Episode 33: Designing For Free Play with Cas Holman
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If you are a fan of the Netflix show, Abstract: The Art of Design, you may already be familiar with today's guest, Cas Holman. Now if you're just starting out in the toy industry, you may not know that there are many different categories that you could design, sell, and market your toys in. My guest today designs toy products that tote the fine line between fine art and toy products. Cas is the founder and principal designer at the independent toy company, Heroes Will Rise and educator at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
Today, Cas shares with her personal journey into the toy industry and breaks down a little bit of her creative process. In this interview, you'll learn what it means to design for free play, and why Cas believes that "good toys make good people". I hope this episode inspires you to forge your own path in this wonderful, crazy world of toys.
Let's dive in.
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Check out Cas Holman website by clicking here.
Follow Cas on IG @casholman.
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00:00
You are listening to Making It in The Toy Industry, Episode Number 33.
00:06
Welcome to Making It in The Toy Industry, podcast for inventors and entrepreneurs like you know your host Azhelle Wade.
00:16
Before jumping into today's episode, I want to tell you all about something super special that I've got in the works. Now this is for you if you're in love with learning with me on this podcast, and you have an amazing toy or game idea that you want to create and monetize. In September I will be opening the doors for you to register for my online digital course toy creators Academy. Now if you've already joined the email list, then go you you are ahead of the game and I can't wait to serve you when the doors open up. Toy creators Academy is going to teach you how to develop your toy ideas and turn them into a toy business. So if you'd love a little more toys spiration from me and a whole lot of guidance, then head over to toy creators academy.com and join the early access list. If you're on that list, you are going to be among the first to know when the doors open. And to top it all off, you are going to get the opportunity to join the course at an incredible rate that no one else will get not even my regular toy coach insiders. So if you've got a few great toy ideas inside of you, and you want to turn those ideas into a toy business, head over to toy creators academy.com to learn even more. Okay, let's jump into the episode. Hey there toy people Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of Making It in The Toy Industry. So a little while ago, I was watching a new show on Netflix called abstract the art of design. Now of course, I jumped straight to the episode of the series that focused on toy design and it was Here, where I discovered and was completely inspired by Cass Holman. She is the founder and principal designer at the independent toy company heroes will rise. She is also an educator at the Rhode Island School of Design. Some of you might know it as risk D in the industrial design program. Now some of her most popular product lines today you might know them it's Rageh magic and GMO. Now these are both award winning designs. But what I love about Cass is that she believes in toys designed for free play, meaning that they're designed with the intended experience in mind instead of the intended outcome. Now cast has been featured in surface mag The New Yorker Fast Company Netflix and today I am so excited to say that cast homerun is a guest on this show. Welcome to the show cast.
02:55
Hi, thank you for having me. Super exciting for that wonderful introduction, I'm I'm very flattered. I didn't mind always happy to inspire. Yeah.
03:08
Well, I I'm really excited that to have you on the show. And I mean, I don't know if my listeners haven't already seen the Netflix episode, you should probably watch it maybe before this interview and then come back to this interview because you'll be even more impressed. But I would love you to just start off and give a history on your backstory. How did you come to become a toy designer?
03:30
I mean, in my mind, while it's absolutely not maybe the most typical of paths to be a toy designer, it makes perfect sense to me my background, my undergraduate studies, were in feminist theory, and fine art sculpture, which in my mind, that makes perfect sense that, you know, advocating for children and designing toys and thinking about how design might impact our future. So that feels absent In line with with feminist theory and sculpture, so, you know, I, I, I had, I had to kind of get a lot of adventure out of my way to figure out what it was that I would focus on. In life I would choose to focus on one thing because I do have a really broad set of interests and always have and I spent a year and a half when I was 20 years old in the Galapagos Islands working for scientists chasing iguanas and sailing a boat around and kind of you know, riches I love the chasing iguanas. I realized that maybe you know the the data collecting and scientific process in general was not maybe my magic doing something the same way a number of times I was not very good at so while I caught a lot of iguanas I am I my data was usually a mess. So I thought all right, well, this has been this has been great, but maybe I need to kind of go and keep exploring. And I was a chef for many years actually, I was a pastry chef for three years and a short order cook for a number of years as I was going to kind of put my through myself through undergrad. And I loved cooking. I loved working in kitchens, in part because you kind of start and finish something every 30 seconds.
05:25
Uh huh. I didn't know that. Right?
05:28
Yeah. Especially as a short order cook. And, and, and, and it's, you know, and it's fun and, and, in a strange way, way more so than what I do now. There are kind of right or there were right and wrong answers right. I mean, it is over Yes. Either. overeasy over medium over hard. Mm hmm. It is what it is. And when it's done is done. You put the plate in the out and it's gone forever. Whereas now, you know, my work is about there not being right and wrong answers. I never know when something Done. Even when something goes into production, we started selling it, I always feel like I could keep improving it and keep working on it. So, um, but it was when I was about 28 years old and I had been working for a really wonderful company in San Francisco, called CRI. They were Herman Miller dealer. So that was when I was kind of getting more and more into design, and kind of realized like, Oh, hey, design might be a way that I could bring together my art. And, you know, my interest in kind of having some kind of positive impact. And was also starting to notice more as my kids had friends.I was shocked at how gendered the toys still were. I really, I guess, I thought, you know, by the nine by the 1990s. You know? Yeah, of course. Yeah.
06:56
Yeah.
06:57
But I was shocked. I thought this Wait, what? No, wait. You know, and then granted I have been in a bit of a bubble I was in just school in Santa Cruz and living in San Francisco where a lot of those gender stereotypes had kind of already been blown up. So realizing that that mass market was still following a lot of antiquated rules about, you know, who we're supposed to be, um, was it was a bit of a an eye opener. So when I am, I went back to grad school at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and, and studied design and had my studio practice in design, and kind of was focusing on interactive sculptures, and more and more objects and things that would have kind of abstract identities to inspire imagination, and found that that was something in particular that I felt like the toy industry lacked was opportunities for children to invent the story right. I was seeing a lot of licensed products and A lot of kind of characters. And I thought, well, why aren't we letting the kids invent the character in the story, you know? And then even in that, why can't it be something that's like not a person or a truck? Why can't you know? Why can't it be something that their imagination can engage, and they can decide. And even going back to, you know, reading about Carolyn Pratt, and the beauty of the basic building blocks, that that a cube or a block of wood can become a whale or a car or a person or a brick. And kind of serve the imagination of the child rather than the imagination serving the story of that object. So that I think was where I really discovered, you know, my my interest and my, my drive and maybe in a way like my, my magic, where were the things I was really into interested in kind of came together? And so it's kind of worked from there. So since 2001 2002, I've been designing around those same kind of principles and the same goals.
09:15
How, like, I'm so curious, like, how did you find the places that would accept that form of design and that philosophy?
09:25
Uh, I, you know, I, I kind of didn't. The, um, the because I was I was I'm kind of always like, I've been on the edges and outskirts in places where it's not quite art. It's not quite design. Sure, yeah. Um, that's, that's served me well, because I, I find those categories to be very limiting in and in what a thing can be and they don't like They don't relate to what children need they relate to what a market needs. Right? And exactly, yeah, I don't want to design for a market, I want to design for children. I don't want to design for a shell for a hook on a wall or a category of a website. So I've always kind of had a hard time when and I do periodically need to fit my work into these categories. Because I understand right, like, especially with internet, like we need to be able to,you know, put things in and soI would say that the you know, the moment the the confidence of having Geemo launch at the MoMA went a long way for me and the MoMA being the Museum of Modern Art's store, and Geemo launched there. And you know, we had a very funny I had a conversation with their buyers about categories. Because in the store, it's just kind of everything is everything is the Little bit of, you know, jewelry with jewelry and housewares with housewares, but, but there it is, you know that all of the toys are pretty unique. And, you know, but they the sake of the website needed to know, is it an executive best toy? Is it a building toy is the creative toy, you know? And, and so it was, that was kind of the first time I kind of really had todecide in a way.
11:28
Like, I have no idea,
11:29
You know, and I thought, can we put it in uncategorized? And they said, Sure, but you know, I'm just in terms of clicks, you know, well,
11:37
yeah, for search, it won't do well.
11:39
People go to construction toys, whatever. 100,000 times a day and and in other we get 10. And I was like, right instruction, Toy. It is. Yeah.
11:50
And I wanted to ask about Geemo cuz you said you had an opportunity to license it. And yeah, do that. Do you regret that?
12:01
Um,I regret not trying harder to help the licensor understand the value of not giving it a face.
12:11
Oh, they Oh, the licensor was the one who wanted to give it the face.And yeah, two different people.
12:16
There. Well, there were a few. So I had a few different opportunities with with Geemo and one was just, you know, like, could it be part of the MoMA store collection? And that would have been wonderful, but I I worried that, you know, when I was a kid, I didn't get to shop at The MoMa, we didn't know what The MoMa was, you know. And so that felt to me, like it was going to be kind of an exclusive thing that wouldn't be very widely available, which, which, you know, I don't know if that's completely true. I think that they have they have a broad reach now, but at the time anyway, it felt like I wanted it to have a broader reach and I wanted to have opportunities to get it into schools and things and and so You know, at that point, I took it to the market myself and then once I kind of had it going, and it was, you know, selling and people got a lot of interest, and a few people wanted to kind of buy it from me, but all of them did want to transition it into this character, or wanted to make it into a game where it could kind of be a puzzle that the lack of instructions was was a problem or the potential partners and, and usually, if you license an idea, like you do kind of relinquish quite a bit of control, and I just didn't I it didn't make any sense and I also kind of felt like again, I I wanted it on I wanted it on the market as it was right like and of course like I am willing to make changes and I knew like maybe it needs to get a little smaller the magnets won't be as strong or you know, okay, fine. We'll use we will add some colors, but you Here's how the colors will work. And I did this actually with a partner in Japan who was wonderful and most of most of Geemo sales happened in Japan through this distribution partner, who was great and worked with schools, and we did make some colored versions and it was like, we made a point of making it. Not a puzzle. Right. So that was
14:22
kind of right around right or wrong way. Yeah,
14:24
yeah. But it's funny. I think that my introduction to the toy industry happened through a lot of conversations about Geemo, which was funny because it was it was toy industry people who kind of had heard or had read about that. This was this great, interesting thing. And I feel like they they could tell they were interested in it and they thought this is really this is quite, quite brilliant actually, but we're just not we we don't know what to do with it. Right. You know, they they were like we don't
14:54
know where to place it, how to market it. How to price it. It's
14:59
Yeah. Yeah so so without it being kind of a game or a bit so um yeah so that was I think kind of actually how I got to know the toy industry and then going to toy fairs with it was was like very very informative
15:16
Wait I want to know what happened how was it received
15:18
the you know the two big toy furs the New York Toy Fair and Nuremberg perfect and Youngberg It was a giant hit and Yeah, I was gonna say yeah, and people loved it and you know we sold we picked up a lot of parts I never got we got a lot of kind of orders, but but no distribution per se in part because since I was manufacturing in a pretty small scale and it was manufactured in Japan and the I had a hard time getting the cost I couldn't get the quantities high enough to get the cost low and up and I just I was paying for everything with the Like I still had a job that was writing for the passion project right? Um, but I learned so much through the entire process that I'm I'm really glad that I did it that way because everything I learned about that you know, everything I learned in that process related so much to Imagination Playground and then from there related to RigAmaJig and so it's been like,
16:28
you wouldn't have been able to grow in that way. If you had just like relinquished to somebody and they did all the legwork. You wouldn't have known what you didn't know.
16:34
Exactly, yeah, exactly. And I Oh, complete and underestimated packaging, estimated sales. You know, I was like, just to get it from the store to your house, you know?
16:51
I Okay, so the main reason I wanted to have you on today is because I'm in the I don't know what we would call it I don't want to say I don't know the standard toy. industry, right? It's not I feel like where you work or where you get to work is more it's almost art meets toys meets like, I don't know, psychological, I don't know, it's, it's different. And I wanted you to come on and talk about your thought process, like your design process and maybe teach it to some of my listeners, because I believe that like, I believe that the toy industry is really limited right now. And I my goal is to get people that are interested in joining the toy industry to realize that it's not that closed off anymore. You know, there is an entry point and I want to show them where it is. But while I do that, I get worried because I see them coming in with these really great fresh ideas. And then they're trying so hard to fit it into a box that they might lose some of what makes it special. So I would just love to talk about, you know, how you get inspired for new ideas, how you look at play, how you watch children, like just talk a little bit about your philosophy.
18:00
Um, well, I would I mean, my I, but by starting heroes will rise I kind of lose serped The, the need to fit my designs into known toy categories. Right and that was no accident. Like I and increasingly and with each round actually like with RigAmaJig, I tried really I already talked to a few different companies and said like hey do you want to license this? And little similar to Geemo but but but different because I think that they regelmatig was maybe a little more. It was just easier to understand like they you see Raghava jig and you see the photos of the videos of kids using it and they were like, wow, this is incredible. However, this is really expensive for learning material, really inexpensive. For a playground, it's, like requires all kinds of, like, I don't know, as a professional development for teachers, it's just like it's a it's kind of a system rather than just like a thing, right? So again, back to if they're, if they're market based company rather than a, like child centered or play or education based company, they're not going to take the time to figure out how to sell it. Right. And so, so we've had to do that kind of with everything that I've designed, because it's not it's like I design based on what will be great for kids, you know, and then that doesn't always like, necessarily that that's not how the market was.
19:44
Yeah, that's not what they want to see
19:46
it well, it's just not it's like it's it's, it's an on the one hand, it's an easy sell because it is a great product. On the other hand, it's a hard sell because it's weird, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, um, but you know, But back to like, kind of advice on on how to design the thing. I don't look at the I don't really look at the toy industry for inspiration. I mean between To be honest, like when I go to the Toy Fair, I find it really depressing, right? I'm like, this is what we think kids need, you know? Like it's so clear that it just feels disrespectful to humans.
20:24
I don't think that you know on it's a good good point you're saying I don't think y'all are thinking this is what kids need. Yeah, the majority I don't want to say everyone a majority
20:33
go to a public park to be inspired. I used to do today not going to a toy store to get inspiration to design for children. But
20:41
when I first started in the industry, I remember going to that statue in in Central Park with Alice in Wonderland. Oh, yes. Yeah, I would just sit there like a creeper. And with my notebook watching kids play take, is that what you do? Or did or
20:58
Yes, I mean, I and I still do And actually, and this is included in the documentary, the crew went with me to China to see Anji place. Yes, I saw that. And in IMG play schools, that which I think is the most ideal model of education. It's completely play based and totally child directed and incredible. And the role of the teacher is observer. So there's not the assumption that, that children learn from us children learn by exploring and playing and they learn from each other, and the teacher observes, right, and so the teacher becomes observer and pays really close attention to what the children are doing. So that they can then a learn from the children and then ask them questions about what they were doing and like the kind of what is the driving curiosity behind why you were rolling a tire up that ladder onto the slope and then down, you know, so, um, but point but back to that, that that kind of central to all my, all of the toys or products or objects that I design are tools for children to design with, right? So I want to give them things that they can use to make their own stories and make their own toys. And so with regelmatig if that day they like, they want to work through, you know, something that's going on at home, maybe they're gonna build a little fort and, and, you know, have their friends go through and negotiate this and they'll rebuild it and do it again. Or maybe they, you know, maybe they need to do something a little smaller scale and like so they'll use it to make a creature and play with the creature. So it's it, it can be what they need it to be. And I think part of that also is that when children have that experience, they there they begin and are more fluent in Trusting their own inspiration and their own drive to play in a way that they need to be playing, right. So play is how its children. Like it's how they're working out. All of that we know about play therapy and, and of course, like in play, we learn how to negotiate all of the collaborative things. We learned conflict resolution, we learn how to share, we learn trial and error. Oh, I did that it didn't work. Let me try it again. So resilience, like all of these things that come when they're able to figure it out and do it themselves. Right. And, and I just don't I, I just don't think we have to give them very, very much. You know, we mostly what we have to give them as is space and trust, right? We have to give them trust. We have to give them quality materials so that they know that they are trusted and they know that they deserve something that's solid and wood and not plastic and hollow and Gonna break are already broken, you know, or like, it lights up when you shake it. Like who like I'm not a dog, you know? Like, why do I need a thing that lights up when I should? So I find like, I think, you know, and again, I think the power of observing children, as you see how rich The play is, and then it's so much. It's much more natural to design with respect.
24:25
Yeah, I you know, I think that the way that you talk about design, it's very, it shows a lot of restraint. Because I think a lot of designers Now I know my friends, like when they're designing something like, Oh, isn't this so cute? And it is cute, but it starts to become an ego thing. Like they're designing for themselves, right? Yeah. And yeah, what you're talking about designing so that kids get to play or design is is it's a lot of restraint.
24:50
Yeah. And it's actually I think that's much harder in a way and I often have to kind of reel it back like I'll take something a few steps and then I'll be like, wait, I just designed The critter this like this, like, you know, dragon head whatever, like, let me take it a few steps back so that maybe it's a dragon head, but maybe that's a little mountain range, you know. So so and that for me is really fun and that I think goes back to what I was doing in a lot of my sculpture, which is this kind of these like levels of abstraction that inspire imagination and kind of, like, invite children to in to just to like make up a story with it or say like, Oh, what is it? It's like a curiosity like a curious form, right? What is that it will it's Oh, is it this is that and then they they're already engaged with the object. And so then then from there, they start to like, oh, how do I use it? And then they've got to figure out how to use it. And there's maybe five ways of using it or more that they just invented how to use it. And that's me, is when something works, right.
25:52
I'm curious, do you find it challenging to make something new when everything you're making is so abstract, you know what the toy industry Like oh, last year we made an owl this year we'll make a unicorn so it's new. Right? So do you find the struggle and how do I know if something is new? What makes something a new product for you?
26:11
Well, I mean, I have a lot of ideas that are kind of waiting to fall quite honestly like it's more about getting the marketing side ready. In terms of like design development, we have 20 products in the queue. Yeah, that are kind of ready to go when the rest of the company catches up. Um, but I, I don't feel like we need a new thing every year like but but like so for example, 3d magic, the new the new products that are coming from Mega Jager coming from requests and feedback from teachers and schools saying, you know, we use regelmatig for our simple machines study, like, Are there some parts and pieces that could help And then so then we're like yes and then so then we make yours and some other things in themselves. Or we see a lot of hearts children making carts and so then we released a locomotion set that has kind of more axles and some bigger platforms for building onto in different ways.
27:20
You're just analyzing how the kids play again.
27:22
Yeah, again Yeah. And and our newest, our newest product is the RigAmaJig, Jr, which is the smaller kind of at home kit. And I was seeing all over the world actually in Anji play schools and also I got a couple videos kind of out of the blue from a library and in somewhere in the US that Nebraska and and children had been using rigger magic Jr. They've been putting the pieces together and then spinning them so they were these. They were giant they were about 18 inches in diameter, sometimes bigger Spinning them. So they're making these spinning tops. And and I thought, oh, what if we added some colors? Or what if we added What can I add? That would give them more to experiment with like, maybe sound is there's something that when it spins, it might make sense. But you know, or what patterns they put together. So again, how can I help them experiment in these ways that they're already doing? You know, I love that you think Yeah, so this kit came out of came out of that came out of me seeing like kids are doing this. How can I make that even cooler? Oh, that's so good. Yeah.
28:38
That's good. I Oh, so now that you're talking about how big the tops are, it brought me to another question I had when I was watching your episode. Do you worry about safety when you're like, I want to make these big wooden pieces and I want kids to lift them up. And I don't mean from your perspective of what's safe. I mean, from the rules and regulations to get it passed. Like how do you Yeah, get over it. That?
29:01
Yeah. And I mean, I also do worry, like, as a human who doesn't want to hurt other people, right. So, so when I, you know, think about that and, and it was a big when I first launched it, a lot of I took it to the The first time I kind of showed it to a large group as a product. So regelmatig actually launched on the High Line in New York City. Yeah, as a possum playground. So cool. And so I got to talk to a lot of people and got a ton of feedback and lots of observing. So when we kind of at that point, it was a kind of a one off, you know, and then I re engineered it for mass production. And, and, you know, change the quantities and figure it out, work with other teachers and classrooms and in kids to figure out what's the right amount of parts for that, you know, what is it Where does it go on a cart? Does it have a wall hanging thing? Um, and when I totally lost the thread, what was the
30:11
problem? The safety Do you worry about it? Yeah.
30:15
So I seen I already seen the children, first of all, a big wooden piece. They, they again, that that, that they know it's it's real. And that moment that they feel trusted and they there's a perceived risk that happens, right? So if you have a child a noodle, the foam noodle, they're gonna like smack you with it. And the perceived risk, I know this won't hurt, right? But if you hand them a baseball bat, the same size but it's wood, like not gonna smack you with it. So, you know, just giving them like just that they were, you know, large and wouldn't they they played very differently than they would Did with plastic or were, you know foam or cardboard building blocks? And, and so we saw them. And this is where the collaboration part is really pretty magic. We saw them run over and grab ask a kid that they didn't know, Hey, will you hold this for me while I do this other thing? And so it really does and that was that was part of the design like it's designed so that children meet each other because we're human each other, like, in my mind collaboration is like maybe all we have so the, the, they play very differently and the the the challenge that came up in selling it was that that's the teachers and adults don't know that right? We're not used to thinking like, we don't trust children right? To thinking like Will this be good for them? Yes, this is heavy, therefore they will ask the friend to help. They're like, Oh, this is heavy, therefore dangerous. They're gonna break their eye. Yeah, yeah, their own. The I sent a lot of time talking to people the first time that I kind of showed it at it at a big trade fair about that, and I was surprised. And this is of course why it's it's kind of like, it's been nice to do it myself because when I thought I would be talking about I wasn't talking about it. Also, I spent a lot of time explaining that it was a kit of parts. So I had in my booth kind of set up a few different weird structures, and then they had some loose parts laying around. And people said, Oh, so we buy a kit that makes this, you know, I just made this. Just buy a kit of parts. And they said, and then the kids make this and I was like, No, no, they make whatever they want, like people really didn't understand.
32:55
The merrier. You're like, oh, you're fine artists. You're like, what are you doing? wasn't
33:01
even trying to understand what they weren't understanding. It was so good for me because again, like I'm not in marketing. So I was like, oh, okay, I see. So this is what I need. This is how I need to be showing it. This is what I need. This is what is not clear, right? Um, and again back to like, oh, mad respect for marketing. Yeah, right. No, honestly, when I
33:22
started getting control over the products, I was producing an arts and crafts, I would always like sneak extra components in the kit and they'd be like, why is this kit so expensive? And and don't worry about because I just wanted like, obviously their instructions because it's a traditional made for marketing for to sell kid, but I wanted there to be extra things so that they could be like, oh, what if I like also put this anyway? I just love that. I feel like, you know, you want them. You want to give them guidance that they need it. But if they don't feel like they need it. You want it to be just like fun. Yes. You just want it to be exploration. I love that. IYeah, go ahead.
33:59
I on that, no, I, I, I almost never have children ask for instructions or say we almost never know. But adults almost always, almost always, well, what do we do with it? How do we use it? Are they doing it wrong? What am I supposed to build when we get
34:18
to the process of them figuring out how to use it is part of the play.
34:21
Yeah, they forget, I think as adults for just less comfortable jumping in and figuring it out. Because we're like, I gotta do it right. Or Yeah,
34:29
I don't want to hurt myself or break something. You're thinking a little bit too.Yeah, I did. He did. Oh, go ahead. That's a goodidea. I wanted you to talk about your, you called it name by function. And I thought that that was you were teaching that to like your first year industrial design students, I think. Yeah. And I just I would like you to teach that here because I think that's a really good way to approach design for someone just starting out if they want to make something a little bit you know, more in design for kids and more design for the experience.
34:59
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's so it's, uh, it's, um, so Okay, for example, a slide. Okay, right. So Oh, actually, no, that's not a good example. Okay. That in the
35:12
use of a mug and a way to extract water, I think but yeah,
35:16
the, um, so so name by function basically is that, that in InDesign in general, not just toy design, but in design. We, I mean, increasingly, I think we're understanding this, but we don't need to design the object, right? We were designing, we're designing something that serves us in some way. So the mug example is like, I don't need this like ceramic cylinder with the handle. I need a way to drink coffee. Right? And in that you can like kind of keep, keep stepping back, like get almost bigger and bigger with your with your function. All right, well, what's the function of coffee? Right? Oh, well, I need to wait. up in the morning. All right, so do do I need coffee or do I need to sleep more? Right? Right so do I even need to design a mug if we get enough sleep right and so you if you in the mug examples interesting because now we have all these like to go all of our fancy to go mugs, right? And, or even like the all of the sustainability design be behind like, coffee takeout things. And I'm like, 100 if you somebody from 100 years ago, saw this artifact, they would be so confused. Right? And it's not because we didn't, we did drink coffee. However, you wouldn't walk down the sidewalk drinking it you like a civilized person. woke up in the morning. Yes, drink a cup of coffee in your mud right? Or if you were tired, you took a nap. In the afternoon you wanted to have a coffee You would sit down at a table. Yeah, coffee. And so it's just like, like how many steps back like Wait, so we keep kind of because there's just like problem solvingthe problem. We need more to go much it's like, yeah, or do we just need to like, have a seven hour day? You know, maybe we need to go splash our faces with water.
37:24
Yeah. So how did your students apply name by function? Like whatkind of things that they come up with?
37:29
Name by function relates to all of all of design. And the examples we see this a lot. What's kind of service design now? Right? So we used to do music as an example. We used to design beautiful. What was the original one with the big phonograph, right? Or even so we had record players and then we had CD players and we had CDs and CD and then or I guess I skipped the The
38:01
cassette or the CD, vinyl record. Oh, in your car,
38:07
that doesn't matter. Yeah. So and then we had cassettes, right. And now but but all of it and all of that, like the function was to listen to music, right? And so, you know, you could say like, Oh, well, what if you just have a band next door? What have you seen? Right? But it's like, Okay, well now, at some point, we were like, yeah, we don't want a cassette. We've maybe I mean, some people do, right. We have like these like the fetishists. Yeah, they're beautiful objects. And it is really it is really different to sit down and listen to a record. But for the most part, and in the service design industry, we now have all of these different platforms to listen to music, right? So in that way, Spotify is the new record player, right? So so we're not designed and we wouldn't have gotten there if we just kept designing around. You could say the same thing with so many things like I mean telephones, right. So telephones we, like, in a way like an email or now maybe a text or a slack thread is the same thing as a carrier pigeon, right? Or the you know, the guy on the horse bringing the male Yeah, yeah. So in this way, like and carrier pigeon and smoke signals and an email are the same thing. Ryan's name by function, right? Interesting. So it's just like kind of just unpacking like what are what really happened and even with we can, we can then work backwards because with our with pocket computers, which is what I like to call our smartphones. It's, it's really not a phone, I don't talk on the phone, right. I use it for I use it for communicating. But most people I think also use it for entertainment. We use it to stay connected with family and friends. So that's like a day Front, like we have these emotional attachments. People use it to like, track their health for a lot of people. It's a medical device, right? This like tells me what my blood sugar is doing. And if I'm going to die in 10 minutes, right, so, we couldn't have gotten to this if we just kept innovating.
40:18
Oh, that's so good. Yeah, no, it's worth
40:21
it really. Like you can kind of work both directions.
40:26
But have you ever like interviewed kids to find out like what they want? Is that something that you do sometimes? Or?
40:32
Oh, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially with RigAmaJig because I'm around I spent a lot of time like in either in classrooms or in organizations that that have it. And, and I, I try to be kind of a parallel player. And, and it's which is hard for me because I want to give them a chance to figure out like, lateral stability. So oftentimes with trigger magic, they'll be When there'll be, you know, a few friends playing or a few, maybe their friends, maybe they've just maybe just met helping each other. But one of them will wind up holding this like four foot plank up while everybody else is building on to it. And at some point, they're like, you know, come on, I want it like, why am I just standing there trying to figure it out. And then they can also kind of give it a kickstand and they'll cry. And, and I want it like, I'm like lateral stability. Eventually, and it's hard for me to hold back but I, I do love them. And then they connect, they figure out Oh, I'm going to connect a bracket and then another plank along the floor. Oh,
41:35
that's amazing. They just made an industrial designer.
41:41
Yeah, lateral stability. And if I had shown them, they wouldn't have gone through all the other things that they now know might work for something else later. Right. So and So yeah, I think that that I, I learned a lot, not just about kids, but I learned a lot about What other opportunities they could use? Right? Like I, what else can I? What other parts like are they gonna be able to explore wish?
42:11
Oh, so good. All right. All right, I know I'm gonna wrap up very soon, I promise. It's so good. Okay, so Okay, there are two, two more big points I want to make. So one is I know you keep up on emerging technologies for small batch manufacturing so that you can hopefully do that more affordably and reach more kids. So is there anything that you would like to share? That might be something that's emerging and new that you think people with small toy companies might want to know about?
42:44
Um, gosh, maybe you know, I would just say some advice with trying to work with domestic manufacturers. I think it's, it's been, I mean, it's a little bit different now. And I think we're going to be in a strange state of globalization with COVID. But the I see a lot of, especially in toys that that they'll kind of just go right to a sourcing agent overseas, which often is the only way to make a thing because of cost. But I always start with doing an outreach in the US which when I can get someone to work for me, and and, you know, because I'm not a big company, it's usually kind of a weird thing. But when I can find a factory that that like, you know, is interested and takes the job, it's great and, and oftentimes, actually significantly less money than, you know, flying back and forth and dealing with quality control and all of the complications of that. But I would say just advice for that. The, the bringing in some, like, the more you can share them. So having a 3d printed part or making a prototype out of wood and, you know, bringing them all of that and having the drawings and the photos and, and kind of getting, telling them more about like, the more they can already see it, the less work they kind of have to do in order to take the project on. And, and so that's made a really big difference for me. And that took me a while to kind of learn, you know, I assumed if I went to somebody with an injection mold, you know, job they would be like Great Britain injection molder will do it, but they it's it's it's tricky and it's there's a lot of setup and time and kind of relationship building. So that part that's something that as a manufacturer, I now like value quite a bit especially as a small company because then you know, I'm never their biggest order and I'm kind of a little thing that maybe they make some money on but you know, it's definitely Not and there are a lot of domestic companies who who are using alternative energy sources and then some even some injection molding factories that are having zero carbon footprints. And so that I think is worth trying. I feel like we've there's a tendency to not even try because there's the assumption that manufacturing us is too hard or not too expensive or not possible. But it is it's, it's just it's going to take a little take a little more work.
45:32
Interesting. Thank you. That's great. And I also i would love just to hear what you feel set you up to launch heroes will rise because I know starting your own company, especially a toy company can feel overwhelming people may think, Oh, never do that. But I'm just curious to hear if maybe that you look back now and you see there were key points in your life that were kind of like leading you to be ready to take on something like this.
46:03
Ah, no.
46:06
Really?
46:07
I mean, from the design perspective, absolutely anything I talked about that I only see no because and I, the business starting a business, it's like, I got all of the like starting a business for dummies, toy and game inventors handbook which, which is actually really useful even though most of it I kind of didn't apply, but a lot of the patents stuff was too but so for me, um,
46:33
why did you do it then?
46:34
Well, well for me, my business is is a way to get quality toys that children need onto the market. Oh, um, and, and yeah, so Oh, and increasingly even, you know, like I said in that that I made it has been important to be able to control How it's sold, you know, like that our photos and especially these are building toys. So like, I get a lot of like, oh, boys must love this. Yeah. And I'm like, well, so because I run everything I'm like intentional about the photos in our pamphlets and on our websites are like young black girls.
47:20
Yeah, I know I saw they're
47:22
like, okay, should I benefit from it? So there's, um, you know, I that's all I think for me part of what it what I'm able to do. And frankly large corporations are also able to do they just don't want to know because maybe they can't they can't because they don't want it. Who knows. Sorry, old tired excuses. So. So for me, I think. Yeah, maybe I have larger objectives that I see. They're there. Being an input potential influence, and, and a lot of the other things that go along with the kind of the product itself. And that, that, um, that in, in being able to control that a lot of it's made in the US that, you know, even when we use plastic it's recycled, that we, we, we talk we are we stubbornly, like talk about the importance of no instructions and girls that have like, girls and boys and everybody in between, like to build things and and like to create things and they can, they can make giant heavy things and handle it and they can use real tools. Yeah, so all of that, I think is part of what I get to do because I'm in the company. So but starting the company, the I think my advice would be and like I said, they got all of the books and kept thinking like, running a business like what like, how do I It's got to be easy. There's, that's the like, you know, easy part. It's actually quite creative and I don't think I realized how, you know, the way you set up your business can also be an often has to be creative because you know how we decide to market the toy and especially with RigAmaJig,, it's, it's not, you know, it's it's kind of a learning material, but in the when a school goes to their learning materials spreadsheet, you know, they have pencils and paper, like that's learning materials. Yeah. And then there's this giant light item of RigAmaJig,, right? Yes, that's quite a pleasure. So we've had to be creative about how to help people understand where it fits in.
49:43
I love that you're making the effort like that. I think that's gonna make all the difference. And hopefully, it'll make a change a wave of change in the toy industry. So my final question for you, if you could take a magic wand and go to the toy aisle and change it into anything, you know, the traditional aisle what would you like like it to be? What would you like to see?
50:07
More or less plastic? I would like it to be kind of one aisle that might be based on like play types of play rather like if it had to be categorized it would be like gross motor skills, imaginative play, pretend play like costumes, absolutely no gender right so the fairy princess stuff might still be there but it would be for boys and for girls. And I mean, that's the biggest thing I think because you know, and it's in my stuff it's I think a little bit more visible because this like I said, like the like RigAmaJig,, oh, boys. But at the same time, like if I was inspired to design a doll, I would want to make sure that boys could play with them, which I would argue boys do with dogs shaped like little human and
51:05
it is the same thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. It was really enlightening. I'm really excited to share this episode. Do you have anything? Oh, any announcements you want to make any final? Would you like people to follow you on your socials or anything like that? Yeah,
51:23
yeah, we're we're we're starting to post more and regelmatig Instagram, okay. And on my Instagram, I don't post a lot but I post whenever something's there's a talk or event or something coming up. That's exciting.
51:39
And that's at casselman
51:40
at casselman everyone is at RigAmaJig,toy, okay. And I think I would say like, on Facebook or Facebook has become a great resource for teachers and children's museum directors to see what's happening with RigAmaJig,. So that's been a great place for people to look and see you know, everybody else's photos. stuff. And then of course, like on the website, we have all kinds of play prompts and you know, suggestions for how to use it in the classroom and resources and helpful videos for people getting started or trying to kind of do something specific with regard to jig. Yeah.
52:18
Oh, okay. We'll check it all out. And I'm gonna put all of the links in the show notes. Anything you want me to put in the show notes. Just send it to me and Oh, awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
52:28
Yeah, it was really keeping in touch.
52:30
Yes, me too. Well, there you have it. my interview with Cass Holleman. Now, what I love about tasses story is that she didn't start off in the toy industry at all. And I know these days, it can seem like you really need to find your passion at a young age to fully realize your potential and become an expert in it. We see kids starting toy companies, you know with their parents at the age of 12. But I hope you found inside and comfort in Cass's story as she lived many lives before beginning her toy career, including life as an adventurous person helping a scientist catch up Juan is in the Galapagos Islands, to working as a short order cook for many years. Now what I really, really want you to take away from this episode, what I want you to learn is that there are many aspects to the toy industry for you to fit your product into. Now, I know that in this podcast, I tend to really focus on massed I tend to really focus on mass market toys and specialty toys, but I rarely have the opportunity to dive into the world of designer toys with you. And there's a whole world out there of designer toys and cast his product stands out within that world as kind of interactive and exponential, and almost teeters the line between being a designer toy and fine art. So if you have ever felt not quite at home in the standard toy market and mass market and then specialty, I just want you to know that if your product doesn't seem to be a perfect fit for these retailers, you might want to look beyond the toy aisles and imagine your toys being sold at other outlets like museums. Now, I love seeing how many non toy people are inspired to join the industry due to this podcast, but it would break my heart if you came into this industry and allowed it to change you instead of you changing it. So I want this conversation with cast today to inspire you to be uniquely you. forge your own Pathan toys and committed bringing your toy ideas to life in the way that you see them being the most beneficial for the development of children and not just the toy market. Now, one of my favorite lines today that I really want you to take with you, from Cass is design with respect. So I want you to keep that in mind, we're designing for children, but that doesn't mean that we can design with respect. Now it's time again for another listener spotlight. My favorite part of the show and I hope it's yours too. Today I'm going to read a review from a listener who I just virtually met online and she actually just joined the Making It in The Toy Industry podcasts facebook facebook group, and she actually just joined the Making It in The Toy Industry podcast Facebook group this weekend, and her name is pearl. sprinkles. Well that's her her username is purely sprinkles Hurley says invaluable as a cake to printer turn toy printer. I cannot rate a gels advice highly enough. She is literally answering the questions I've been asking during this startup period that I'm in. I'm so happy to help you purely and to be there for you and answering all your questions. And I hope that this podcast continues to bring value to you, and so many other listeners. As always, thank you for tuning into this podcast. I know there are a ton of podcasts out there that you could listen to, and it means the world to me that you tune into this one. Until next week. I'll see you later toy people.
56:50
Thanks for listening to Making It in The Toy Industry podcast with Azhelle Wade at over to the toy coach.com for more information, tips and advice
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