High-Tech Learning on a Low-Tech Budget
If the kids have a hankering for a home computer and a bundle of educational software but the family wallet is too flat for that, parents should take heart with a new electronic product emerging as a big seller this Christmas.
Price/Stern/Sloan Publishers, a 22-year-old Los Angeles company known for its innovative books, has developed the Questron series of electronic workbooks, otherwise known as “the beeping, buzzing, flashing, zapping way to learn.” The system isn’t as extravagant as a computer, but it has plenty of bells and whistles that are activated by a microchip inside a battery-operated wand. When a child uses the device to point to an answer, it will “beep” and show a green light if the answer’s correct or “buzz” and show red if it’s wrong.
“Parents like the fact that the child can sit down and do some independent ‘educational’ games and have an immediate response,” said Laurie Flores, owner of the Children’s Book & Music Center in Santa Monica.
Flores’ store was one of 240 throughout the country that test-marketed the product last year. When Questron wands and workbooks started selling out at many of these outlets, Price/Stern/Sloan knew it was on to something big. Unable to finance the growth comfortably on its own, the company turned to Random House, the big New York publisher, which last January agreed to provide funding for production and advertising in exchange for a 10% stake in the Los Angeles company and exclusive distribution rights for Questron in the United States, Canada and Australia.
Between them, the companies will spend a total of $4 million on Questron advertising in 1985 and early 1986.
Getting the product to market was a time-consuming proposition, according to L. Lawrence (Larry) Sloan, chairman and chief executive of Price/Stern/Sloan. He and the company president, Charles Gates, first saw the idea demonstrated three years ago in Hong Kong by a man representing a British electronics company. The publishing house agreed to pay the British company royalties in exchange for the chance to develop the product.
Then came months of painstaking research and development--to perfect the microchip, made by Cherry Semiconductor in East Greenwich, R.I., and the mixture of inks that must be “read” by the wand’s infrared sensing device.
“In most publications, if the color is off by 1% or 2%, there’s no problem,” Sloan said. “But if this color is off by a fraction, it’s not going to work. We had a tremendous amount of trial and error.” Patents on the Questron system are pending in many countries, he added.
The heavy development costs caused Price/Stern/Sloan to report a 1984 loss of $659,000 on sales of $16.2 million. It was the company’s first annual loss in 10 years. But the gamble appears to have paid off. For the first nine months of 1985, the company reported net income of $457,000, contrasted with a loss of $228,000 in the same period last year. Sales for the period grew 36% to $17.6 million from $12.9 million.
Price/Stern/Sloan’s first product was “Mad Libs,” still a top-selling party game book. In 1978, the company published “How to Flatten Your Stomach,” which spent months on the best-seller lists and was a forerunner to hundreds of “how to” exercise and fitness books. The company’s juvenile division, with such lines as “Mr. Men” and “Little Miss,” now accounts for half its business.
Questron, which is targeted primarily to children age 3 to 7, got a thumbs-up endorsement last week from the Consumer Affairs Committee of Americans for Democratic Action, a consumer group that issues an annual report on toy safety. The product is available at independent toy and book stores as well as major chains such as K mart, Toys R Us and B. Dalton. The wand comes with a four-page insert that explains how the system works and sells for $9.95 to $12.95; the 24 workbooks, which quiz children on vocabulary, math, geography, history, science and trivia, cost $3.95 each.
Sue Miller, an author and former educator who serves as a spokeswoman for Questron, sees its main value as a tool that parents can use to help their children learn even before they start school. “Children learn how to make good choices, sometimes by making mistakes and sometimes by getting it right, but with no stigma attached,” she said.
In a world geared more and more to high technology, Sloan sees many possibilities for Questron. Already under way, he said, are sample workbooks for students preparing for Scholastic Aptitude Tests and other exams.
“It’s a fine, interactive device,” he said. “There’s nothing like it for the price.”
