In interviews, Meyer often drew parallels between aerospace engineering and toy design, saying that both required ingenuity and teamwork.
Meyer attributed his success to the highly collaborative environment at Marvin Glass & Associates, saying, “When you’re flying an airplane, use every resource there is. That’s why we’ve been able to create so many successful products.”
Meyer’s car had a vanity plate that read TOYKING, and by most accounts, it was. In a 2010 interview, he said that he still enjoys telling people what he did for a living, and responding to them: “Oh, I played with that!”