When the inventor told Matt Groening this story some years later, the Simpsons creator confessed he was already quite familiar with Bop It! Not long after, a suspiciously similar game called Bonk-It! In it, Bart, Lisa and Maggie play the game in the backseat of the family car until the game drives Homer so crazy he runs off the road. One has to wonder how many real-life parents have come close to this same outcome.
Twist It! Pull It! We originally called it Cubis. I get lots of comments on my social media about people who have been playing it for years, and are very addicted to it; it truly combines physical and digital by having the player physically manipulating light-up squares to fit them into patterns.
It really had nothing to do with Bop It! You were supposed to trap a ball of light as it passed back-and-forth through the centre by squeezing the two ends.
So it too is a game with voice commands to do physical actions. It commands you to go to a colour cup and you have to physically smash your Hyper Dash down on that colour, but you can make the game as big or small as you like. How so? You could make it big by spreading the different-coloured cups around the yard, or make it small by leaving them on the table. This idea was pitched to every company, several times, over a year period before Wild Planet decided they wanted to get into the game business.
Would you walk us through that? Think of R, I, T and E as the four legs of the table that you want to place your invention on to give it the best chance of success. I felt I wanted to give the students something to walk away with; something that they could use in their future creative professions.
And all I knew was that I wanted it to be an acronym so it sounded official and easy to remember. Or R,I,T,E? I wanted it to be an easy acronym, so I decided it should only have four letters.
And just — sorry — how long before the talk is this? A couple of weeks? I only had a few hours before the talk! The more you think about it, the bigger the word Relationships gets… It also occurred to me that you need to bounce your ideas off people you trust to give you perspective and help you brainstorm. To build on that, if you have collaborators on a project, which many of us do, you need relationships with the right people with the right skill set.
And the I is still for Idea? Idea, yes, although luckily it also stands for Innovation, which is different from just an idea. So the I also stands for trying to think of what you can do to your idea to bring the most innovation to it that you can. Often, we think we have a great idea and we stop short. This is a tool to help you push yourself to imagine that whatever your first idea is, you can probably innovate it to make it ten times better because you need to visualise making your table as tall as possible — taller than all the others.
Push past that first idea and keep going… T for Timing is a very tricky one… Often people think of timing as pure luck. Sometimes it is, of course: you just happen to walk into the right place at the right time with the right idea. Lucky you! It also means you can use the R from Relationships to help you with that…. In what way? If you have good relationships, you can use them to help make your timing not just about luck.
Ten inventors could have the same basic ideas, the same relationships; and the timing for each might be perfect… But we might execute it in ten entirely different ways. Ask yourself: are there other ways the same idea could be executed that will be better timed?
And perhaps be more right for one of your relationships if you know what each of them is looking for? How, then, do I get the most out of the table?
If they wanted to adjust the volume, they needed to twist a knob. Instead, Klitsner decided to do away with the connection to the television altogether. Rather than the kid using the toy to control something, the toy would manipulate the player, barking commands to twist it, pull it, or bop it—which is where Klitsner came up with the name, and which is often styled with an exclamation point. He designed a prototype crafted out of foam and shaped like a baton.
He used his own voice for commands. Bop It was inspired in part by Simon , the electronic game introduced in that requires players to observe a light sequence on the device and then try to press buttons in the same sequence.
Bop It! Then, in the second year, it did even better. When I did the original pitch, I sped up my voice and put in silly sound effects. Years later I met Simpsons creator Matt Groening and told him about it. Only when I got the job did I realise the magnitude of the project. I prepared well for the recording session, which took about an hour and a half.
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