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IT Figures!
American Classic Toy, Inc
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| American Classic Toy, Inc is doing roaring business with its latest Sudoku Cube creation |
"People all over the world are excited about this product," enthuses Jay Horowitz, president of Sebring, Ohio-based American Classic Toy, Inc and the man behind the Sudoku Cube.
After the Sudoku Cube was launched in the US in September 2006, sales ramped up. Today, the company's factory on the Chinese mainland has a production capacity of about 500,000 units per month and handles orders from Spain, France, the UK and South Africa.
At the recent Hong Kong Toys and Games Fair in January, Horowitz's stated objective was to expand sales internationally. In response, dozens of potential importers and distributors lined up at his company's booth.
"We had people from Iceland, India, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, the Philippines, Malaysia, Portugal, Brazil, Finland, Russia and many other places," Horowitz says, happily flipping through the business cards they left.
He also provided some background about Sudoku and the Rubik's Cube? A worldwide phenomenon, Sudoku is a number puzzle played on a nine-by-nine grid. The digits 1-9 must fill the grid, and no digit can appear more than once in each region. The Japanese word sudoku roughly translates as "digits must occur only once". Wildly popular in Japan since the mid-1980s, the game was created in 1979 by a retired American architect whose hobby was puzzles.
The Rubik's Cube? by comparison, is a colour-based puzzle that features a three-by-three grid of nine squares per side, with each square in one of six colours. The idea is to manipulate the cube so that all the squares on each of the cube's six surfaces consists of a single colour.
Now, Sudoku Cube players must line up the numbers 1-9 so that all nine numbers appear in every row, column and on each side. "The numbers can be in any order, but they can't be repeated," Horowitz says.
Each cube offers a total of 18 puzzles: six vertical, six horizontal and six regional (side). "It has nothing to do with maths or arithmetic, and it's all about critical thought and logic," Horowitz says, adding that one can play the Sudoku Cube at beginner, intermediate, advanced and master's levels.
Not a puzzle fan by nature, Horowitz says he became hooked on Sudoku after observing a fellow passenger doing Sudoku puzzles to pass the time. "She offered to show me how to do it, and later I found myself wondering how I could apply it to the games business."
Toys and games have been in Horowitz's blood for generations. His immigrant grandfather built a wholesaling business in New York City for houseware products that included toys. When his father took over the company after World War II, he concentrated exclusively on toy distribution.
Uninterested in wholesaling or retailing, Horowitz switched to toy manufacturing. After graduating from university in 1968 and marrying into a Colombian family, he decided to start a factory in the South American country. "There was almost no domestic toy manufacturing there and I saw an opportunity," he recalls. He remained there for 10 years, becoming a licensee for well-known American toy brands such as Kenner, Marx and Ideal Toy Corp.
But the country's increasing climate of violence exacted a heavy toll and he relocated his family to Miami, Florida in 1978. That was a time when the nostalgia craze for the 1950s was in full swing, with the TV show "Happy Days" (featuring the likes of Fonzie and the Cunningham family) a major hit.
It occurred to him that toys from earlier eras might have sentimental value too. He began buying toy companies, along with the moulds and product rights to the toys. Marx and Ideal (which, interestingly, owned the moulds for the Rubik's Cube? were among the stable of 30 companies Horowitz accumulated over the next 20 or so years.
At first, he marketed the toy moulds and product rights to manufacturers around the world. Then he hit on the idea of marketing classic toys such as Fort Apache, Marvel the Mustang, Super City, Tic Tac Throw, KABOOM! and Skittle Pool under his new company, American Classic Toy, Inc.
"We started to reissue the original products in the original moulds to the original specifications. Each one was numbered and had a certificate of authenticity and we sold them to adults or collectors," he says.
Today, the company's classic line of 18 games, 10 toys and three crafts sells in the US as well as in other countries where American toys are familiar, such as the UK, Australia and South Africa, which brings us back to Horowitz's introduction to Sudoku on that fateful plane ride in March, 2006. For the next month, he worked feverishly to figure out how to arrange the numbers on the cube. "Then I had an inspiration - it was a spatial numerical pattern," he says. Over the next three days, he worked on the problem non-stop day and night until he discovered the secret. "If I used the numbers in a certain sequence on the cube, I could align 18 different, completely integrated nine-square-long Sudoku puzzles." The national and international patents that Horowitz holds on the Sudoku Cube are based on these numerical patterns. Every number also has a background colour and, as a second puzzle, the cube can be arranged by colour, similar to the Rubik's Cube?
The Sudoku Cube is currently offered in 12 versions: named Act I, Act II and so on, for age ranges from seven-year-olds to adults. Every four months, three new versions are scheduled to be added. Using the numerical pattern, there is no limit to the number of possible variations that can be created.
The Sudoku Cube sells for US$9.87 in the US (an amount chosen because each number appears only once) and comparable prices around the world. With the Sudoku Cube on its way, Horowitz is hardly content to sit back and take it easy. He's also invented the Sudoku Slide, a two-player game that combines the appeal of the Sudoku Cube with that of well-known slide puzzles.
Horowitz was overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response to the Sudoku Cube at the Hong Kong Toys and Games Fair. "It's been extraordinary. The potential seems unlimited and demand has been incredible - not just in Asia but everywhere," he observes. "It doesn't matter whether you speak English or Chinese or Spanish, regardless of race or ethnicity, in the universal language of numbers, it's addictive."
His fondest wish is for the Sudoku Cube to become, like Slinky?and other toy favourites down through the years, a tradition that continues to captivate generation after generation of players.
TEXT BY ANDREA PAWLYNA
American Classic Toy, Inc
101 S. 15th St, P.O. Box 69,
Sebring, Ohio 44672
Tel: 330-938-6599
Fax: 330-938-2532
Email: americanclassictoy@sbcglobal.net
Web: www.americanclassictoy.com
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