Lonnie Johnson and the SuperSoaker invention discussed on "CBS Sunday Morning" "by design" episode on 21 May 2017
Jane Pauley appeared on the show remotely from Amsterdam, with the news being covered by a different person.
Of note for intellectual property was the story by Mo Rocca on Lonnie Johnson, the inventor of the SuperSoaker.
More details of Johnson's career are available in a story in Forbes, which illustrates some of the problems a single inventor can face:
Inventing was more of a hobby. Also I thought that once I got a patent, the world would beat a path to my door. But nobody knocked. When I realized the technology was being commercialized, it didn’t dawn on me that it was something I should pursue.
(...)
I was experimenting with nozzles I’d made that shot a stream of water across the bathroom and I thought they’d make a good water gun. I was having trouble getting people to understand the hard science inventions I had like a heat pump or the digital measuring instrument. I thought the toy was something anyone could look at and appreciate.
(...)
Initially I wanted to manufacture it myself and I talked to some companies that could handle that. But when they told me it would cost $200,000 to get the first 1,000 guns off the production line, I figured at $200 each, nobody was going to pay that much for a water gun. I didn’t understand that the tooling costs a lot but once you got the production line set up, you’d get the cost way down. I had spent my career in the military, so manufacturing and business were outside my bailiwick.
(...)
In 1987 I launched a successful toy, the Jammin Jet, powered by compressed air and water that would shoot out the back. It was made of Styrofoam and had a five-foot wingspan. A company called Entertech made it but an engineer inside the company put the rudder at an angle so the plane would fly in a circle. I tried to convince him not to do that. They manufactured 60,000 planes, spent $1 million in TV advertising and shipped planes with a design flaw. A kid would take the plane out of the box, and it would dive and break apart.
(...)
It was 1989 and I’d written letters to companies including Hasbro, who dismissed the idea. Eventually I went to the Toy Fair and I met a guy in the hallway who said I should talk to the folks at Larami, a small company that made knock-off toys. At the fair, I managed to meet with someone there and he said, “If you’re ever in Philadelphia, come and see us and we’ll be happy to talk to you.” He said, “Don’t make a special trip.” So I went to Philadelphia and waited over an hour in the reception area before I got in to see someone. I took the gun out of my suitcase. They asked if it worked and I shot water across the conference room. They turned the prototype into the first Super Soaker.
(...)
I can tell you that I received a royalty on sales, that the Super Soaker was the No. 1 selling toy in the world and that between 1992 and 1995, it topped $1 billion in sales. Because of the success of the Super Soaker, Hasbro bought Larami.
(...)
As to the value of a strong trademark over a patent:
The toy is still around but the patents have expired. In hindsight, one of the things I learned was the value of the brand. The Super Soaker name was the result of a discussion between myself and the president of Larami. If I’d understood the value of the brand, I would have put it in my contract, which was just a patent license.
Johnson has some interest in the battery biz:
My other invention is an all-ceramic battery. Existing batteries use liquid electrolytes. My battery uses glass as an electrolyte. We can hold between two and three times the energy that a lithium ion battery can. The idea is that the JTEC could convert heat from the sun to electricity and the battery could store the heat until you’re ready to use it. Solar power would be one application. You could also use it in nuclear power plants.
link to Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2017/03/03/the-inventor-of-the-super-soaker-talks-about-turning-inventions-into-products-and-his-next-big-idea/#4aba592b555c
link to CBS Sunday Morning: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/this-week-on-sunday-morning-by-design-may-21/
Moment of nature: Keukenhof Garden outside Amsterdam.
This was not unrelated to the Pauley piece on Hortus Bulborum in Limmen, established in the 1920s by tulip enthusiast Peter Boschman.
Of note for intellectual property was the story by Mo Rocca on Lonnie Johnson, the inventor of the SuperSoaker.
More details of Johnson's career are available in a story in Forbes, which illustrates some of the problems a single inventor can face:
Inventing was more of a hobby. Also I thought that once I got a patent, the world would beat a path to my door. But nobody knocked. When I realized the technology was being commercialized, it didn’t dawn on me that it was something I should pursue.
(...)
I was experimenting with nozzles I’d made that shot a stream of water across the bathroom and I thought they’d make a good water gun. I was having trouble getting people to understand the hard science inventions I had like a heat pump or the digital measuring instrument. I thought the toy was something anyone could look at and appreciate.
(...)
Initially I wanted to manufacture it myself and I talked to some companies that could handle that. But when they told me it would cost $200,000 to get the first 1,000 guns off the production line, I figured at $200 each, nobody was going to pay that much for a water gun. I didn’t understand that the tooling costs a lot but once you got the production line set up, you’d get the cost way down. I had spent my career in the military, so manufacturing and business were outside my bailiwick.
(...)
In 1987 I launched a successful toy, the Jammin Jet, powered by compressed air and water that would shoot out the back. It was made of Styrofoam and had a five-foot wingspan. A company called Entertech made it but an engineer inside the company put the rudder at an angle so the plane would fly in a circle. I tried to convince him not to do that. They manufactured 60,000 planes, spent $1 million in TV advertising and shipped planes with a design flaw. A kid would take the plane out of the box, and it would dive and break apart.
(...)
It was 1989 and I’d written letters to companies including Hasbro, who dismissed the idea. Eventually I went to the Toy Fair and I met a guy in the hallway who said I should talk to the folks at Larami, a small company that made knock-off toys. At the fair, I managed to meet with someone there and he said, “If you’re ever in Philadelphia, come and see us and we’ll be happy to talk to you.” He said, “Don’t make a special trip.” So I went to Philadelphia and waited over an hour in the reception area before I got in to see someone. I took the gun out of my suitcase. They asked if it worked and I shot water across the conference room. They turned the prototype into the first Super Soaker.
(...)
I can tell you that I received a royalty on sales, that the Super Soaker was the No. 1 selling toy in the world and that between 1992 and 1995, it topped $1 billion in sales. Because of the success of the Super Soaker, Hasbro bought Larami.
(...)
As to the value of a strong trademark over a patent:
The toy is still around but the patents have expired. In hindsight, one of the things I learned was the value of the brand. The Super Soaker name was the result of a discussion between myself and the president of Larami. If I’d understood the value of the brand, I would have put it in my contract, which was just a patent license.
Johnson has some interest in the battery biz:
My other invention is an all-ceramic battery. Existing batteries use liquid electrolytes. My battery uses glass as an electrolyte. We can hold between two and three times the energy that a lithium ion battery can. The idea is that the JTEC could convert heat from the sun to electricity and the battery could store the heat until you’re ready to use it. Solar power would be one application. You could also use it in nuclear power plants.
link to Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2017/03/03/the-inventor-of-the-super-soaker-talks-about-turning-inventions-into-products-and-his-next-big-idea/#4aba592b555c
link to CBS Sunday Morning: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/this-week-on-sunday-morning-by-design-may-21/
Moment of nature: Keukenhof Garden outside Amsterdam.
This was not unrelated to the Pauley piece on Hortus Bulborum in Limmen, established in the 1920s by tulip enthusiast Peter Boschman.
posted by Lawrence B. Ebert at 4:02 PM
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