#254: This Game Unites Boomers to Gen Alpha and It All Started in a Third-Grade Classroom with Tim Walsh
What if a simple classroom activity could unite generations across decades? In this episode of Making It in the Toy Industry, we’re celebrating 30 years of Blurt with its inventor, Tim Walsh, and uncovering the incredible story behind the game that connects Boomers to Gen Alpha.
Discover how a third-grade classroom exercise—reading dictionary definitions aloud—sparked the creation of a timeless game that’s built kids’ vocabularies, brought families together, and even supported memory retention for older adults. Tim takes us through the evolution of Blurt, from its humble beginnings as a prototype called DeFUNitions to becoming a household staple.
But this episode isn’t just about one game. It’s about the unsung heroes of the toy industry—inventors who remain “criminally unrecognized” despite shaping cultural phenomena like UNO and LEGO. Tim and I explore why toy creators deserve the same recognition as musicians and authors, how Euro games are leading the way in celebrating designers, and what the industry can learn from them.
Tim also shares invaluable lessons for aspiring toy creators: why resilience and persistence are critical, why timing can make or break a product, and why you should always focus on generating multiple ideas instead of pinning your hopes on just one. You’ll also hear how toys like Operation have inspired careers in fields like healthcare and engineering and how play is essential for creativity, connection, and overcoming life’s challenges.
Whether you’re a toy enthusiast, an entrepreneur, or someone who values the power of play, this episode will leave you inspired to think differently about toys—and the brilliant minds behind them.
Listen For These Important Moments
[01:44] - The Surprising Anonymity of Toy Designers
[04:16] - The Origin Story of Blurt
[07:33] - Blurt's Impact and Evolution
[21:58] - Challenges and Successes in the Toy Industry
[24:10] - The Power of Play in Creativity and Connection
[26:17] - Insights from Toyland: Interviews with Legendary Inventors
[28:33] - The Concept of 'Entreplayneur' and Embracing Playfulness
[34:31] - Play Throughout Life: Lessons from Blurt and Beyond
[38:12] - Advice for Aspiring Toy and Game Inventors
[40:40] - The Influence of Childhood Toys on Future Careers
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This episode is brought to you by www.thetoycoach.com
Check out Tim Walsh’s website at: https://www.theplaymakers.com
Connect with Tim Walsh online by clicking here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seizetheplay/
Get your own Blurt! at Amazon: https://amzn.to/3DVTQ0v
Check out this book by Stuart Brown & Christopher Vaughan about how play shapes us and how we connect: https://amzn.to/4jegQrQ
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Making It In The Toy Industry, a podcast for inventors, entrepreneurs, and makers like you. And now your host, Azhelle Wade.
[00:00:22] Azhelle Wade: Hey there, toy people, Azhelle Wade here. And welcome back to another episode of Making It In The Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by thetoycoach.com.
[00:00:31] Azhelle Wade: Today we are celebrating the legacy of Blurt with none other than Tim Walsh. Tim is a well known game designer, award winning filmmaker, best selling author, professional speaker whose work has sold over 7 million copies worldwide. His books including Timeless Toys, the Right Brain Red have all been praised by the Wall Street Journal and NPR, and his films such as 'Toyland' and 'Operation: The Power of Play' have earned Best Documentary Awards across the U. S. And of course, Tim is the mastermind behind the shout it out party game Blurt, which is celebrating its 30 years of connecting families, friends, and classrooms. Let's dive into the evolution of Blurt and welcome Tim Walsh to the show. Welcome, Tim.
[00:01:13] Tim Walsh: Azhelle, so great to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:16] Azhelle Wade: So happy to have you here.
[00:01:17] Azhelle Wade: You are such a legend, so this is a great, this is a great opportunity for me. Thank you for coming on the show.
[00:01:25] Tim Walsh: Absolutely. You're crushing it, by the way. I know you'll probably blush, but you're doing great. I just love to watch your stuff.
[00:01:34] Azhelle Wade: Oh, thanks so much. I'm trying, I'm trying to find my voice. I think I'm finding it. I'm getting really close.
[00:01:39] Tim Walsh: Oh, yes, you are. Thank you.
[00:01:40] Azhelle Wade: So I'd love to kick this off with asking you to finish this sentence for me. The thing that surprised me most about the toy industry was...
[00:01:47] Tim Walsh: How anonymous toy designers are. I got into the industry when I was a freshman in college because Trivial Pursuit exploded in 1984 when I was a freshman with some buddies.
[00:01:58] Tim Walsh: And we thought, 'Oh, we should invent a game. We heard that the inventors of Trivial Pursuit like own golf courses now and race horses, and they're just so successful.' It is true, yeah, two of the inventors of, yeah, two of the inventors of Trivial Pursuit went to our college, Colgate, where we went to school.
[00:02:17] Tim Walsh: And we heard about them, and were unaware of them, and then we didn't have an idea for a game. And then a couple years later, Pictionary comes out and is huge. And that's sort of what got us into the game industry. And in the process of trying to promote my own games, I would go on radio stations, and they said, 'Well, we need another reason to have you on other than just to promote your game.'
[00:02:38] Tim Walsh: So I started to do research on where did Play Doh come from and where did Monopoly come from? And it's just amazing to me that if you create a piece of music that sells a million copies, you get a platinum record. And if you write a book that sells a million copies, Oh my gosh, that's a New York times bestseller many times over.
[00:02:55] Tim Walsh: But if you're Merle Robbins, a barber from Cincinnati and you invent UNO and UNO hasn't sold a million or ten or twenty but like a hundred and fifty million times platinum and no one has heard of Merle Robbins. It's just, it's a crime of the joy that these inventors have given people. So a lot of my projects have been trying to celebrate toy and game designers.
[00:03:22] Azhelle Wade: Oh, that's so awesome. That's so funny and so true. Was that your quote? Comparing selling a million toys and games to a million streams?
[00:03:30] Tim Walsh: Yes, that. Mary Couzin often quotes me when she says that. You know, if you ask any of your listeners, if you ask them to come up with a hundred musicians or a hundred authors or a hundred actors off the top of their head in a room with no internet access.
[00:03:44] Tim Walsh: Everyone can do it. But I don't think they could name five toy or game designers. And yet, when you look at the impact of Barbie and Monopoly and Lego and Slinky, it's just, these people are criminally unrecognized, I think.
[00:03:59] Azhelle Wade: Oh, wow. What a good quote. Okay. So one, I've heard that quote before. I didn't know it came from you. And then ' criminally unrecognized'. That is, that's good. Yeah, that's
[00:04:10] Tim Walsh: Hyperbole!
[00:04:11] Azhelle Wade: It's so true. Why is it like that? So true. So tell us a little bit about Blurt. It's celebrating its 30th anniversary. Congratulations.
[00:04:21] Tim Walsh: Thank you very much.
[00:04:22] Azhelle Wade: Can you take us back to the origin story. What inspired this game?
[00:04:26] Tim Walsh: Yes, because it really taught me the power of play. I was dating a woman who was a teacher. Third grade teacher, she asked me to come into her classroom and my job was very simple. I had to read to four or five third graders. So they're about eight years old. And while she tested other kids elsewhere in the school or the next, next room over. And I was failing miserably at that job because they had heard every single book I pulled off the shelf.
[00:04:50] Tim Walsh: They'd already heard. And Azhelle, if you know eight year olds, they do not hide their discontent, right? Their eyes are rolling. And they're just like, "Ugh!", just miserable. "This guy's the worst!", "This is, oh, this guy, oh." And so out of total desperation, I grabbed a children's dictionary off the shelf. And I was desperate.
[00:05:09] Tim Walsh: And I was like, "Alright, I'm gonna quiz you." And I said, okay. But instead of asking the word, I read the definition. And I remember the first one was the nuts of an oak tree. And this kid said, "Oak nuts!". And I said, "No, it's an acorn." But that's funny. I don't know why it's not called an oak nut. And then I turned a couple pages to the B section and literally said, "Okay, what's the word for the first meal of the day?"
[00:05:32] Tim Walsh: And this kid said, "Waffles!" I said, "I'm looking for breakfast, but that's funny too!" And it was literally right then and there. I was like, this is a great idea for a game. Cause I already had at that time, a game called 'Tribond' which was my first game with two friends, Dave Urich and Ed Mussini. But the real transformative thing for me was, five seconds earlier, they were literally, wanted nothing to do with me.
[00:06:00] Tim Walsh: Had no interest in anything I was saying. And then it was like, "Give us another one!" And they went from...
[00:06:04] Azhelle Wade: "They wanted nothing to do with me."
[00:06:06] Tim Walsh: Seriously, and they were like leaning on the edge of their chairs like "Give us another one!" And I was like, "Wow, that's the power of play to engage kids." It was pretty amazing.
[00:06:16] Tim Walsh: I went home and came up with a prototype called "DeFUNitions".
[00:06:21] Azhelle Wade: Okay, that's cute. Play on words.
[00:06:24] Tim Walsh: Here it is.
[00:06:25] Azhelle Wade: Oh my gosh, that's really good.
[00:06:27] Tim Walsh: The actual prototype.
[00:06:30] Azhelle Wade: Wow.
[00:06:30] Tim Walsh: This was before the internet, so this is like all glued together and hand typed.
[00:06:37] Azhelle Wade: No doom scrolling, taking away the time. Wow, that looks great.
[00:06:43] Tim Walsh: That was ;93, and then it came out eventually in ;94, so this is our 30th year, so it's been great.
[00:06:50] Azhelle Wade: What's the game now? What's the game play? The final, real.
[00:06:53] Tim Walsh: The final game play is, well, this is the, this is what it looks like now, the 30th anniversary.
[00:06:58] Azhelle Wade: Ooh, fancy!
[00:06:59] Tim Walsh: So there are two, there's cards, and there's a harder side and an easier side, and you roll the die which determines which clue you read, and everyone's playing at the same time, so there's no sitting out.
[00:07:09] Tim Walsh: And you read a definition slowly, and the first one to blurt out the word advances in the game. And then there's opportunities to send people backwards. And so for kids, it teaches them new words, vocabulary. I did not anticipate it being a party game for adults. Because adults know probably 99 percent of these words.
[00:07:29] Tim Walsh: It's just, are you going to blurt it out first?
[00:07:32] Azhelle Wade: Oh, that's so fun. How has Blurt Impacted families, schools, or communities? Do you have any favorite stories of an experience the game had on these families or how it brought people together?
[00:07:44] Tim Walsh: Yeah. So many stories, you know, a lot of teachers use it in the classroom because it's frowned upon to blurt in the classroom, I must say, so teachers use it as a reward. So no, you know, you got to raise your hand during the school day. But if you're good and you don't blurt out answers during the school day, we'll play blurt at the end of the day and where you're allowed to blurt out answers.
[00:08:06] Azhelle Wade: That is hilarious.
[00:08:08] Tim Walsh: And I just love the stories. I got a letter from a guy once and this, this is how you know it's been a few years. He said, "I'm an architect now, and my favorite game growing up was Blurt" I was like, wow, I feel really old. Uh, but it was, it was exciting, you know, and I got,
[00:08:26] Azhelle Wade: You know, I was thinking when you were telling your story, I was like, "Oh, I was too young to even play this game when he was testing it on these kids." I was like, Oh, that's interesting. Time, man. Time is crazy. Yeah.
[00:08:38] Tim Walsh: I'm just thrilled that families enjoy it. You know, I got one Thanksgiving, I was, uh, you know, after you eat, you're kind of comatose and I was scrolling through Instagram or something and I found someone had posted their family around the table and there's all these leftovers and they're playing Blurt and I, I didn't know who they were, but it was just like, you know, to be invited into their home and be a part of their family celebration, that's pretty cool.
[00:09:02] Azhelle Wade: I'm sorry, you've got me stuck on this. Why can you sell a million books and be a best selling author and not? I'm stuck. We've got to figure it out. What is it? Because I don't believe that it's clearly not that your game Blurt Isn't having the impact of a best selling book but is it our industry kind of failing to uplift the items that do sell so well or do have such impact?
[00:09:23] Azhelle Wade: What is like, what is it that we're missing? Like they, New York, New York bestsellers, they have the New York Times that can lift this book. What is it that we're missing?
[00:09:33] Tim Walsh: Well, I think it's changing. And Mary Couzin had a lot to do that for people that don't know. Mary, I listened to your podcast with, with her a while back.
[00:09:40] Tim Walsh: She's been very vocal about promoting inventors. You know, with Blurt, Educational Insights, the company that does that game, has put a lot of inventors on the side of their boxes. I remember when I first broke into the industry, Marvin Glass, the famous designer from the 60s and 70s, was the only person that had the clout to have their name or their logo on the side of a box. And then years later, Brian Hirsch, who invented Outburst and a few other games, he got his logo and it was a big deal because inventors were really anonymous. It was the companies that took the forefront, right? It would be the analogy I've used in the past is imagine the White Album by Apple Records, not the Beatles.
[00:10:24] Azhelle Wade: Oh, interesting.
[00:10:25] Tim Walsh: You would never do that. You know, you wouldn't say this is Top Gun, the hottest movie of the year. Oh, that's so interesting. And it's, and it's by Universal, you know, it's not, it's Tom Cruise.
[00:10:35] Azhelle Wade: Oh, that's interesting.
[00:10:37] Tim Walsh: So, you know, it's funny how that works, but I think it's changing. The Euro games. The games from Europe that people refer to as Euro Games have started putting authors on the side of the box or designers on the side of the box for some years now. You know, I don't look at myself as I wish I was more known. A million is a really a great number and that's wonderful. But when you look at like UNO or LEGO, I mean, when something has sold over a hundred million copies, to use a music analogy, you're in the realm of like the Beatles, Elvis, Taylor Swift, The Eagle.
[00:11:09] Tim Walsh: I mean, there's the impact.
[00:11:10] Azhelle Wade: You're never working again, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't have to ever work again.
[00:11:14] Tim Walsh: Yeah. To your question, I think maybe it might be our culture that we value work. We have expressions like good work, way to work. We, you know, don't play with that, quit playing around. I think there's a negative, a negative connotation with play where it's frivolous to the point where if you make, is it a tchotchke or just a throwaway thing?
[00:11:34] Tim Walsh: But my goodness, when you think about the value of play and what it does for people, I think we need to do a better job of making toys and games and their designers better known.
[00:11:44] Azhelle Wade: There are a couple of companies. That I've talked to that are trying to copy the music industry's model and bring it into the toy world, I wonder if they'll be successful but put those companies aside what you made me realize is like The Beatles for example .There's a record label who is building them up as a brand right while helping them release this album. So, maybe it's us as an industry if a manufacturer or toy company sees an inventor who they're like, well, I really believe in this person.
[00:12:10] Azhelle Wade: Let me sign them and then tell them we're going to build them up as a brand that which will help lift anything that they create, which will benefit them and benefit us. Maybe that's like the next step. Like a picture on the back of the box is great, but how many people are going to put that over, understand what that means, but like, if it's not just a picture on the back of the box, but it's like a full spread explaining this inventor and why they made this, you know, and the story and, you know, every, and it's building the brand.
[00:12:36] Azhelle Wade: That's where the shift, I think, is going to happen, right? And you're just making me think, and I'm loving it.
[00:12:41] Tim Walsh: Yeah, Mary and I have talked about trying to replicate the platinum. Gold is 500, 000 in the music world. Platinum's a million, et cetera. Could we do that in toys? And would toy companies disclose their sales volume?
[00:12:54] Tim Walsh: Because a lot of times they don't want to do that. And then there's the reporting agencies. I know in the past Walmart didn't want to disclose what they were selling, so there are definitely some hurdles in terms of how do you get a real count of how many units a game has sold. Like for my games with Blurt, at the time I was working for Patch Products, now they're called PlayMonster, but we subscribed to NPD data, which showed the hard sales from the retailers.
[00:13:18] Tim Walsh: So there are some hurdles, but I think it's worth pursuing.
[00:13:20] Azhelle Wade: Yeah, I mean, it's just an interesting concept. If companies invested in an inventor's brand and like had exclusive rights to sign with that inventor made, that would just be an interesting angle, like a very music label. Yeah,
[00:13:33] Tim Walsh: Yeah, I think it probably is more analogous to authors, right?
[00:13:37] Tim Walsh: Because In the music world, especially when MTV came out, the music world, it's very visual, even though it's an auditory world. Music videos and it's not an accident that people like Taylor Swift and Beyonce are also look like supermodels in addition to being hyper talented.
[00:13:55] Tim Walsh: And same thing with actors, you know, it's a visual medium.
[00:13:58] Tim Walsh: Games are, we're in the living room, you know, it's just the game. So it's more analogous to books, but certainly the book industry does a very good job at promoting authors and doing book signings in stores and book tours. It'd be nice to have a game tour or a toy tour or a toy signing in a toy store.
[00:14:16] Azhelle Wade: A toy signing! Yes! There you go, that's an idea, there we go, that's it.
[00:14:23] Tim Walsh: When I first took my book, Timeless Toys, to ChiTag, John Spinello was, I just met him and we kind of clicked and he's a friend of mine. So he came to my booth at ChiTag and he would sign the Operation Chapter of Timeless Toys. And I'm telling you, people lined up. And it was like Wayne's World where they were like, we're not worthy. People were like, so excited to meet him and play with the prototype for operation. And I really think that a toy tour or a game tour could be something big.
[00:14:57] Azhelle Wade: Yes. And companies listening, this can help. If you're going to release another product with that inventor, this will only help drive the sale. Just saying. That's so good. I'm sorry. I wanted to go back to that because I felt like there was something here and I'm glad we did because we, we really got somewhere. I love that. What does it feel like when you actually see people enjoying your game and different ages from younger kids to their grandparents?
[00:15:20] Azhelle Wade: What does that feel like?
[00:15:22] Tim Walsh: It's awesome, you know, and, and unexpected, you know, Blurt came out of a third grade classroom, so I thought this is a vocabulary game for kids, and that's all it is, and over the years, a lot of adults played it as a party game, and then I've gotten letters from speech therapists and people that work with older folks that are in memory care, where their processing is slower, because a lot of what Blurt is, is picturing what is being said, and then your brain has to come up with the word.
[00:15:48] Tim Walsh: So, you know, if I said the hair on a man's upper lip, you, you have to click the, Oh, that's what's that word called. You know, and I remember playing with some older folks once and it was, uh, the clue I gave was the, the round window and the side of a boat and this woman yelled out, well, it's 'porthole' and this woman yelled out 'pothole' and everyone laughed.
[00:16:12] Tim Walsh: And then this other woman yelled out 'porthole' and she got it right. And then there was like this pause and this older gentleman was like, he raised his hand and I was like, yes, sir. And he said, "I need this game. I was in the Navy for 25 years. How in the world did I not get porthole before her?" You know, and he was like, "I need this game."
[00:16:36] Tim Walsh: So it's fun to have all kinds of different ages playing it and enjoying it.
[00:16:40] Azhelle Wade: Oh, that's so cool. Has like the longevity of Blurt surprised you? Yeah.
[00:16:44] Tim Walsh: Yes, 30 years.
[00:16:48] Azhelle Wade: Y'all still selling that?
[00:16:51] Tim Walsh: Seriously. Yeah, we had, well, it was off the market for like three years. I'll make it brief. But basically, you know, I licensed it to the company I worked for, PlayMonster.
[00:17:00] Tim Walsh: They were called Patch Products then. And we sold it for nine or ten years. And that's when it was really big in Walmart and Target and Toys R Us. And then Mattel bought the rights to that game and Mad Gab and Tribond, and Mattel had the rights for three years, and they never released the game, but they paid me minimum royalties, thank you very much, that was very nice.
[00:17:21] Tim Walsh: But when I got it back
[00:17:22] Azhelle Wade: And probably at that point were pretty well established from your years of sales.
[00:17:25] Azhelle Wade: Yeah. Okay. Yes. Okay.
[00:17:28] Tim Walsh: But when I got it back, I was like, you know, I don't want to try. I want to get a company that is really more grassroots and that's I found Educational Insights and they've had it for many years since and it's just been wonderful.
[00:17:40] Tim Walsh: So they continue to sell it and do great with it. So I'm very thankful that it's been, uh, three decades.
[00:17:47] Azhelle Wade: Wild. Like that is the dream. One game. Just one, like for three decades. So it's Blurt only in the format that you showed me the blue box. Is there one that is like geared toward kids, one that's geared toward party night, or is it just the same game that you find people pick up for different reasons?
[00:18:04] Tim Walsh: Yeah, there's two sides of the cards. Obviously the blue side is easier for younger kids. And then the red side, if you're playing with adults, so it kind of grows with kids too. And then over the years, you know, we've had Bible Editions and Travel Editions. Educational Insights had a National Parks edition that was fun to write.
[00:18:22] Tim Walsh: So it was just all words kind of relating to hiking and mountains and national parks that was fun to put together. University Games does the game outside of North America, so they have a new version that's in New Zealand and Australia and the UK. Which is exciting, so. I showed you the game was originally called DeFUNitions and my girlfriend, who's now my wife of 29 years,
[00:18:46] Azhelle Wade: She was the same from the story?
[00:18:48] Tim Walsh: Yes, she was, my girlfriend is now my wife, so it's, but she was
[00:18:52] Azhelle Wade: From the kindergarten? I mean the kindergarten. The 8th grade, the 8th grade class?
[00:18:55] Tim Walsh: Yes, the 3rd grade class. No, not
[00:18:57] Azhelle Wade: 3rd grade. Sorry, they're 8 year olds, 3rd grade class.
[00:19:01] Tim Walsh: Yeah, but she was the one, she said, you cannot make a word game where you misspell a word as the title, that you cannot do that.
[00:19:09] Tim Walsh: And I was like, Yes, I was like, well, what am I going to call it? And, and there was a game called Outburst. And I always thought that was kind of a negative word that if you, if you have an outburst, that's kind of, but if you blurt with somebody, that's funny, you know, and I could not believe that the trademark was available.
[00:19:28] Azhelle Wade: That's how I felt about my name, my business. I was like, this is available?. Yeah. How come nobody got it?
[00:19:34] Tim Walsh: Yeah, so I've had the trademark for Blurt for 30 years now.
[00:19:37] Azhelle Wade: Okay, so Blurt has sold over 1. 25 million copies. That's a lot. Um, you know, maybe platinum. Who knows when we build back. And it's been around for 30 years.
[00:19:51] Azhelle Wade: When you're describing it to me, I can feel there's a different, there's an energy with it that could be addictive. But like, what do you think it is that makes Blurt so different from other word games out there? Why do you think it attracts people and pulls people in so much?
[00:20:07] Tim Walsh: Well, it's very simple, and I must say that my games tend to be simple.
[00:20:11] Tim Walsh: One of my favorite reviews of the game, so Tom Vassel, I know him, we met at a trade show a few years ago and we, I joked to him about this, but he reviewed Blurt a few years ago on his web or his YouTube channel, Dicetower. And he was not, he didn't like the game. He thought it was boring and kind of bland, which is fine.
[00:20:29] Tim Walsh: Cause everyone has their opinion, but it was the best worst review ever because he said, I just don't get it. I don't understand. This game is just seems so bland, but everyone that I played it with thought it was the greatest thing ever. And they had a great time, but I just don't really get it. I don't think, you know, but everyone in that like three or four times, he would say that he didn't care for it, but the people that played it thought it was so great.
[00:20:53] Tim Walsh: So the, the one thing I, and I'm not comparing myself to Jenga by any stretch of the imagination.
[00:20:59] Azhelle Wade: Leslie's about to call you.
[00:21:00] Tim Walsh: I tell you, but as a designer, when Jenga first came out, I was like, I don't get it. It's 54 pieces of wood! It's 54 pieces of wood! Why is this game selling so many and then I played it.
[00:21:14] Tim Walsh: And I told Leslie this story when I interviewed her. I said, it is the, probably the greatest game ever designed. It's got gravity and tension and all these things. So for Blurt, I just think it's that, the simplicity of, you know, hearing and then processing and then trying to be first. And when people are trying to be first, they Blurt out funny things, which creates a lot of humor.
[00:21:35] Tim Walsh: Um, So I think that probably has something to do with it. And listening, you know, a lot of teachers don't talk about the vocabulary that it's building as much as they talk about it teaches kids to listen because you can't play the game unless you're really listening to what's being spoken.
[00:21:55] Azhelle Wade: Oh, that's really good. Huh. Great. Have there been any challenges in keeping Blurt relevant all these years?
[00:22:03] Tim Walsh: Oh, sure. You know, it's We You know, the game industry is interesting and different than toys in that the bar of entry is very low. Anyone can create a game. Not anyone can create a toy. You know, there's tooling often, and it's much more difficult to come up with, with a toy.
[00:22:21] Tim Walsh: Games are sort of the low hanging fruit of the toy industry. So unless you really are going to market a game quite a bit, it's not going to sell. Because the other thing about toys is if I look at a plush or I look at a science kit, or I look at a ball, I know what that is and what I do with it. A lot of times instinctually.
[00:22:39] Tim Walsh: A game, I have no idea how that plays. Unless I play it or flip it over. So I think games take more marketing. So, oh my goodness, the number of hours that I have spent playing Blurt on radio stations and in stores. And I probably have said the nut of an oak tree, I don't know, a hundred thousand times in my life over 30 years, but no, it's been great.
[00:22:59] Tim Walsh: We've had a couple of high points that I can remember is, is Literacy Volunteers of America. We were able at the heyday. When Blurt was in all the mass market stores, my company gave $50, 000 of our royalties to Literacy Volunteers of America to help teach people to read a lot of English as a second language, because a lot of people that are just learning English use Blurt because it's, again, you're, you hear sort of the setup and you have to come up with the word and then I got to give my hats off to Educational Insights in 2018, they got Blurt in Chick-Fil-A as a happy meal, or I guess they call it a kid's meal in Chick-Fil-A.
[00:23:40] Tim Walsh: So that was incredible because it was designed in a school here in Sarasota, Florida. And I drove to the Chick-Fil-A like one mile from the school where the inspiration came. And then here I am, whatever, 28 years later or something at the time, driving through the drive thru and getting a little mini Blurt game in my, in my chicken nugget meal.
[00:23:59] Tim Walsh: So I thought, oh my gosh, this is a full circle moment.
[00:24:02] Azhelle Wade: Is it in Chick-Fil-A now?
[00:24:04] Tim Walsh: No, no, this was 2018 where they had, they did a, they did a promotion. So that was fun.
[00:24:08] Azhelle Wade: That's very cool. All right. I'd love to move on and talk more about the power of play in creativity, connection, and design. So some people, like you were saying earlier, often dismiss the idea of play as being frivolous, but you built an entire career and business proven otherwise. Why is play such a powerful force for connection and creativity, in your opinion?
[00:24:32] Tim Walsh: Well, it's kind of hard to overstate how important it is for connection. I mean, that's how kids socialize one another is through play. And kids that aren't socialized and don't get a chance to play are just miserable kids because they don't have a relationship with their peers.
[00:24:47] Tim Walsh: And it's kind of like we have rough edges when we're kids and we don't know how hard we can play. Push someone and not hurt them or kids rub up against each other and they round off their rough edges, right? And it's just so sad. Like if you read Stuart Brown's work on play deprived kids, I mean, kids that don't play grow up to be uh, really, uh, they have no resiliency. They, they have no friends. It's just such a sad, sad story. So it's really how we connect as humans is, is through that play bond. And then in terms of creativity, I think talk to any creative person. They say, well, you can't be afraid to fail, right? If you're in a creative industry and you come up with an idea and the boss says that's stupid, that's not a very creative place.
[00:25:32] Tim Walsh: And it's not a place that's open to creativity because there's too much judgment. Play is low risk, right? Kids and animals play to practice for adulthood and it's very low risk for them because if you have a really bad idea as a kid, it's a little too dangerous. You want that idea to die so that you don't die, right?
[00:25:53] Tim Walsh: That's the sort of the 20, 000 foot view of this is low risk. We need to allow for failure and let kids get their bumps and bruises, and that's how they grow up. So for creativity, my goodness, if you have a playful attitude, it's all the difference in the world. There are no bad ideas. There is no such thing as failure.
[00:26:10] Tim Walsh: It's just that's not the direction we're going to go. We're going to try this. So I think from a creativity standpoint, play is just indisposable.
[00:26:17] Azhelle Wade: When you did the film Toyland in 2013, did you learn anything about the impact of play while doing that project?
[00:26:25] Tim Walsh: Oh, yeah, because I interviewed just these legendary inventors It was such a what a blessing to uh, you know I spoke to Milton Levine the inventor of ant farm before he passed and Betty James the developer of Slinky, what a legend she is.
[00:26:39] Tim Walsh: I mean she was running a company in 1960 long before there were female executives doing what she was doing. I mean she's, her story alone was worth just talking and sitting down with her and Eddie Goldfarb and just everyone. It was just, what I learned really is just the creativity of people that, that harness the power of play.
[00:26:58] Tim Walsh: Like one example is Ren Geyer, who I, I know you know. So he was the co developer of the Twister game and also a Nerf, the Nerf ball. So he's doing okay for himself. He's doing well. I didn't know anything about him other than that he created those two things. So I take a film crew to his house, which is in Gasparilla Island, not too far from where I am right now.
[00:27:22] Tim Walsh: We go there and he goes, "Well, let's go upstairs and we'll talk upstairs. We'll set up the cameras up there." So I'm walking up the steps and on either side of the stairwell, there are all these gold and silver record awards. And I'm like, "Ren, what, what?" And he said, "Oh, my daughter and I formed a music company in Nashville and we, we, we've had some success."
[00:27:43] Tim Walsh: He's won a Grammy. Yeah. So I'm like, what? Then we get up the stairs and I'm looking around his studio and there's all these prototypes and, you know, obviously it's a toy place and I go, what's that? And it was the Sunday system was this box on the top shelf of his bookshelf and it didn't look like a game.
[00:28:05] Tim Walsh: And he goes, "Oh, it's a, I have dyslexia. My, uh, several of my kids have dyslexia. It's a reading system that we developed with another woman. We're in 1800 schools around the country." And I was like, what, what are you, so I, I convinced him to write a book, which is Right Brain Red is Ren's book. I helped him write it.
[00:28:24] Tim Walsh: I said, people need to know about you beyond your toy world. Right. Wow. So that was eyeopening for sure.
[00:28:32] Azhelle Wade: Wow. Where'd you come up with the term 'entreplayneur'? Where'd that come from?
[00:28:40] Tim Walsh: Pretty, uh, cause I'm a hack. That's where it came from. No, I just thought it was fun. I love, I think I have adult attention deficit disorder because I'm always like, "Ooh, let me try to write a book. Oh, I think I'm going to make a film." You know, if I would just focus on toy and game design, I'd probably be better off, but I can't help myself. So yeah, entreplayneur, I love our industry. I think it's the greatest industry in the world and it's unlike any other, as you know.
[00:29:07] Azhelle Wade: Well, how has embracing that playful mindset influenced your approach to business and life? Is it just that you kind of hop around and go with where your heart desires or does it help you show up in a playful way instead of being super serious all the time? Like how does that entreplayneur mindset influence your, your work?
[00:29:23] Tim Walsh: I think I'm, can be a depressive sort of person. I'm not, I know, it's sad, it's weird. I talked to Peggy Brown about this, another friend, a mutual friend of ours. I'm pretty much an introvert. I can talk and be in front of people, but it really just drains me. So when I go to a trade show, a lot of times at night when people are at the bars, I'm like in bed because I, by, by the time I hit eight o'clock and I've been talking all day, it's like, I'm just wiped out.
[00:29:52] Tim Walsh: So I feel like play has sort of opened up possibilities for me because I feel like my personality is kind of middle of the ground, middle of the road, I think, and there's a fearlessness to play, right? Because when you study play in kids, if there's war or things that are, you know, if they're hungry, play stops.
[00:30:12] Tim Walsh: Because it's just, there's bigger things. So if you are blessed enough to have enough food and safety around you that you're able to play, it's transformative. So I think taking it into business, you know, I feel like playful companies that are able to do that dance, you know, part of the polarization that I feel like is happening in the U S, I can't help, but think there's a loss of play there.
[00:30:34] Tim Walsh: Because in past years, before the internet drove us all crazy, there would be a dance, you know, if you disagreed with someone, there would be this reciprocal sort of play, a back and forth that somehow we've lost. And I feel like play could be maybe a bigger solution to some of our ills.
[00:30:52] Azhelle Wade: Oh, that's a very good point. I, I, that's very interesting too. The thought that the internet did that to us. I, I feel like I grew up without social media being so prevalent, but it very quickly happened in, as I was an adult. So I feel like I noticed the change you're describing, but hearing you say it, it's more, it's like reaffirming that, yeah, things were different at some point. They weren't always so black and white and people weren't always so aggressive and so, I don't know, like, unaccepting of different ideas.
[00:31:22] Tim Walsh: Yeah, and I think the algorithm rewards conflict, unfortunately. Right. That's been proven, you know, that if you say something nice, you don't get as much engagement as when you say something controversial or you read something controversial, you tend to interact with it more. And I think that's what's driving us crazy. The internet's a wonderful thing on many ways, but it's also the social media because a lot of...
[00:31:48] Azhelle Wade: It's training us to want conflict. It's training us to think conflict is how you get adoration. Because the conflict posts get adoration, but if you're just talking to a human and not to an algorithm, the conflict actually wouldn't get adoration, what would get adoration is like appreciation and understanding.
[00:32:05] Azhelle Wade: And so that's so interesting.
[00:32:07] Tim Walsh: Yeah. And how many problems? How many problems? And great ideas have come from people that were bored, you know, that, that they're just sitting there and it's, it's a trope to say, "Oh, I had my best idea was in the shower or while I was driving." And if every moment you're reaching for your phone and not allowing yourself to be bored, to let your mind wander, then you're missing out on maybe a great idea or something else.
[00:32:37] Tim Walsh: So I just wondered and worry about the slot machine effect of our cell phones that you're constantly grabbing that lever to get another dopamine hit.
[00:32:46] Azhelle Wade: I gotta share a story now because when I first started working in the industry, I worked in New Jersey and I lived in Brooklyn. So I had this really long commute back and forth. So I didn't have a lot of free time. And then eventually I moved up in my career and I got a job, another job in New Jersey, but then I moved to New Jersey. And then I wasn't very much a TV person. I don't think I had a TV. So I would get home at like six and then I would be like, what do people do with all this time?
[00:33:13] Azhelle Wade: So then I started a business because I was like, I don't even know what people do with all this free. I started sewing things. And then I was like, started like a clothing company. So then I started a clothing, like a convertible costume company. And like that, there's not a lot of space for that in my life anymore.
[00:33:30] Azhelle Wade: Partially because of social media, maybe a little bit because of TV. But like, yeah, we just need time to just sit with ourselves in quiet and just feel bored. So you just have an idea to do something else.
[00:33:42] Tim Walsh: Yeah. And it's the discomfort. I just feel like, you know, the, weaved into this conversation of the internet, I think is over protecting kids, right? Because I just feel like you can't protect kids. You can only make them stronger, right? And I feel like that when we do overprotect kids and kind of bubble wrap them, we might be protecting them in the moment, but the long term effects outweigh the safety you might be giving them in the moment because it's just through, through that boredom or for lack of a better word, pain.
[00:34:14] Tim Walsh: You know, when you're sitting there like, well, I'm not going to watch TV and there's nothing else to do. What, what am I going to do? And that through that discomfort, you were like, I'm going to start a business. You know, imagine if that wasn't the case, you know,
[00:34:28] Azhelle Wade: Wild, ah, this is it. That was so good. What would you say to someone who thinks they're too old to play
[00:34:35] Tim Walsh: Nonsense! Yeah. Well, we are as a species in the Ottonis, which means that we can play throughout our entire lives and not every animal is that way, you know, play is sort of a childhood thing, and then you're an adult. In most mammals, it continues through their entire life, but certainly we are a species that plays throughout our entire life, and I feel like my parents are no longer with us, but my wife's father just passed, and her mother's getting up there in age, and we've spent a lot of time in rehab centers and nursing homes, and the people that are doing the best at an older age are people that embrace the fun of life and play. And it's really, you're missing out on so much. If you feel like you would call yourself a curmudgeon or, you know, because that's the other thing.
[00:35:20] Azhelle Wade: What are these words? I need to get blurt. That's what I need to do. Wow. What lessons has Blurt taught players or even you? Cause sometimes games teach us skills in unexpected ways. So is it the vocabulary, the listening? Is there anything else that you think Blurt has taught you or taught others?
[00:35:43] Tim Walsh: Yeah, I think, you know, most people think of it as a word game, and I sort of gave away that extra thing that it does, which is the listening. I think that's a very big part of it. But, obviously, the main thing is the time with family. You know, when Trivial Pursuit exploded and sort of opened the door for adult games, prior to Trivial Pursuit, it was chess and Scrabble, and there wasn't many games or party games. for adults. And the reason Trivial Pursuit was so awesome, it wasn't necessarily the question, but when you answered a question about Gilligan's Island, the conversation that, oh, that was such a silly show, and the, the professor could make a phone out of a coconut, but they couldn't fix a hole in a boat.
[00:36:27] Tim Walsh: Oh my, you know, and then all these conversations that came out of the game. So my biggest thing with Blurt after 30 years is just the fact that people have enjoyed one another around a table and laughing at what people blurt out that's incorrect. Or so that's part of the, I guess, the benefits beyond the play itself is the connections with people.
[00:36:48] Azhelle Wade: Yeah. Before we move on to our closing questions, where can people go to buy Blurk right now?
[00:36:54] Tim Walsh: Probably Amazon.com or specialty stores. Educational Insights is doing some stuff on TikTok with me where we're playing it on TikTok, which is talk about an old dog learning a new trick.
[00:37:05] Azhelle Wade: I'm not even that.
[00:37:07] Tim Walsh: Oh my gosh.
[00:37:08] Azhelle Wade: TikTok is a lot for me.
[00:37:09] Tim Walsh: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:37:10] Azhelle Wade: It's addictive. It is built way too well. It is insanely addictive.
[00:37:17] Tim Walsh: Yeah, yes, yes. So, but yeah, Amazon or they can call our favorite toy store and see if they have it. But yeah, check it out.
[00:37:26] Azhelle Wade: We will put the link in the show notes. So head over to thetoycoach.com/podcast and look for this episode to find the link. With 30 years of Blurt behind you. What's next on your creative horizon? Any exciting new games, books, or films in the works?
[00:37:40] Tim Walsh: Yes. I have two games coming out with Mind Wear and, um, another with Ultra Pro and knock on wood, I'm hoping one with a smart toys and games. And then I have two toys coming out. Wow. I hope in 2025 or 26.
[00:37:56] Azhelle Wade: You've been busy.
[00:37:58] Tim Walsh: Yeah. I COVID hit and like a lot of people, I was consuming way too much. And I was like, I need to stop binging Netflix and go the other direction, create stuff. So yeah, I've made a concerted effort.
[00:38:11] Azhelle Wade: Nice. What piece of advice do you wish that more toy or game inventors knew about?
[00:38:16] Tim Walsh: Invent a lot of stuff. When you first get in the industry, a lot of times you invent one thing and it's your baby and you put a lot of your time into it. And then for whatever reason, if that thing doesn't go, you're like, what do I do now? And I have licensed things that I thought would never fly. And then all of a sudden they do.
[00:38:32] Tim Walsh: I'm embarrassed to say that early in my career, I flew up to Spin Master to pitch them something. And it was a pass. And then they said, "What else do you have?" And I said, that, "Uh, that's it." And they said, "You flew to Toronto with one idea?" And I was like, "Well, I believed in the idea, you know." I was like, well, and obviously now when I pitch, I have probably at least 10 things that I'm showing at a time.
[00:38:58] Azhelle Wade: And you hear that toy people? 10 things! Because I meet with people all the time. And when somebody has one idea, you know, I split it between like, I say, you're either on the inventor path or you're on the entrepreneur path. So when somebody has one idea, I'm like, it sounds like you're an entrepreneur. If you want to be an inventor, you, I know you have more like you've got to have more, you got to keep going like, oh, that's such good advice. Yeah.
[00:39:20] Tim Walsh: Yeah, yeah. And you have to just try a lot of different things. And of course, any creative industry, you need to have very thick skin because like an actor, you're going to do a thousand auditions and hear 'no' most of the time. Same thing with toy design. You know, you're going to hear no mostly. It's a numbers game.
[00:39:35] Tim Walsh: You need to up your odds. And, uh, pitch, pitch a lot of things. And I, not typical, the first three games I ever worked on each sold over a million copies. That is not. So Tribond was first and then Blurt. And then while I was the VP of Product Development at Patch, uh, MadGab came in and it was called something else at the time.
[00:39:56] Tim Walsh: And we worked on it with the inventor, Terry White. And that became MadGab.
[00:40:01] Azhelle Wade: But it also might have had something to do with the era that you were coming up in, right? The era that you became an inventor in was like golden age!
[00:40:10] Tim Walsh: For sure, timing. I talk about that all the time. There's a lot of toys that benefit from the timing. And in fact, our first game, Tribond, came out after Trivial Pursuit, but it wasn't right on the, at the tail of Trivial Pursuit. At that time, there was Tony Randall had a trivia game in Time Magazine and they all failed because everyone wanted the original trivia game. And then ours came out in 1990 and it was enough of a, of a delay.
[00:40:34] Tim Walsh: And I think if ours came out sooner, it would have failed. So yeah. Timing is a lot to do with it.
[00:40:40] Azhelle Wade: Yeah. What toy or game blew your mind as a kid?
[00:40:43] Tim Walsh: The one over your left shoulder.
[00:40:46] Azhelle Wade: Oh!
[00:40:47] Tim Walsh: The big wheel.
[00:40:48] Azhelle Wade: Oh, the big wheel. The big wheel.
[00:40:51] Tim Walsh: I loved the big wheel as a kid. I wrote about it in my book, and Jay Lohr was the inventor. He worked for Mark's Toys when he came up with that, but yeah. It came out in '69 when I was five years old, and it was, oh my gosh, I had so much fun playing with that. In fact, I wrote it until the back wheels cracked. And they were falling apart. This was my early inventing, Azhelle. I put dry dirt from under our tire swing into the cracked wheels so that when I pedaled it, it looked like smoke was coming out the wheels.
[00:41:23] Tim Walsh: Yeah.
[00:41:24] Azhelle Wade: Oh my gosh. I tied paper to my bike so it sounded like a motorcycle.
[00:41:32] Tim Walsh: Yes.
[00:41:32] Azhelle Wade: Everyone that is listening. So if you're watching the video, I have a shelf behind me with toys and normally like with the product of the person on the shelf, and I don't have Blurr, and so I was like, what can I put that, like, will go with Tim, and I just had this toys book, this, like, toys ad book, and I looked at it, and I was like, this feels like his vibe, so I put it there, and for it to be your favorite toy, like, what kismet, like, that's just meant to be.
[00:41:59] Azhelle Wade: This was not planned.
[00:42:01] Tim Walsh: That's right. That's right. Well, and we've learned. So one of my projects was this Operation movie, and it was amazing to find out that how kids play affect who they become.
[00:42:13] Azhelle Wade: Oh, yeah. Tell me about that.
[00:42:15] Tim Walsh: Oh, my goodness. It was so amazing. So John Spinello is the inventor of Operation, which is a game with a surgery theme where you're taking the little white bones out.
[00:42:23] Tim Walsh: The short story is he sold that game to Marvin Glass, and then Marvin Glass licensed it to Milton Bradley. And then they sold, you know, 50 million copies, but John never made any money on the game. So Peggy Brown and I, when we were friends with John and he was struggling financially and had some health issues that, so we did a crowd rise campaign for him that went viral and Jimmy Kimmel and all these people started telling the story of John Spinello And that's what led to the film.
[00:42:50] Tim Walsh: But the cool thing was we made a website and we said hey if you played Operation and loved it as a kid send John a dollar just to thank him so that he can get this surgery And it was a great story and he got them, got the surgery got the money and it was just Beautiful.
[00:43:05] Tim Walsh: But the number of email that we got from nurses and doctors that said, "I played that game as a kid and loved it. Now I'm a surgeon. Now I'm a nurse." And even an electrical engineer wrote us and said, "When I played that game and I, the tweezer touched the little metal foot and his nose lit up. I couldn't understand how one thing led to another and electricity."
[00:43:30] Tim Walsh: It's brilliant. And he's an electrical engineer now. And it's like what you play with and how you play as a kid affects who you become.
[00:43:39] Azhelle Wade: Ooh, I got chills.
[00:43:41] Tim Walsh: Yeah, it's, it's, that's, play is powerful.
[00:43:44] Tim Walsh: And now I'm thinking, like, what did the big wheel do to him?
[00:43:49] Tim Walsh: Well, so that's, so doing the, the dirt in the, that's an example of kind of a creative thing.
[00:43:54] Tim Walsh: And then another one is, I love Wiffle Ball, and we would play up against our house and a pitch with we've had a little piece of plywood with a strike zone and we got an argument. Was that a ball or a strike? We couldn't tell. Well, we came up with putting a folding aluminum lawn chair and that was our strike zone.
[00:44:11] Tim Walsh: So, if a ball hit the aluminum chair, it made a different sound than if it hit the wooden background. So it was like an auditory strike zone. And it eliminated our arguments because if it hit the chair, it was a strike. And if it hit the wood and made a thud, it was a ball. And so that was, you know, You know, again, at the time, I didn't know it, but looking back, I'm like, Oh, that was inventing a kind of a game when I was 100%.
[00:44:37] Tim Walsh: Yeah. So yeah, we had, and if we were on our cell phones, none of those things would have ever happened. So that's why I'm listening to your childhood. And I'm like, mine was a lot more computer games. And that explains some things.
[00:44:55] Tim Walsh: Well, for people that are interested in that, you got to read Stuart Brown's book, Play.
[00:45:00] Tim Walsh: Yeah. And he tells the story of, of the, uh, Jet propulsion labs where they were trying to get the older engineers were retiring. These are people that took us to the moon and they wanted to, uh, hire younger engineers and all the younger engineers were brilliant, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, very smart kids. But they couldn't problem solve as well as the older engineers and Stuart and some other people were wondering why is this the case and they played differently.
[00:45:28] Tim Walsh: Older engineers took apart clocks and took apart their bikes and they played with their hands. And there is a hand to brain connection with problem solving. And the younger engineers were brilliant, but couldn't solve the problems, as well as the older engineers. And we're losing something when we lose play.
[00:45:46] Tim Walsh: We're losing some sort of development between our hand and our brain, that we need kids to play and manipulate things that are other than the screen. Not instead of the screen, because the screens aren't going away. They're not going away, but in addition to the screens.
[00:46:01] Azhelle Wade: Very true. Thanks for that. Can you say the book again? We'll put the link in the show notes.
[00:46:05] Tim Walsh: It's 'Play' by Stuart Brown.
[00:46:08] Azhelle Wade: Okay, great. Thank you so much. Wow, Tim, this was a great chat. We went off the rails. I hope you don't mind. I know we were, we were talking about Blurt, but we had, we went to a lot of very other important places. I love it. I love it. Yeah. So today, I mean, wow.
[00:46:21] Azhelle Wade: Let's, let's think about what we talked about here. Thank you, first of all, for sharing your incredible journey with us, inventing Blurt, but your entire invention journey as a game and now hopefully toy inventor, congratulations, and congratulations to Blurt for the 30th anniversary edition. Today we not only celebrated the legacy of your amazing party game, but also just what the toy industry can do for connection and creativity and joy and development of kids and adults. I appreciate your passion for spreading the knowledge and the magic for the toy industry, and I know our listeners are going to walk away with a renewed appreciation for toy and game inventors, but also a unique understanding of what it takes to become one. Tim, you said that you have a surprise for us today.
[00:47:06] Azhelle Wade: We're able to give away a Blurt to a listener of the podcast. Is that right?
[00:47:10] Tim Walsh: Yes, Educational Insights, I told them I was coming on. They said, well, if you're on any podcast, you can give a game away. So the 30th anniversary Blurt, we'll give one away to one of your viewers.
[00:47:21] Azhelle Wade: So here's what we're gonna do. If you're listening to this podcast, and you hear it in time, I'll put a deadline on this. I'm thinking Valentine's Day. So, I want you to go on Instagram, create a story of you and your favorite toy or game when you were a kid. What toy or game blew your mind as a kid? Tag me as @thetoycoach so I can see your post and we are going to pick a winner from all the people that post from now until February 14th.
[00:47:48] Azhelle Wade: And then we will select one person to get a free Blurt Game. Sound good?
[00:47:53] Tim Walsh: Love it.
[00:47:53] Azhelle Wade: Great. Awesome. So where can our listeners connect with you if they want to connect with you after this?
[00:47:58] Tim Walsh: Well, my website is theplaymakers.com, but @seizetheplay, all my social media is . Instagram, LinkedIn, everything is Seize the Play, so they can go there.
[00:48:11] Azhelle Wade: Awesome. Thank you so much. If you love this podcast and you haven't already left a review, what are you waiting for? Your reviews keep me coming back week after week and it inspires our guests to join us as well. Every time I get a new review, I get notified on my phone. It puts a huge smile on my face.
[00:48:25] Azhelle Wade: So please, wherever you're watching or listening, please scroll down and leave a rating and review. As always, thank you so much for spending the time with me today. I know your time is valuable and that there are a ton of podcasts out there. So it truly means the world to me that you tuned into this one.
[00:48:39] Azhelle Wade: Until next week. I'll see you later, toy People.
[00:48:43] Thanks for listening to the Making It in the Toy Industry podcast with Azhelle Wade. Head over to thetoycoach. com for more information, tips, and advice.
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