USA TODAY

Toys bring out kid in corporate America

By Bruce Horovitz, USA TODAY

Push those paperweights and penholders off the desk. Make way for corporate-colored Silly Putty eggs and Etch A Sketch boards etched with company logos. The toy industry, desperate to boost income after several years of flat sales, is trying to lure businesses into the toy shop. Using nostalgia as a sales hook, the toymakers behind such familiar brands as Lego and Slinky (yes, even $100 gold-plated Slinkys) are looking for ways to broaden their bases beyond children. At issue: A $23 billion, kid-coddling industry with nowhere to go for growth but, ugh, grown-ups.

"They'll try just about anything," says Jim Silver, publisher of The Toy Book, an industry trade magazine. "It's ugly out there."

There's a very serious notion to all this, too. Most executives are basically kids in adult clothing. One newly created division of Lego is sponsoring two-day corporate strategy seminars, where executives use specially made Lego blocks to help companies construct, if you will, new strategies. And maybe blow off a little creative steam in the process.

The rationale: Adults need toys, too.

"It's grown-ups — more than kids — who need toys on their desks to play with when they're stressed," says Howard Papush, a corporate consultant who goes by the name "Dr. Play." And it's no big surprise that the toys executives favor are the toys of their youth.

Promotion-industry executives are dumbfounded. Companies used to want their names etched onto pens, hats and coffee mugs. No more. Now, they want toys. While sales of these items now account for less than 1% of all toy sales, analysts estimate they could ultimately grow to 10%.

"Executive toys are the only part of this industry that's growing," says Jeff Huvar, vice president of Promobrands.com, which imprints corporate logos onto Frisbees, Hula Hoops and Magic 8-Balls.

Many of the names are as familiar as the shocked face on your first-grade teacher when you snuck one of these into the classroom:

Silly Putty. With its sales flat, the maker of Silly Putty figures the best way to get the egg off its face may be to get its Silly Putty eggs inside the corporate suite.

That's why Silly Putty has begun to nudge business executives to stamp their corporate logos — and company colors — onto the familiar eggs. Companies can order a minimum of 5,000. Cost: From 80 cents to $1.50 each, depending on the number ordered.

Its first corporate customer: Puffs.

"What better way to inspire creativity and imagination?" asks Susan Mboya, brand manager for the tissues. She ordered thousands of the Silly Putty eggs, which will feature the Puffs logo along with its familiar powder blue corporate coloring. Many will be handed out to employees next month at a company party.

Silly Putty's corporate sales program won't officially launch until fall. But after displaying the items at a trade show last month, the orders already are coming in.

Work stress isn't the only driver. So is the psychic fallout from Sept. 11. "A lot of people are looking for simple things that they feel comfortable with," says Debra Ottinger, manager of partnerships at Binney & Smith, the parent company.

The company also makes Crayola crayons. It's pondering a similar corporate tie-in with them. Companies will be able to order the big box stuffed with 64 crayons that match the company's corporate colors — such as all blue crayons for IBM or dark brown for UPS.

Etch A Sketch. For Ohio Art, maker of Etch A Sketch, these are not the best of times. For one thing, Kmart, which has sold more Etch A Sketches than any other retailer since the toy was created 42 years ago, is still in bankruptcy proceedings.

Wal-Mart carries the toy, too, but because the retailer is so notoriously tight-fisted, it's tougher than ever for Ohio Art to make a profit on it, says Bill Killgallon, CEO of the company. That combined with the overall softness in the toy industry has created "one heck of an impetus" for Etch A Sketch to seek corporate clients, Killgallon says.

It even hired promo specialist Airmate to seek out such gigs.

Among those it's landed: Visa and Pepsi-Cola. Visa ordered 10,000 pocket-size Etch A Sketches — complete with the Visa logo and made in Visa's familiar blue color — to hand out to clients. And Pepsi ordered more than 15,000 — made in Pepsi red with the Pepsi logo — as part of a consumer giveaway last year.

Last year, Ohio Art also created a heart-shaped Etch A Sketch for Avon that representatives sold door-to-door.

There's another potential market: When Killgallon's daughter, Carrie, is married next month, guests will find their correct seats at the wedding party tables by looking for their names printed on heart-shaped Etch A Sketches at each setting.

Slinky. Never mind that since 1945, some 300 million Slinkys have been sold — if not sprung.

Ray Dallavecchia, president of Slinky maker Poof Products, wants to sell you one now. So the company has created an entire division in search of companies that want to slap their logos onto Slinkys — plastic or metal. Citigroup has. So has Phillips 66. And Holiday Inn.

"The aura and icon status of Slinky is such that the adult appeal is extensive," says Dallavecchia.

He won't say how much money the division makes, but he does say, "It's absolutely a profit center."

Sales of Slinkys with corporate logos are growing at a rate of about 5% annually — making it one of Poof's fastest-growing products — and now make up about 10% of total sales.

The most profitable Slinky is clearly for executives. It's a version plated in 18-karat gold that sells for a cool $100. "How many guys can say they have an 18-karat gold Slinky on their desk?" he asks.

Lionel. The folks at Lionel are always searching for ways to get new people all aboard — particularly those who aren't already train buffs.

It's not easy, says CEO Bill Bracy. But by recently luring corporate customers, the familiar train cars are showing up in unexpected places.

Whirlpool ordered Whirlpool-themed train sets as an incentive for retailers and employees.

Each of the boxcars was personalized for the company.

"This is only about 1% of our business," says Bracy. "But it's a form of advertising and promotion that gets our trains into some unlikely venues." And onto some executive desktops.

Lego. Perhaps no toymaker has taken corporate clients quite as seriously as Lego.

The maker of snap-together, plastic building parts isn't satisfied to simply sell the product to grown-ups. Through a new niche brand called Lego Serious Play, it's also peddling two-day, executive seminars that use special sets of Lego bricks as executive learning tools. The workshop focuses on "strategy making," says Robert Rasmussen, CEO of Executive Discovery, the sister company to Lego that makes the Serious Play products.

Cost of the workshop: $10,000.

For that price, you even get to keep the 50 pounds of specially packaged Lego bricks (about 6,500) that teams of 10 executives are directed to assemble together.

Among the companies that have bought it: Nokia, Tupperware and DaimlerChrysler.

The first question that Rasmussen typically asks executives: "Does your company operate more like a race car or a zoo?" Then, he asks the team to construct their answer out of Lego blocks. Yes, this special Lego set comes complete with monkeys and elephants.

"This is about using play to enhance business," says Rasmussen. "We give them the tools that can help them think."

But first they must play around.

Papush, the consultant whose Los Angeles company is called Let's Play Again, isn't embarrassed to admit he keeps a box of wooden blocks on his desk that he pulls out at least once a week when he's feeling tense. He likes them, he says, because they're like the blocks he played with as a kid.

He charges up to $3,000 for half-day seminars with senior executives. He prods CEOs and the like to return to the creativity of their youth in order to make the office a fun place. How? Among other things, by picking up a favorite old toy from the toy shop.

"There's an acute kid in each of us that's dying to come out," says Papush, who is working on a management book appropriately titled, When's Recess?

"If people don't bring a sense of play to work," Papush says, "they're cheating the company."

They just have to take care that the Silly Putty doesn't gum up their keyboard.