Word: mousetrap
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...biggest bomb was Steven Spielberg's World War II farce, 1941, which cost Universal Pictures nearly $40 million, including promotional costs. "It was overdone, overproduced, overeverything," says Goldman. "It was like building a $1 million mousetrap to catch one mouse in the kitchen." Universal's president, Sidney Scheinberg, argues that "it's too early to say" how the picture will do and suggests that neither Universal nor Columbia, who co-financed the film, will lose any money. Yet movie analysts reckon that the film may have to gross as much as $100 million before the studios...
Despite all the sweet nothings uttered to the contrary, Harvard's attitude towards her undergraduates is best voiced by Fox himself. When asked last September whether the administrative board was the most helpful mechanism for students he could imagine. Fox replied, "If you could find a better mousetrap...
...those who went so far as to sell short in dollars, last week's U.S. measures proved expensive. "We sure hope that we mousetrap some bastards with this," gloated one White House senior aide. And although traders named no names, they indicated that some speculators had been hurt. Said a veteran money dealer in Brussels: "One or two companies got their fingers burned right up to their armpits...
...West Coast, well pay rewards people for doing what they are supposed to do: go to work regularly and on time. Some results have been impressive. Reports James Parsons, 59, president of Parsons Pine Products of Ashland, Ore., maker of nearly 80% of the nation's wooden mousetrap bases: "Our absenteeism has dropped 30%, and our tardiness is almost zero." Parsons' incentive: an extra day's pay at the end of every month to workers who are punctual. Reichhold Chemicals' fiberglass manufacturing division in Irwindale, Calif, offers half an hour's extra pay for each week a worker completes...
...morning in 1972, Electric Guitar Maker Bob Brown, 50, found dozens of mice and rats sprawled dead in his workshop in San Diego. They had been zapped by vibrations from a nearby guitar that he had miswired and forgotten to turn off. Eureka, thought Brown, the better mousetrap! After further tinkering, he produced the AMIGO-an acronym for ants, mice and gophers. The football-size device emits electromagnetic waves that have no effect on people or domestic animals but upsets the small pests' neurological systems. They either flee or go into a trance-like state, refuse...