Barbie, Novie, wow moments and more: in conversation with the endlessly creative Ric Scott

Ric Scott! You have 30 years of toy-design experience… You started young?
I did! Pre-toys, I sold my first design when I was 14. I went to a polytechnic high school; I’m a board-trained draftsman. When I was interviewed by the engineer Peter Santaw, back at Jakks in Malibu, he described me as a hybrid engineer-designer. That’s stuck with me because I have a lot of electrical and mechanical engineering, but I can also design and draw and just about anything. And while I don’t think I’m the best designer on the planet, I think I know how to solve a problem.

Well, I was going to ask about that. You clearly DO know how to solve a problem… To what degree does that come from your unusual upbringing, do you think?
That’s an interesting question. You know, I actually read up on you a little before this and found out how much you like magic, and about how it makes you think differently. But I’ve always thought differently – I don’t have a choice! I don’t see the world like everybody else… Whether that’s due to my upbringing, I don’t know. Growing up, my dad was a truck driver in California. He drove produce, but in the winter – when there was no produce – he always had to be creative… Like, “What else am I doing? What else can I do for work?”

So my dad would cut wood, for example, or collect scrap metal to get by. If he saw workers tearing down buildings, my dad would talk to them and ask about taking away all the pipes, say. He’d get them home in some crazy way, then cut them up and sell them. Only he would have me cut it! He gave me the gloves, the jacket, the visor and everything, and he taught me how to use a cutting torch… How you get it going, how to know when its ready; when it starts to glow and when to hit the air. And this was when I was only five…

FIVE?! Good grief!
Yes, I was the only five-year-old that knew how to use a cutting torch. It was crazy! Ha! Anyway, my point being that my dad never graduated from high school, so he couldn’t get a higher-paying job – he really wanted to work at the zoo. But anyway, he was always inventing and making stuff and I was always with him; always making something. We didn’t have a lot of money, so my dad would make a toy gun, for example, by taking a piece of conduit pipe and screwing it onto a piece of wood he’d cut with a band saw.

The way I see it, then, is that you would’ve been assimilating all that to develop a creative habit… You don’t knowingly use creative techniques now because you were brought up using them habitually…
Yes, that makes sense!

And out of interest, what did your mother do?
My mum liked ceramics, so she was a painter. And actually, mum and dad had a ceramics studio. I didn’t really want to work for my mom and dad doing that, but I found out all about it… They did some crazy things with ceramics. That’s come in very handy now because I’m currently helping a company called Zombie Gnomes. They do ceramic figures that are like little zombies. Here’s one…

Ha! That’s funny! You say your dad wanted to work at the zoo… Does that explain why you kept monkeys growing up?
Yes. My dad didn’t have the education to get a job at the zoo. That built a frustration in him, I think. And this is the 70s… Back then, you could literally order a monkey and get one in a box on your doorstep, right?

It’s how I found a forever home…
Ha! Not seen as inhumane in those days, but my dad would rescue these monkeys. Like, one time, he looked in the newspaper and there was one lady – I think her husband had passed away – who was giving away this capuchin… Her name was Hotspur. I still have her water bowl, actually! We had this huge hutch in the backyard for monkeys, but we also had chickens, rabbits, geese, cats, guinea pigs, a few snakes, a few spiders, some fish and some bigger fish that ate the other fish…

So how did you get from this rather unconventional upbringing to the toy industry? What was your first toy invention?
When I was about 11, I gave thought to being an engineer. Watching my dad build everything was a big part of that. He also built this massive HO gauge train set in my bedroom and, on that, I’d see how there’s a certain incline that a train can go up before it starts to slip… My dad would add weights to it; so that it acted like a real train. Clearly, there was all this math to it… It interested me.

Later, in high school, I had two majors: drafting and electrical engineering. I didn’t know what to do when I got to college, though. Back then, you looked at all the courses in newsprint. I thought a few classes looked good and I ended up doing five concurrent majors: math, electrical engineering, philosophy, industrial design and archeology.

Eclectic! I mean… Archaeology?
It wasn’t that big of a deal because I found out that, per term, it was the same price for 12 credit hours as it was for 21 credit hours. So all I did was say, “I’ll just take everything.” But I figured electrical engineering was where I could maybe make money. Archaeology just filled one of the requirements. Checking the box! Interesting when when I got into it, though! As a second-year sophomore in college, I took a senior-level class – Osteoarchaeology 478 – where I learned to determine the age, sex, and race of a human skeleton. And really, how a hand and bones move and articulate is kind of engineering… So that was also interesting to me.

Anyway, to your question: my first toy invention would have to be Dentist Barbie which was in 1995. I was in a marketing meeting at Mattel. They’d put me on what was called the ‘aspirational’ category, and two things tested really well… One was a teacher; the other was a dentist. They’d just done a teacher, so we had to make a dentist fun. I got teamed up with a wonderful marketing person named Jeanette Corcuera. We discussed what needed to happen to make a child want to play with a dentist…

And let’s not gloss over that! What does need to happen to make a child want to play with a dentist Barbie?
We recoginised that what kids really want from the dentist is something happy! Good news and some encouragement. So we came up with the idea of putting a sound chip in the doll which said something like, “Let’s brush!” and “Great checkup!”

Makes sense. You don’t want Dentist Barbie looking into a mouth, wincing and saying, “Jesus wept!”
Ha! Right? And I’ll share something about what I think of as my own little secret sauce here… I’ve always found that all toys are about just one thing.

Because for 24 hours a day, kids are controlled. They’re controlled by their parents or guardians; what to wear, what to eat, how much to eat, when to go to sleep, when to wake up, when to play, when to go on screens. And they’re controlled by their environment… The doors on buildings are hard to push open; the countertop at an ice cream parlour is too high! But when a child has a toy, they have control.

You know, the only other person I’ve heard articulate that sentiment is an extraordinary children’s entertainer, Danny Orleans. Danny Orleans switched me onto how funny it is for kids to see an adult that’s not in control. And I think he pointed out that that’s why kids chase pigeons… It lets them exert control over another life form.
Ah! I see that! And because I believe that, every toy I’ve created – among all the craziness – is about a kid controlling something. So in the case of Dentist Barbie, I made sure that they put in a really good Kelly doll because you need a cause and an effect… You need a dentist and a patient. I worked on it with Kitty Black Perkins; a great designer and a wonderful person to work with. She designed the first Black Barbie. I love her so much; she’s so great. She did the fashion. I did the dentist’s chair… Also, as a model maker, I made the prototype which ended up in the catalogue. So that was the first proper toy I ever designed, it was great.

You also worked, did you not, on Novie for Spin Master?
Oh, wow; yes. Ha! My claim to fame on Novie is that I helped saved three dollars and 28 cents on the wholesale price! That meant it could come out at a 20-dollar retail price. There was a great team of engineers working on Novie because this was all IR motion. I met with the team twice a day for two weeks; a lot of writing code and adjusting it. We wanted to include a lot of gestures and have it back up and do a wheelie… We put these little wheelie bars on the back; these little nubs. And even that was pretty precise stuff… It had to be adjusted by maybe a quarter of a millimetre to get it to do a wheelie and then come right back down.

And from that, may I infer that you’re quite an exacting person?
Yes, I think that’s fair. Also, I do think of myself as a yes person – in as much as that, if you ask me to design or fix anything, the first thing I want to say is yes! I always want to find a way.

What are you working on at the moment, Ric? Because you briefly left the toy industry to work in pets – but now you’re back…
Yes, I’m kind of cherry picking projects at the moment. I’m helping Zombie Gnomes as a business consultant mentor; I’m helping them do a Kickstarter. I’ve also been thinking about getting more fully back into toys and games – I’m looking for the right toy company to work with! I was a director at my last job, but I’d be happy to be a manager.

And who would be the right toy company, Ric?
Ha! Well, I don’t mind telling you this… My deep, deep, deep desire would be to top off my career with an interview position to be an Imagineer for Disney. I think that would be the greatest joy! Lifelong dream. But I’d be open if someone reached out to speak about full- or part-time consulting.

Well, seems like I timed this call right! This article will be read by literally pairs and pairs of people…
Ha!

…you just never know which of these few might be ready to reach out. Before we wrap things up, I wanted to ask… As well as revolving around the idea of control, you’re on the record as saying you always look for the ‘wow moment’ on toys. What’s your philosophy there?
Well, this is something I think I got from Jim McCafferty when I worked at JMP Creative. You know Jim?

I do! I’ve interviewed him here and Billy spoke to him about Sticki Rolls here… Great guy.
Well, Jim drilled that into me: he was always about making that moment when you first see something being super cool. For kids, it often boils down to why will they want it? How will they play with it? And how will they play with it again? Barbie is a great example of that; it’s the key to everything: why do they want another one?

So the wow moment’s got to be very visible; it has to be demonstrable. Can you show it on TV? Or Tic Tok now, or Insta? So with Novie, you could show gestures and wheelies and screams and screeches… Andreas Garza was my boss and mentor on this and I think he ended up doing some of the voices. But yes, Novie has the wow moment; one that visually captures its excitement. I like its educational component too, by the way… I think the whole team did a great job on it.

I’m curious to ask you a question that Billy Langsworthy favours… What’s your most underrated invention?
Underrated? You mean something that made it to market? Or didn’t make it to market?

One of each if you like…
One that didn’t make it to market was a synthetic muscle tissue that I developed in high school. I figured that our muscles only do one thing: contract. That’s all! And when you’re doing electronics, you quickly find out about a solenoid which also just contracts via a magnetic field. So I took a series of solenoids and put them inside a silicone foam-rubber based encapsulation.

The silicone gave it resistance and acted like a spring to expand it after the current was reduced or shut off. thought I was really onto something, but several patent attorneys told me I couldn’t protect it because it was going to have military implications. And that’s a shame because I still have a desire in my heart to really help folks, and robotics is now getting there… They’re finally understanding how to make muscles and tissues work – it’s got to be analog; digital muscles don’t work as a prosthetic.

Gosh and Golly, Ric! Before I get an answer about something that did make it to market, your Junior Blind work is really helpful to people is it not?
Oh! Absolutely, yes. Yes… Maybe I should’ve said I’d like to do more work that really helps folks! But yes… I led the team on a playground for the Foundation for the Junior Blind, a project sponsored by Mattel. That was a four-year project. It’s called the Mattel Park; it’s for kids that are blind or have other disabilities… Some don’t even understand the concept of play. Thank you for mentioning that – honestly, that is, I think, my greatest achievement.

Oh, wow. Then you were going to tell me about something underrated that DID make it to market… A toy?
Hmmmm. I worked in Erector Set – or Meccano, as you would’ve known it in Europe. I was there for three years. The thing I think that is underrated is an entire line of toolboxes I did there. They let you store stuff in them, but you can also you build on top of the toolbox or incorporate them into your build… So I made sure you could screw stuff to it along the sides and on the top and bottom. You can build on it, around it, under it… The parts all connect and stack so you could turn it into a workbench, say…

Ha! That’s exactly what I was just thinking! And build a little tool rack on the side of it to hold your tools…
Right! So I would say that’s probably a little underrated. I worked very diligently on it to make it as versatile as possible.

Brilliant! Well, listen… I’ve enjoyed this enormously. Thank you so much for making time and sharing your wonderful insights.

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