Douglas M. Gaus
www.newproductconsultant.com

I'm very proud to have one of my inventions makings its U.S. debut here at Toy Fair 2016, at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center this very morning here in the Big Apple!  Come out to see the cool new outdoor toy in its native blister packaging, as well as running around in its birthday suit, at the Alex Brands booth, #2203.  Come out to see it!

Product is now available → click here to purchase!

Per the product description on the Alex Brands website:
POOF Fling Flyer lets you launch a missile from the palm of your hand! Just grip the handle of the launcher, load the foam rocket onto it, fling and release. Find a unique flinging style; overhand, underhand, or even from under your leg! The patented projectile also makes a whistling sound if it’s traveling fast enough, and the launcher has a wrist strap so it’s easy to keep with you.
Recommended for children 5 years of age and older.

Includes a foam missile, launcher handle and wrist strap
Flyer whistles as it soars long distances

Also check out the nice article published a few days ago on the online edition, Business Section of the Idaho Statesman on the link below.  A slightly streamlined version hit the print version of the Idaho Statesman, yesterday, Feb 12, and can be found on Page 4 in the Local Section!

Furby creator part of Boise inventor team behind new toy

I'm starting the new year (Welcome 2016!) with a twist on my Innospirational Words blog segment...I'll take famous sayings from visionaries of the past and mash them with my own ideas to make them applicable to entreprenuers and inventors needing inspiration in today's modern times...

Coming on the heels of its summer debut as the best supporting tractor in the rebooted "Vacation" movie, the Albanian import seems to be making a dent, literally, in the not so crowded mini-van industry.  Standard luxury items include the front seat drinking faucet, exterior door handles that double as martini glass holders, front and rear inward facing side view mirrors, a forward tipping headrest, onboard pop-up CB radio and a Swiss Army-like key fob (including button icons for a muffin, rocket, swastika and jumping rabbit?).  And with strict Albanian emissions, luckily the Albanian government contracted out everything emission related to the Volkswagen Group out of Germany...

Test drive one out for yourself at a local dealership near you, many are located in self storage units in various inner cities...this is how they are able to keep the lavish import's MSRP to a minimum.  The 2016 "Honda of Albania" models should be out in storage unit showrooms near you very soon!

Make Me a Millionaire Inventor - CNBC
Episode 6 airs tonight, 10/9c:

CNBC has a six episode series currently wrapping up called "Make Me a Millionaire Inventor"...The show is dually hosted, by Deanne Bell and George Zaidan, both seasoned hosts of various former shows on various cable channels.  The former, Deanne, has a mechanical engineering background and the latter, George, has a chemistry and science background.  Each one meets with inventors who have been unable to take their invention to the next level and decide after reviewing the invention if they think they can help them.  Once the inventor is given the thumbs up by the host, they are forwarded to the two main engineers at BlueFish Concepts (a product development company in El-Lay, CA) to flesh out a new prototype in a couple weeks (if the two weeks is true, we know that each prototype cost must be heavily subsidized by the show- I'd be happy to get some preliminary designs in that amount of time!).  Armed with a working prototype with modern industrial design, the hosts prep and then arrange meetings for their inventor with potential investors..the end of each episode shows how that meeting went, and if the inventor was offered funding to help bring the product to market and how much they had to concede in equity for the funding.  The show has borrowed heavily from earlier invention type tv, mainly "Everyday Edison's" but to some degree "The Shark Tank", History Channel's "Invention USA" and Food Network's "Invention Hunters"....maybe even the grand-daddy of them all, "American Inventor"....

 

Bazillion Dollar Club - SYFY  (UPDATE 10-1-15 - CURRENTLY CANCELLED FROM SYFI!)
Series Premiere September 22 at 10/9c:

SYFY, known more for B science fiction movies like "Pirahnadile vs. Croco-dragon" or "Octopussnado" is entering the invention tv ring next week with "Bazillion Dollar Club"...Two silicon valley alpha males, Dave McClure and Brady Forrest, host this Psy Fi Gangnam style offering.  Straight from their website, it states: "This is Dave and Brady. They are investors in a ton of tech companies, a few of which we'll follow. They'll guide and mentor these companies through an accelerator program (read: startup boot camp). It's all in preparation for a product demo day in front of potential investors, who are the key to taking the company to the next level...or not.."  Sound somewhat familiar?  Please re-read the first paragraph above if you suffer from severe short term memory!! 
 
The main difference between the two shows is the word Million and Bazillion, one obviously trying to grandstand and outdo the other...I'm hoping an unnamed search engine company will throw some bucks from their petty cash drawer and come out with their own show "Who Wants to Be in the Googollinaire Club?"  For those interested in making the real cash, a googollionaire would be equal to a $1 with 100 zeros after that...try to beat that paltry Millionaires or petty Bazillionaires! 


Editor's Note: Merriam-Webster states that a Bazillion is a huge, unspecified number..and others refer to it as a very large exaggerated number....so, if I'm a Dreamer and I have a chance to make an invention that makes me a Googollionaire, which equals $1,000,0000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000,000,000,000
or a Bazillionaire which equals a huge, unspecified and exaggerated number ($?)...my accountant tells me I gotta go with Googollionaire!


Editor's Update: Oct. 1, 2015: Although it was obvious that an invention/technolgy type show was not a good fit with SyFi Channel, the viewers of the same said channel cast really their votes by not tuning into the first episode of "Bazillion Dollar Club"...This resulted in an early pulling of the show!  So Dave and Brady, the tough ones on the show (who were cracking the whip on hopeful new tech companies seeking venture capital) ironically had the boom lowered on them!  Now they are on the end of being at the mercy of another channel picking up this Silicon Valley misfit.  REELZ TV, you saved Trump's damsels in distress, the Miss USA pageant, not too long ago.  Have any interest in this lost puppy? 

This company is clearly having fun at what they do...you can't help but have fun with them when you peruse through their prank line of products, especially the Prank Pack boxes. Their online tagline says that these boxes help "disguise your crappy gift in a box they'll remember."

The graphic design team at 30 Watt (Makers of Amusing) use fictional celebrities to endorse their fake products and to give them some more street cred, using Tom Buttons (Outdoorsman/Inventor) for their Fish Eye, a wearable fish camera to "let a fish do your fishin!", Cy Hennington for Connect-A-Cord, a box of 50 (qty) one foot lengths of power cord that can be strung together for the "perfect length power cord every time!" and Henri Remoulade for Turn and Churn, a travel ice cream maker that attaches to your hub cab and makes "wheel fresh ice cream!".

This company has clearly made something out of nothing...there is some definite ingenuity in spending the majority of their focus in designing and selling product packaging only...I think the packaging supplier probably gave them some weird looks when they were getting initial quotes after also including a markup to also package their product with it..and they replied "we won't be needing that."

The product ideas dance the fine line between absurd ASOTV products and real crappy products that made it to your local drug store aisles.  Reading through their line of fake products and packaging copy, especially the disclaimer for the Face Heater (product and disclaimer pictured above), reminds me of Irwin Mameway.  Dan Ackroyd played Mameway, President of Mameway Toys, in an interview on Consumer Probe, to explain that his toys weren't dangerous, in a Saturday Night Live skit back in the 70's...(see video below)

Go to 30 Watt's website (orAmazon) to buy some of their fun prank products and use them to dress up some of your substandard gifts...they also sell similarly funny  prank gift card holders @ $15 for a pack of 6..along with some more creative and drinking themed barware and more. 

The gift of a laugh or a smile from the box may be better than the actual gift inside (but you may have to spend some extra time explaining to Grandma that she can't buy a real Crib Dribbler for the newest grandchild, when she asks where she can get one).....All in all, you should know that when someone spends an extra $5-10 on you just to make you laugh from an outrageous product box...that you should be very prankful to have such a friend!

With less than eight months left on his ten year long Comedy Central stint, and Dave's Late Show seat being vacated for him just around the corner, Stephen talks about some of America's most beloved inventions:  Thomas Edison's little known English muffin innovation, the neck fanny pack, three legged pantyhose, and Amazon's recent patent for 'Photography Against a White Background'...Looks like I may be infringing with my website and all marketing materials used in the past...I'd better watch out for the patent trolls!  Hold on, my doorbell just rang, and I see a drone waiting at my door trying to deliver me some sort of papers....Curse you, Jeff Bezos!

See Stephen further explain the Gerbil Shirt, "...which innovatively combines a shirt, a gerbil habitat and being alone for the rest of your life..." 

For further reading, check out the Pet Display Clothing Patent on Google Patents:US 5901666 A   :D

Seeing the Chicago Cubs announce today that they have a new mascot, shot me back through memory travel time to my elementary school, Happy Valley School in Lafayette, California...the year was 1973.

  

I was in fifth grade and our school had just told us we were getting a new school mascot from which we had none.  We were now going to be the Happy Valley Hornets!  Finally, we could have some school shirts or banners that had some coolness and for which we could have mean, mean pride! 

In a few short weeks to follow, the administration would show us our new school logo. In leading up to the big reveal, I imagined the coolest, mean looking hornet waspish crazy insect with an insane looking stinger poised and bent, just looking for its next kill!  And hornets didn't die, like their lame-o insect cousins the bees; word was out that hornets could sting people all day long and never die a death from injecting their victims with a combination load of venom and pain!

We had the Merriwood relays coming up, where only the finest track athletes in the area would sprint down never ending parallel lines to achieve athletic glory and attain a first place ribbon!  Our competitors from neighboring elementary schools knees would begin to wobble and sweat would pore from their hairless armpits just looking at our new mean jerseys, meant to intimidate all before us: the opposing players, their parents, their kids, even the judges!

Mr Lilley, our principal, gathered us all in the main hall outside his office, where we were all gathered around to see the new mascot.  I knew that because I went to the coolest school, that the adults running it had access to the best graphic designers and money would be no option for getting the perfect look of the mascot and its accompanying logo. There was a reason my parents toiled to live in this middle class town and I knew the property taxes they paid would have to have gone straight to the Cool Happy Valley Hornet Mascot and Logo Fund!

I just remember an art stand holding up the covered logo...a thin sheet was covering the awesomeness that was just minutes away from being viewed.  I could not stand the anticipation!  Please, pull off that dreaded sheet that separated us from the glory years to come with our new found Hornet mascot and logo!

What happened next, was stunning to my brain and almost sent me into therapy at the tender age of 11...it all was surreal and happening in Super Slow Motion...kind of like watching This Week in Pro Football, where i got to painfully revisit Franco Harris' catch, after the football rebounded off of the poor shoulder of a coiled Pittsburg Steeler receiver due to having been hit from a classic Jack Tatum stinger, but thereafter still was able to run down the sideline acting like a selfish snob with the ball cradled like a baby in his arms into the end zone to beat my beloved Raiders in the AFC Championship even with the newly annointed King Quarterback, Ken Stabler, at the helm and unduly cheat them out of winning the playoff game.  I know that was a run-on sentence, but that play was a run-on play. 

Revealed on the art board and despise to my eyes, was a cutesy font with letters spelling "Happy Valley" that were arched over the ugliest thing I have ever seen.  It was a cute Hornet!  There was no mean grimace to be found on this insect.  It was smiling at us all, almost inviting us to come over!  I looked on the next most important thing, and it was not a long mean stinger in the shape of a jagged and rusty nail.  It was short and rounded at the end, looking like the soft pedal of a flower!...and it was attached to the second ugliest thing I have ever seen...a cute insect bottom!  It had a mark above it, to show it was wiggling in the wind and saying to us all, "hey, aren't I cute!  I won't hurt you, let's play!" 

Even Mr. Rogers and the creepos in his Neighborhood had more street cred than this piece of $#@^!&...I think it was the first time I ever swore, except it was just in my head and the profanities were just the thoughts screaming inside my head and were resonating back and forth in my skull, like a brain wobbling inside the same from a concussion...

Chicago Cubs Fans:  I feel your pain!  Hey, I know your city is a tough city and you have a lot of intercity problems, including youth-aged gangs and drive-by killings, which is nothing to take lightly.  Your teams' mascot obviously doesn't have to be a proponent of guns or violence, but does it have to be marketed and cool to only people 4 years and younger? 

It says they used focus groups that wanted a family friendly mascot , but I think either 1) the focus group was not focused enough or 2) they need a focus group to come up with the correct focus group