Inventor’s Squirt Gun Hits Pay Dirt

When Lonnie Johnson watches the television commercial for the “Super Soaker” squirt gun, he laughs out loud.

It’s not the nerd-turned-Schwarzenegger-avenger plot of the commercial that makes Johnson laugh. It’s that he designed the toy, which shoots a stream of water 40 feet or more with compressed air.

The Philadelphia toy maker Larami Corp. expects to sell 1.7 million of them this year, at $7 to $30 each retail.

The Super Soaker enabled Johnson, 41, formerly an engineer with the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, to quit the world of corporate science in January and make his living as an inventor.

With 12 U.S. patents under his belt, Johnson now spends his days in his Altadena home caring for his two sons, 6 and 8, and working on his more serious inventions. These include: a home radon detector that switches on fans when the gas reaches harmful levels and a heat pump that warms water inside pipes without electricity, gas or solar energy.

“I’ve got peace of mind, I’m doing what I thought I could do, and I don’t have to deal with the petty (office) stuff,” Johnson said recently. “I’m a free man.”

Above his head, a dozen balsa wood, plastic and plastic foam toy airplanes hang from the ceiling. Technical drawings of his patented inventions line the walls next to him.

The path that Johnson has chosen is one that many try but on which few succeed. In the United States alone, more than 30 inventors’ associations exist. Nearly 175,000 U.S. patents were applied for last year and 96,727 were granted, according to statistics from the U.S. Patent and Trademark office in Arlington, Va.

But only a select few earn a living from inventions, said Norman Parrish, president of the National Congress of Inventors Organizations. “Only about 3% of inventions end up being granted and successful,” Parrish said.

Equally rare is an inventor such as Johnson, with a degree in mechanical engineering and an aerospace background, Parrish said.

Born in Mobile, Ala., Johnson recalls tinkering from an early age. As a high school senior and the only African-American entrant in the University of Alabama science fair, he took first place with “Linex the Robot,” a yearlong project built with parts scrounged from junk yards.

Linex’ motions could be programed. He moved his arms with compressed air stored in a discarded butane tank, scooted along on wheels powered by two motors, responded to voice commands via walkie-talkie and spoke through a tape recorder, Johnson said.

But the science fair experience “bothers me a little bit,” he said. “If I had been (white) and did something as phenomenal as that, all sorts of doors would have opened.”

Johnson got an engineering degree from Tuskegee University and began a career that included stints with Union Carbide Corp., the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Laboratory nuclear power plant, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and JPL.

He also spent time in the Air Force, assigned to the Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M., and the Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Neb.

But he chafed under the bureaucratic work environment and began inventing to gain freedom and a steady income.

He designed a digital thermostat, a ground moisture sensor and several toys before the squirt gun was picked up by Larami, which has a line of 150 toys, including plastic guns, sunglasses, skates and a line of jump ropes, paddle balls and play putty named after Geoffrey the Giraffe.

The “Super Soaker” is the first product the company has promoted on television, and it has spent nearly $1 million for commercials, said Larami executive vice president Al Davis. Because the gun is an advance over previous squirt guns, it will be fashionable longer than the one-year life span typical of most toys, Davis said.

“It will be good until something comes along that’s better, “ he said.

Larami is a private company and would not disclose sales figures. And, although Johnson declined to say exactly how much he is making from the squirt gun, the inventor said he is doing better than the average JPL engineer, who can make up to $70,000 a year.

Pete Theisinger, one of Johnson’s former JPL supervisors, said Johnson’s success at inventing comes from combining existing knowledge in a new way. “That’s a tremendous gift, to think of something from whole cloth,” Theisinger said.

Johnson’s dream is to perfect his heat pump, which will heat water to 110 degrees by forcing it through tiny holes and vaporizing it in a special cone-shaped pipe. Hot water will then be drawn to the bottom of the pipe where it can be used in the home, he said.

Government scientists have told him the idea may work in theory, but is not practical, Johnson said. The inventor, who plans to build a model and prove them wrong, says he’ll be “a multimillionaire if that thing works.”