Ridiculous Opinions #237!
So, every day in my journal, I write down what I refer to as an "Idea of the Day". This is where a lot of crazy Randy creativity starts to happen and it has been the genesis of practically everything that I've written/created for the last fifteen+ years. Basically, it's a warm-up exercise for when I'm ready to begin my REAL writing. Sometimes, it becomes the writing itself, especially when the ideas are flowing!
Every once in a while, these ideas come easily. More often, they do not. Over time, I've amassed a lot of ideas. At one point, I had almost five thousand in my journal, but I lost track of the numbering after a little while and started to renumber them a couple of years ago. Someday, I may publish an entire book of these ideas. Just because.
In the fall, I was having a lot of trouble completing the "idea" part of my journal because the creativity wasn't flowing. So, in December I decided that I was tired of dilly-dallying around and I decided to start focusing on ensuring that my ideas were good to go.
To make this happen, I started having weekly "themes" for my writing; just basic ways to get my creativity off the ground. At first, I started writing "Genre Remixes", where I would come up with two different genres and try to write a mash-up of the two. This was very successful, so I decided to continue working with themes. One week, it was a "Carnival Week", where I worked to come up with ideas for carnival games and activities in a more modern setting. My best idea from that week was a fortune telling machine that uses AI to write personalized (yet vague) fortunes. That would make SO MUCH MONEY!
One week it was "Historical Remix" week, where I would take a historical event and try to change it (an example would be telling the stories of 50's greasers set in a sci-fi future...kind of "Grease" meets "Star Wars", so instead of their hot rods pulling into the drive in, it would be their souped-up spaceships).
It's all a fun exercise, and this week, I've been having a grand, old time. You see, my theme for this week was TOYS. My goal for myself was to invent a new toy line for each day over the last week. To let you into my world just a bit, I'm going to tell you about several of the ideas that I came up with. This may be interesting to you and it may not. So, here is every idea that I've come up with over the last week, with the date and the Idea Number...
WORLDS (February 17th, Idea #336)
Okay, imagine this!
People like little tiny things, right? Worlds would be a line of super-cheap, highly detailed little buildings and vehicles that connect. These would come in mystery boxes, so you never knew what piece of the "World" you were going to get. Basically, they would be a little square that was part of a larger grid. Each square would connect at the base and any piece of this "world" would be able to fit onto the next piece.
So, for instance, maybe we would start with the "Neighborhood World". You would buy a little mystery box (super-cheap...remember!) and when you open it up, it would contain a house. It's just a miniature, highly-detailed little house with a base that can connect.
You like your little house, so you decide to buy a new mystery box and in it, you find another house that is very different than the one you bought at first. You would use the bases of these two houses to connect to each other. Soon, you'd have a whole neighborhood that would fit on your desk or that your kids could endlessly reshuffle.
The "Neighborhood World" would be a limited edition. Once we were done making that line, we would start on a new line. The next would be "Western World" where each part would be for a western town. You'd get the saloon in one box and the jail in the next. If you got all of the pieces, you'd have an entire western town.
Each place would come with tiny figures that could attach to the building. You could even go so far as to put a QR code on the bottom of each building, which you could scan into the WORLDS app, where you could take your world with you.
And if you wanted to dream bigger than that, you could have little scenes play out in your online "world". The possibilities are endless!
I really like this idea. It's like a physical version of the Simpsons Tapped Out game. I can't imagine it would be that hard to make it and it would make a wad of money.
SAVE THE PLANET (February 18th, Idea #337)
My next idea was for a line of action figures. When I was a kid, I really liked G.I.Joe action figures, but I'm not sure how well war-toys would go down nowadays.
But when you're battling A.I. ROBOTS, it's an entirely different story!
So, my toy line of G.I.Joe-like action figures would be battling a group of robots who have gained sentience and tried to take over the planet. The figures would be a little bit like Mad Max, as they couldn't rely on technology, so you'd see a lot of steampunk-like weapons that were cobbled together from existing materials.
Plus, you could kill the bad guy a hundred times and they would never die because it's the same artificial intelligence behind it. It's a violent win-win.
I would play with these toys.
ARMADA (February 19th, Idea #338)
My next idea was for a Hot Wheels-like line of toys. I loved Hot Wheels when I was a kid because I could always convince my mother to shell out the 99 cents it would cost to buy one when we were at Wal-Mart. And because they didn't do much besides roll around, it would allow me to use my imagination to have grand adventures.
So, with that in mind, I wanted to create a series of Hot Wheels-like cars, but they were all spaceships! You'd get a different spaceship each time and they could roll around like Hot Wheels. We'd call the series Armada, because all of the spaceships could be a part of a fleet of ships that worked together.
If I was a kid, I could have endless hours of fun with this, because it wouldn't just be that the ships could roll around on the floor. They could fly! Spectacular.
PEOPLE (February 20th, Idea #339)
For this, I wanted to create something my daughters would have played with. When Harper and Abbey were young, I found a set of toys on eBay that came from McDonalds called "100 Years of Disney" or something like that. Basically, they made 100 little vinyl figures, one from each year of the Disney company's existence.
These were the most-used toys in our household. They didn't move. They didn't do anything. They were just vinyl figures, well-sculpted and well-painted. We still have them to this day.
So, with that in mind, I wanted to create a series of toys called "People" (because when I was young, I used to play "people" all the time..."Mom, will you play people with me?").
This line of toys would be absolutely simple. They would just be well-sculpted, well-painted people. A teacher. A garbage person. A firefighter. A neighbor. We could have very well-designed people with a name ("Neighbor George", "Firefighter Suzie", "Garbage Person Sue"), but that would be it. They wouldn't have a story behind them. They wouldn't be a part of a cartoon. The figures wouldn't move. They would just be stuck in a pose and that would be it.
They would be cheap and never-ending. You could have a TON of people. You could have a teacher and each individual student in their classroom. You could have astronauts and dog-walkers. You could have a basketball team. Hell, you could have an entire basketball league. You could just keep cranking out people, over and over.
I like this idea so much that I have been looking into how to manufacture these things. I might actually do a trial run of these.
SOCCER BUDDY (February 21, Idea #340)
This idea is genius, as far as I'm concerned, but I just don't have time to learn how to make it. You know Star Wars: The Force Awakens? You know the character BB-8?
Okay, imagine the same technology that goes into making an actual BB-8. My daughter, Abbey, had a BB-8 toy that was remote-controlled. You could make it run all around.
What if we put that technology into a soccer ball? What if your soccer ball could roll around or even follow you?
Imagine you're a kid, playing soccer all by yourself. You're running around and you kick the ball toward the goal. Then, you have to run to get the ball once you've kicked it. Or let's say you're dribbling across the field and you want to make a pass to someone. You kick to make the pass and it goes flying off to the side of the field. You've got to go get it.
Soccer Buddy would be attached to you through bluetooth. If the ball gets too far away from you (some kind of predetermined distance), it would use the technology from the BB-8 toy to roll back to you!
Genius, I tell you. Genius.
AIR GUITAR (February 22, Idea #341)
This one's kind of goofy, and I'm sure my music teacher spouse would scoff at the absurdity of this idea, but hear me out...
I want to create a series of guitars for kids that are simply light-weight, plastic recreations of real guitars. Why? So that kids could put on some music and fake playing guitar with their favorite bands.
These wouldn't be cheesy, kid-friendly fake-guitars. They would be lovingly-crafted, well-painted recreations of real guitars!
Now, you might say, Why wouldn't you just get them a real instrument? And I don't disagree with that. But how many parents over the years have bought a real instrument for their kids that just ends up collecting dust.
My toy line would be a gateway drug for music. If your kid wants a guitar, get 'em one of these. If they continually play with it, then eventually you can get them a real guitar. Done and dusted.
STACKS (February 23, Idea #342)
The idea I came up with yesterday is a little bit of a call-back to my "Worlds" idea from the beginning of this post. Except this would go upwards instead of outwards. Basically, you would get some little boxes that are kind of like the floor of a building. It's basically a little box that comes with tiny action figures. But the boxes would have magnets which would enable you to stack them. They attach to each other.
The first set of Stacks would be apartments. Inside each little box, you would find a miniature apartment, with an action figure that lives inside of it. The apartment would be hyper-detailed and filled with (immovable) furniture and what not. And the more Stacks you buy, the more you're able to build an entire building. You could also buy a Base-Stack, which would serve as the street-level for your stack. And you could connect Base-Stacks to other Base-Stacks, until you had a city block or something.
Can you see how all of the toys that I am trying to make here are all about imagination? That seems to be sorely lacking today for kids. When I was young, I would venture out into the woods to look for the greatest stick I could find on the ground and that would be my gun when we played war. Now, you can get a toy that looks real. Or you can play a video game that is hyper-realistic so there's no need to use your imagination at all.
I want to make toys that don't do a whole lot. The kids would have to fill in the blanks to ensure that they would have a good time. Someone, someday, might make a boatload of money off of these types of things. The journals where these were created are a GOLDMINE of ideas.
Look, this is how my brain works. And with these mental exercises, you can see how I function on a day-to-day basis. Before I can allow myself to play Fortnite, I have to take care of my own, personal work. This is a part of it. Will it ever go anywhere? Absolutely not. But it's fun for me to use my imagination to think about this stuff. Hopefully, you found it fun, too.
I hope you enjoyed this little trip down Randy's Weird Thoughts lane.
