Word: toying
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Robot Knock-Off. The gentle art of toy piracy consists of changing a competitor's successful design just enough to evade paying royalties to its originator. "When they copy you, it's piracy," cracks Lou Marx, who pays no royalties in the the U.S. "When you copy them, it's competition." When Marx "competes," he often cuts the price, but he always makes small improvements, e.g., when he "knocked-off" Ideal's bestselling mechanical robot, he put in a battery motor...
...best idea in the world, a toymaker still takes a tremendous gamble. To put a new narrow-gauge train under Christmas trees two years from now, Marx will invest $500,000 in dies and materials. Unlike most toymakers, Marx finances his operation out of capital, thus can push a toy into production faster than anyone in the industry...
...machine layouts to cut wasteful operations. "When we find a machine that will do a 30-second job in 25," he says, "we'll scrap the old one, even if it's new." Marx was one of the first U.S. toymakers to switch to plastic. Though the first plastic toys broke too easily, he now makes most small toys of polyethylene, a durable material that can be turned out up to 64 times faster than metal. Unlike most toy manufacturers, who virtually close down for six months when the Christmas lights go off, Marx sells 90% of his output...
Letter of the Law. In San Diego, cornered two days after he took $6 and a $3,000 station wagon from a motel garage, Ex-Convict Conrad Hansen amiably handed over his toy pistol to police, explained that he had used it in the holdup because ex-convicts are not allowed to carry real guns...
...leading quail hunters. One gaudy night, while Evelyn's mother was conveniently out of town. White blackly enticed the girl-or so she later testified -to a certain address on West 24th Street, which was entered through a secret door at the rear of a toy shop;. There, she said, he showed her into a room swathed in sound-stifling draperies from ceiling to floor, and containing a canopied bed with mirrors set in the top and sides. He offered her champagne. It tasted bitter. "When I became conscious again," she said later, "I didn't have...