Toy Inventor In His Lair
For 25 years, Bruce Lund and his small band of workers have been dreaming up toys that have thrilled kids around the globe — hydrogen-powered rockets, talking microscopes, and one of the company’s most successful toys, the T.M.X. Elmo Extra Special Edition — the fuzzy, red toy that collapses into fits of giggles at the push of a button.
Lund’s prototypes are all built in his tiny River Forest factory, which, from the outside, is dental-office drab.
“Nobody stops by,” says Lund, 57. “We like it that way.”
If they did, they’d discover an extraordinary place, with a secret vault — and a combination-safe door — that contains about 3,500 hand-built prototypes.
And there’s a wonderfully messy, bright-green workshop, with benches strewn with bits of plastic, wires, batteries and general toy-doll carnage.
“I love a good mess — I really do,” Lund says, tossing a piece of junk plastic to the floor. “The messier it is, the more productive I feel we’re being.”
Any big idea he’s working on now? He offers only this tease: “It’s so lifelike. It captures life more completely than anyone has ever done. It will seem alive.”
Photo by Institute Of Design.
Jaclyn on February 6th, 2009 8:31 am
That sounds like a wonderfully awesome place to go to work everyday! can you imagine working with toy’s all day long and coming up with new way’s to keep kid’s amused and laughing…what could be any better then that job there!
cassy on February 7th, 2009 7:59 pm
wow great! thats a good place to visit specially for kids,coz its a lot of fun and excitement seeing different kind of toys its really fun and it will make you also forget your problem about the down economy for one day, that is really cool idea!
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