There's a new toy in town. MaKey MaKey isn't fluffy or cute. It doesn't talk or dance when you press its belly. It inspires curiosity, experimentation, invention and pride.
This $49.95 part-digital, part-mechanical construction kit represents the business potential of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — or STEM — movement compelling politicians and professors to rethink education and venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to create and fund new products around it.
Kit founders Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum of Cocoa Beach, Fla.-based JoyLabz believe MaKey MaKey and an equally-inventive new generation of toys are on the cusp of transforming the toy industry.
Less than three-year-old littleBits of New York City recently raised $11.1 million to grow its business selling exploration kits — tiny circuit-boards that can be snapped together to create larger circuits that light up, make noise or perform other small feats. GoldieBlox and Roominate both sell building sets aimed at getting girls interested in electronics and engineering. GoldieBlox won Intuit's Super Bowl commercial contest this year after it created a viral video of young girls making a Rube Goldberg device.
At February's Toy Fair in New York, the first year JoyLabz attended the event, retailers surrounded its booth to watch demonstrations of the Makey Makey kit. It allows kids (and adults) to make simple musical instruments and more complicated electronics by connecting everyday objects such as silverware, coins — even many foods work if they will conduct electricity — to a computer with an Internet connection. The Makey Makey circuit board functions like a computer keyboard.
Toy Fair attendees also viewed a sampling of videos of the thousands of ways in which early online buyers are tinkering with the kit's elements (then recording their creations). For example: Pizza Hut Canada made an instrument out of dipping breadsticks; the global design firm IDEO uses it for work! shops; and one dad programmed a controller for his son, who has cerebral palsy.
Since Toy Fair, Silver says he's fielded requests from nearly every major toy retailer. Once he redesigns its packaging, he expects orders for MaKey MaKey kits from around the world. And he's got a pipeline of additional products to follow.
Playthings built with software that users can customize are a highlight of the toy industry this year, says Adrienne Appell, senior manager of public relations for the Toy Industry Association. Crowd-funding platform Kickstarter has helped a lot of new companies raise funds for their projects, and many of those were on display for the first time at the fair.
"New products are engaging kids in topics from computing to science to robotics. There are games teaching kids to code," says Appell.
"It's getting kids involved in pretty complex subjects at an early age, but they're having fun."
Silver and Rosenbaum spun MaKey MaKey out of the MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten group in 2011, and the men launched a Kickstarter campaign in June 2012 to fund its development. Their work was immediately validated — they set out to raise $25,000 and instead collected $568,106 from more than 11,000 backers. They've sold 100,000 kits since, and are prepared to sell 10 times as many within the next two years as the retail relationships pick up.
But sales weren't ever a goal for Silver — the world has changed enough in the last decade to make his years of research relevant beyond the media lab. What would have been called media art back then is now a business.
"People need products to dream with, not just products to be more efficient," he says. "If I have to prove to you why my product is important, then I don't want to make that product. I want to create something that makes people say, 'This will help me dream.' "
Laura Baverman is a Raleigh, N.C.-based business journalist covering start-ups and entrepreneurship for regional and national publication! s. She pr! eviously covered entrepreneurship for the Cincinnati Enquirer, a Gannett newspaper. Baverman can be reached via e-mail at lbaverman@gmail.comor Twitter @laurabaverman.
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