Gary Aigner – PlayMonster’s Chief Design and Development Officer – on design, development and more

Thanks for joining me, Gary. I’m shocked we’ve not done interview with you until now… Who are you and what’s your role?
I’m Gary Aigner, an industry veteran; currently Chief Design and Development Officer for PlayMonster. PlayMonster makes games for kids and families as well as arts and crafts and activities products, including Koosh and Spirograph.

Perfect! And as you know, we recently did an interview with the son of Denys Fisher; the inventor of Spirograph. People can read that here.
Oh, that’s a fantastic story for sure!

Extraordinary invention… Still doing business at 60. So! We’re chatting today because I recently saw people playing the hilarious Marshmallow Madness… For those that don’t know it, how would you describe it?
It’s the family tiny-hand eating challenge! That’s the line on pack… It was longer than that originally – it was a mouthful… See what I did there?!

Ha! My kind of interview! This is one of those games which, once seen, needs no explanation. It looks so funny, even on socials. Is it an inventor item?
Yes… We work with a wide inventor community; we partner closely with many different inventors. In the specific instance of Marshmallow Madness, you’re right: it’s a fantastic game. When we saw it, we started laughing right away… It was love at first sight! I’ve watched the game being played SO many times – and I laugh every single time because the body illusion is just amazing. It never gets old; I can watch it all day.

So you have your inventors… What’s your development process once they show you an idea?
Well, it starts with the ‘who’ first rather than the how. PlayMonster has the best development team I’ve ever worked with – that’s what we’ve assembled. They’re just incredibly creative people, unified in something comparable to a startup-mentality mode from the top down. We’re focused and we’re super opportunistic. We try to get things done fast and be disruptive… Speed to market is absolutely key and everyone’s in that same mode. So while ‘fail fast’ is sort of a cliché, it’s what we do. But the team is right; the chemistry is great.

How do you know which ideas are right for you?
We know what makes us laugh and we make what we like! Our small team has at least 100 years of experience in games and toys, so our gut is pretty honed. But we’re also methodical. When we’re nurturing an idea, there’re filters, stage gates and questions that we ask. Maybe to some that all seems academic, but we go through the process of making sure we’re connecting with an end consumer… Making sure the tone, manner and experience – the essence of each concept – is going to play with those we intend it to play for.

That’s important because if you’re not connecting with the consumer in the right way, you’re going to fail. So we make sure we’re doing that at every stage of development. When it comes to execution, we’re a team of makers – and we’ll make things fast. That way, if something works and is fun and repeatable, and it brings us to the table again and again, then we probably have a winner.

And is that something, Gary, that you playtest with consumers early on?
Actually, we don’t do a lot of consumer testing in the sense of, ‘Hey, do you like this idea?’! Because we already like it! It’s much more about how it plays… That’s crucial. Asking the consumer for input, being informed by that and making the core idea better and better with each iteration. We do a ton of that.

So if you have a great idea that playtesting says isn’t quite there, does the team knock it into shape? Or let it go?
It depends on who has heart for it in our team. We’ll go through one iteration and if there’s something that we’re not feeling, we’ll have another crack at it and try different things. We’re a small team with limited bandwidth so, yes, we do have to let some things go. As a collective group, you have to have a certain amount of judgement… Is this worth spending more time on? Or do we put it aside? But we don’t like the thought of killing an idea if we can park it and have it in the backs of our minds.

Yes, the word I was thinking there was ‘percolate’…
Of course, by the very nature of what we do – how we’re built and why we do what we do – there’s a short ‘attention span theatre’ while developing ideas. That’s part of the fast-fail thinking I mentioned. But an idea is still an idea… The potential for an idea is limitless, especially at the beginning. So you can park an idea rather than kill it, and maybe go back to it more successfully later… “That idea we had six months ago… What if we just tried this, put this secret ingredient into it?”

I imagine Marshmallow Madness had the secret ingredient from the word go… Was there any particularly big challenge developing that?
Oh, cost for sure. What the game is now was what it was early on: the tone and manner; that was all dialled in early on. But when we got to the manufacturing and execution phase, we were outside cost. The magic price point in the US is still $19.99 for a game like this. That’s cemented; it never moves… But cost of manufacturing, cost of goods, cost to import – they all go up, especially this year. And so the pressure grows.

Luckily for us, we have an amazing factory partner network. And when we partner with someone, if we’re feeling really good about a game, everyone can see the potential. So our factory partners team up with us. They’re in it to win it, just like we are! And so there’s an entrepreneurial sort of relationship there as well. That meant we were able to rein this in, get a good cost… And voila! We’re on the shelf. And to pick up on something you said about social media earlier, Marshmallow Madness has great sharing potential.

And do you factor that in when you’re looking at a sizzle? “How would this look as a TV advert?” That kind of thing?
Actually, we primarily leverage the social piece. TV is expensive and people can turn it on and off and over! So we don’t really pound the linear-TV part of it. But I can tell you that Marshmallow Madness has had a great social uptake… Especially from major influencers like Games for Two, for example, and a few others. I’ve seen the videos pop up – and real people having fun playing the game beats any commercial you can film.

Good answer. And this might seem like a redundant question, because the answer is obviously going to be “enormously!” – without a British accent, of course! But how important is creativity at PlayMonster?
Enormously! Ha!

Ha! Well, thanks for joining me. Ha! I should rephrase! In what way is creativity enormously important at PlayMonster?
No, you’re right – it’s super important… Creativity is absolutely at the heart of our culture. Creativity and curiosity beget innovation. And innovation is our lifeblood. That might sound like a generic answer, but everyone at PlayMonster believes it.

I’d also say that my team is very well resourced and supported from the top down by our board and our CEO, Jonathan Berkowitz. He’s a product guy and amazing to work with. So we’re well backed, which is to say that a blue-sky feeling is what creatives need to thrive… And we’ve got it in spades.

Fantastic. You used to invent didn’t you? Do you still keep your hand in?
Sure, of course! In terms of scale, I’ve been in the invention business in just about every size of company in my career, starting – a long time ago – with Steve and Jeff Rehkemper, right up to Hasbro. In all that experience, I wanted to come back to a smaller company and have true impact… Something that involved rolling my sleeves up and doing things with the team, including creating. Creating is why I’ve been in this business for so long… That moment when you arrive at a ‘eureka’ idea is amazing – and even better in a group. So I love that. It’s what keeps the juice going.

And on that, what else keeps you creative?
It’s curiosity! Just the curiosity part of the formula… Being curious and bringing that to random findings. I’m constantly grazing on social media, for example. I spend an inordinate amount of time on TikTok and Instagram and latching onto trends. I’ll send way more links to my kids saying, “Isn’t this cool?” than they send to me. Ha! That’s more or less an organisation-wide assignment. We riff on ideas that come in from everywhere… You need that as fuel to power the creative machine.

I love the idea that you’re pestering your kids! “Dad, stop with the videos already!” You mentioned Steve and Jeff Rehkemper earlier… Great pedigree. How did you come to be working in toys and games?
I was an industrial design student out of UIC here in Chicago, where I was born and raised. I started working as an intern for a small industrial design firm here and we happened to do some work for the Rehkemper Brothers. It was a small job, but we went to their studio to go through the work – that was a revelation! I knew that’s what I wanted to do. At some point, I managed to weasel my way onto Steve’s team; I sold a couple of ideas and stayed with him and just learned so much from those guys.

Oh, I can’t even imagine! I mean… What a place to start!
Right? The know-how, the machinery, the process of selling in… I just learned so much. After that, I joined a family-owned manufacturer on the west side of Chicago. Within two weeks of joining, I was on a plane heading to Hong Kong on my own. I’d never even been out of the country before – I was absolutely terrified!

How old would you have been at that point?
I was 24 – and very much drinking from the fire hose, so to speak! But it was so thrilling because I was taking my own stuff out to get it made at a factory for the first time. Since then, I’ve been to Hong Kong over and over… Southeast Asia is my favourite place in the world. I love travelling there and working with the people; I love the culture. In any case, that’s primarily why I switched to the manufacturing side: to learn how things were made.

After that, I joined a specialty company – a startup called Learning Curve. I began there as a designer and left as Head of Development. We did a lot of things like Thomas the Tank Engine wooden railways… We grew that quite a bit. We also did a ground-up development for Chuggington. We did that as a small group: the character, the IP, the whole 360-degree experience. It worked really well.

Enormously well, even?
Enormously well, yes! Ha! We had great success right out of the gate. That’s why I had to go when I got a call from Hasbro. They were doing exactly what I love to do. I was there for about ten years. After Hasbro, I decided I wanted to use all my experience to parlay into a smaller organisation so that I could have a true impact on culture, innovation and company direction… And I’ve been here at PlayMonster for six years. And it’s like they say: time flies when you’re having fun. It’s true. Time passes by in a heartbeat.

Perfect! What’s next for PlayMonster, Gary?
Well, as I said, we move fast! We’re small and can take risks that maybe other companies won’t… So we’ll continue to innovate in the categories that we currently play in: games, arts, crafts and activities, and outdoor play. Beyond that, I probably can’t say too much, but I can tell you that we’ll kick the can over and be disruptive in any endeavour we take on…

That sounds – with my winkling hat on – like there’s something you might want to announce a little closer to Toy Fair… Something in the offing?
Could be!

Ha! Well, I wont harangue you! Make sure we get a news release about it though… Always happy to run a story. Alrighty… Let’s wrap it up with this: what, Gary, is the most interesting object in your office or on your desk?
Well, it’s the end of the week and my office is a mess. I’ve got a lot of random stuff. Oh! I have some human tongues…

Of course you do. May I rest in the knowledge that they’re rubber?
Ha! Yes! They’re anatomically correct, though. I can’t tell you why they’re there… But they’re like fidget toys when I’m on like a call at the moment. I get one of two reactions when I’m on a video call: “That’s cool!” or “Oh my God! That’s gross!”

Well, now’s the time for people to call and tell you to hold your tongue! Ha! And on that note: thank you, Gary: come back any time.

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