The secret weapon for toy and game companies, invention studios and design agencies are responsible for some of the industry’s most successful, and creative, launches from the last 12 months.

We caught up with figures from Bang Zoom, Open 2 Design and Sweet Spot Studio Inc to learn more about how 2018 was for them and what they think of the state of play moving into this year.

How was 2018 for you guys?  
Steve Fink, Owner, Bang Zoom: Can’t complain! We have been having a great time inventing in lots of toy and game categories.

Matt Burtonwood, Director, Open 2 Design: It’s been a great year. We always start the year with the plan to pick up a couple of new clients and find some new people to work with and through a couple of things this year we’ve managed to do that. A big part of that was the Mojo Pitch event. We tend to just sit at our desks squirrelling away in the studio 99% of the time, so the chance to get out and meet people was really appreciated. It also helped us put a line in the sand on some of our inventor ideas and gave things a bit of focus.

Jon and Sarah Vanderbeek, Co-Founders, Sweet Spot Studio Inc: 2018 was even more pivotal than 2017 was for us. We’ve been able to spend more time on stuff that we consider important to the business. We’re looking at big picture stuff and technologies with a level clarity that we haven’t had before. There are other leading design agencies that are awesome, and previously we felt if we compete on their level, we lose. But recently, we’re starting to realise that we can swing just as hard as companies that have previously been our heroes. We’ve built our launching pad and now is the time to get to work.

What’s been some of your big successes (that you can tell us about!)?
Jon and Sarah Vanderbeek, Co-Founders, Sweet Spot Studio Inc: Our Thomas products with Fisher-Price hit the shelves in 2018. We picked up an award from Mattel for one of those. We’ve got a big thing coming up with Hasbro, we’ve licensed product with Moose and Spin Master for the first time. Up to now, we’d licensed to Hasbro, Mattel and a bunch of smaller companies, so we’ve probably more than doubled the number of companies we’re working with over the last 12 months.

Matt Burtonwood, Director, Open 2 Design: We managed to get something picked up for development at the Mojo Pitch event. That felt like a big vote of confidence in what we do. Work for hire we always be the heart of what we do, but this year we wanted to start putting our toe in the water in the inventor space and see if we had something to offer. Like a lot of agencies, and creatives in general, we all think we’re sitting on a great idea. So it was nice to put some time into a few things and see how they went down.

Steve Fink, Owner, Bang Zoom: Bang Zoom had some fun stuff shipping in 2018!  Treasure X from Moose is exciting because it’s another boys brand we get to partner with the amazing players at Moose on. We are also proud to have Little Live Pets Hatching Dragon and Rollie My Kissing Puppy with Moose too.  One of my favourite Barbie dolls we have invented also shipped last year, Flying Wings Fairy (the wings fly off the doll like a real butterfly).  We also invented a new doll line, Hairdorables, by Just Play, is off to a great start.  Just Play really knocked the styling and design for these dolls out of the park.  A very BIG item we have out is the Jurassic Rex Imaginext set by Fisher Price…it’s huge!  Then we have some new games, like Chow Crown and Speech Breaker, both by Hasbro. Chow Crown is crazy; it’s like the weirdest, funniest food challenge game.

How do you assess the state of creativity in the industry at present?
Jon and Sarah Vanderbeek, Co-Founders, Sweet Spot Studio Inc: It seems that companies are playing it safe, but then in the games space, it feels like we’re back in the Eighties with these crazy pooping games like Flushin Frenzy and Don’t Step in It, which are really creative. So in games, there’s lots of creative stuff going on. But the industry has to be super, super creative moving forward to get over the huge pinch of costs we’re facing, because I think the industry is getting too expensive – you won’t be able to do a $20 item soon with anything in it. So it is getting more creative in some ways, but safer in others.

Matt Burtonwood, Director, Open 2 Design: I’m really interested at how tech is finally starting to find its place in toys in a compelling way. Previously it’s all felt a bit superficial. I wonder if the lack of physical shelf space in bricks and mortar stores has made it less of an issue for buyers to work out what aisle to stick the product in. I’ve seen two presentations from Tech Will Save Us this year and they have blown me away. I have kids at the right age so I’m looking for that kind of thing, but it’s been hard to find things at the right age grade.

Steve Fink, Owner, Bang Zoom: Creativity-wise I assess it as “awesome to very awesome.”  There’s so much cool stuff out there, and seems to keep coming.  It’s very exciting to walk the aisles of retail and see new things pop up all the time.  The Girls category in particular is a creativity festival!

What’s been the biggest change to the way you work as an agency over the last five years?
Steve Fink, Owner, Bang Zoom: We are much more strategic and focused over the last five years. We are still all over the place and bouncing off the walls, but there’s much more of a method to our madness vs. five years ago.

Matt Burtonwood, Director, Open 2 Design: We drink more coffee. My Cintiq has got bigger. I feel like not much else has changed! We still get up do the same thing and go home. It’s an awesome job. I guess we’re doing less by hand, more digitally. But essentially it’s a swap of pens for stylus. The process is still much the same.

Jon and Sarah Vanderbeek, Co-Founders, Sweet Spot Studio Inc: We focus more and we’re more selective in what we work on and who we work with. We started out in Halloween and giftware. We did severed body parts, packaging for first aid kits, anything to survive! After the first five years of doing anything, the next five years we decided to focus on the toy stuff that we were good at. Recently, it’s become more targeted on Star Wars, Marvel, Thomas, vehicles and strategic partnerships.

Can you tell us about anything from you guys that’ll be hitting shelves in 2019?
Steve Fink, Owner, Bang Zoom: We have some crazy sh*t coming out this year which I’d love to tell you about, but those darn attorneys made us sign NDAs.

Matt Burtonwood, Director, Open 2 Design: We have a cool ride-on thing coming out – I’m looking forward to seeing how that turned out. Then we have a couple of lines that are tied to TV show launches and hopefully a couple of our own things too. Fingers crossed!
 
Jon and Sarah Vanderbeek, Co-Founders, Sweet Spot Studio Inc: We have something very exciting coming with Hasbro. I can’t say much about it other than they claim we’ve given them the ‘Holy Grail’ for Spider-Man. And it’s a technology that can be licensed to the whole company and other brands. We also have an item with Spin Master as part of the Air Hogs line that’s cool and a plush item with Moose. We’ll have more out this year, with more companies, than we had in 2018, and then a lot more in 2020.

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At this year’s Mattel Inventor Showcase, Michigan-based invention house Sweet Spot Studio Inc scooped the Toy of the Year award.

The award was given to the firm, run by Jon and Sarah Vanderbeek, for their work on the Fisher-Price Thomas & Friends TrackMaster Dino Escape set.

Having both been mentored under toy legends at Bang Zoom Design and The Obb, the Vanderbeek’s have gone on to develop major brand launches for IP spanning Jurassic Park, Nerf, Thomas the Train and Hot Wheels, and also spread the love for invention by putting on STEAM workshops with kids from local schools in their town of Saugatuck.

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Jon and Sarah Vanderbeek are the founders of Sweet Spot Studio, a Michigan-based invention house responsible for creating a raft of popular lines for the likes of Mattel, Hasbro and Fisher-Price since launching back in 2006.

Having both been mentored under toy legends at Bang Zoom Design and The Obb, the Vanderbeek’s have gone on to develop major brand launches for IP spanning Jurassic Park, Nerf, Thomas the Train and Hot Wheels, and also spread the love for invention by putting on STEAM workshops with kids from local schools in their town of Saugatuck.

Off the back of a stellar 2017, we spoke with the duo to find out more on their history in toy design, as well as look at the some of the firm’s highlights over the last 12 months.

How did Sweet Spot Studio come to be?
Sarah and I met back in 1995 and got into the University of Cincinnati’s Design, Arts, Architecture and Planning’s Industrial design program.  Through this program, we both took internships with some of the leading toy inventors of the time, brainstorming toys and using design skills to create presentations or models of new ideas.

Sarah worked with the sons of the founder of ColorForms at Kiscom (Kislevitz Brothers), later to be renamed, The Obb.  I got my internship at a place called Bang Zoom in Cincinnati and was mentored by founder, Mike Hoeting.  I discovered a love for making mechanical, working toy prototypes at Bang Zoom and other internships around the country. After I graduated in 2000, I took a job at Sarah’s old internship called The Obb. Sarah did another year of University and was taught by Mike Hoeting, so our “toy paths” once again would cross-pollinate.

After she graduated in 2001, Sarah got a design manager position at a giftware company called Russ Berrie. After six years of traditional employment in the NYC metro area, we decided to quit our jobs and start our own design company. Much of our reasoning and drive stemmed from our personal desires to have a family with relative freedom, but also our converged childhood dreams of being artists, designers, musicians, etc that pursue a dream and work hard at it.

We called it Sweet Spot Studio, Inc because we always hear the term “sweet spot” in meetings. Everyone is always trying to hit the “sweet spot” with marketing, sales, development, etc.  We immediately started working as design and engineering consultants with Mattel, Hasbro, Spin Master, Great Planes and other toy companies, while doing art direction, development and graphics for the likes of Russ Berrie, Amscam and Rubie’s in more seasonal markets.

For 12 years, we have been placing our own inventions with the same clients, but only recently have gained traction with more mass market high volume items.

How do you stay creative?
It’s like discipline. It’s completely necessary to execute a job so we find it and work at it and keep it alive. It’s important to realise when to be creative because it can get in the way during certain tasks of which were already figured out during a creative process.  I have learned more about when not to be creative to be perfectly candid. Creativity is a necessity, but you have to know when to turn it off or steer it in an appropriate direction.

Is there one element that unites everything that Sweet Spot Studio has created?
There’s a lot of personal interests driving our daily business and right now most of what we do is in toys and I’m most excited about toys that do something cool. We work on actions, performances, dynamics, stunts and features that help bring a toy to life through electronics, mechanisms, effects and whatever we can discover along these creative paths. We want to do something that hasn’t been done before, to innovate and be productive.

In terms of industry evolution, what’s been the biggest thing to impact the firm since you launched?
Lower cost rapid prototyping has both enhanced what we can deliver but also has antiquated some beautifully sophisticated skill-sets that we used to be able to capitalise on. In other words, why make it by hand when you can print it?

It still important to know the ‘old school’ model making methods and techniques, but I am very glad we keep up with technology because it surpasses us every year and will make us irrelevant if we become complacent.

How has the last 12 months been for Sweet Spot Studio?
This last 12 months feels like a pivot point for us.  We have placed some of the leading items for 2018 and have several items doing well on the shelf for 2017 so we feel stronger than ever. On a personal and professional basis, our last 12 months has been fantastic. We have done more on our own invention in the last 24 months than the previous eight years, so we feel like we’re on a proverbial launching pad of our dreams.

It’s such a tough business to license to the largest toy companies in the world but the last 12 years is telling me that we are a part of this business and belong here.

Do you think the toy space is in a good place creatively at present?
The technologies you see out there are giving us opportunities in the $60 to $100 space that I could only dream of before. I see some really cool stuff coming out for 2018 in this space. The near $50 price points continue to deliver great creative developments. We are challenged more than ever on $20 and under to come up with something compelling but feasible.

The higher price points seem to be development heavy and the lower price points need some serious creativity to deliver great toys.  Higher costs of production make it harder and harder every year but we battle all obstacles with cunning creativity in this business.

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