During my childhood, if your parents didn’t want to spend the bread, there was really only one way to get your bright, electrical stimulation:
Lite-Brite.
Lite-Brite has been around since before time – well, 1967 to be exact.
As many of you probably know, because it’s MORE than likely you have seen one of these when you were a rug rat, Lite-Brite was essentially a back-lit board that was covered with black paper. You would take a transparent, colored pin, stick it into the black paper and it would create a bright image of whatever you want. Sometimes the black paper had various images on it like a sail boat or some crap.
It had a pretty catchy commercial: the kids seemed so excited when the Lite-Brite would spin around and their childish images would glow with the force of a thousand suns – the images flying off the machine with glowing sexual power.
Hell, even the theme was memorable:
I remember being so disappointed that the Lite-Brite didn’t come to life…
The Lite-Brite was invented by the one and only Burt Meyer, who also co-invented other famous toys like Mouse Trap and Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. Meyer had quite a prestigious career that spanned decades, but according to an article by Tim Walsh, Meyer’s favorite invention (or “item” as Meyer describes) was the Lite-Brite.
According to Meyer, the pitch wasn’t too hard:
“I brought (Hasbro president) Merrill Hassenfeld into our conference room,” Meyer said. “I dimmed the lights and plugged it [the Lite Brite prototype] in. As soon as I put a peg in, it lit up. After he tried it himself, he sat back and said ‘That’s my item!’ He and Marvin inked a deal within an hour.”
Today, there are a number of artists using the Lite-Brite platform to toss together some pretty cool pieces; some are insanely beautiful and others more tongue-in-cheek.
In fact, artist Rob Surette made the world’s largest Lite-Brite image measuring ten feet by twenty feet and made with 504,000 pegs.
My past experience with the Lite-Brite was almost killing myself by sliding my lil’ kid finger in between the male contacts of the plug and putting it into the socket. I remember waking up to my preschool teachers hovering over me and wondering if I was dead.
I wasn’t exactly the smartest kid, nor the easiest to entertain. Anyway, as a child I wasn’t impressed with the Lite-Brite; I was always more of an Etch-A-Sketch guy.
Regardless of how I think, Hasbro released a mega-hit that’s been around for almost 50 years in various forms – including a new iPad version – and you can’t dismiss a hit.
Until next time…
