Fledgling Toy Makers Face Big Odds in a Tough Game

Ask parents to identify companies that make children’s toys and they’ll come up with the big names--Mattel, Hasbro, Fisher-Price.

But hundreds of other smaller toy makers are out there, some of them young Davids going against the industry Goliaths.

Among the 1,500 exhibitors at the just-ended Toy Fair trade exposition in New York were companies like Good Gifts, Tibbits International and Golden Ribbon Playthings Inc. Each was founded by an entrepreneur with an idea and enthusiasm to try to crack the crowded toy market.

Good Gifts, a Colorado company, debuted at Toy Fair with Clay Scent-Sations, brightly colored and scented modeling clay like Pla-Doh.

Doug Dieterle, a member of the family behind Clay Scent-Sations, said the flour-and-water-based product got its start about six years ago in his sister’s kitchen. Eventually, salesmen--known as “reps” in the trade--were hired to sell to stores.

Good Gifts, which sold 65 tons of the clay last year, is a small operation compared with the 36-year-old Pla-Doh, made by Hasbro’s Playskool division, which sold 7,000 tons. But Dieterle shrugs off Pla-Doh’s head start--Good Gifts isn’t trying to overtake its bigger rival.

“We’re a niche market,” he said.

Still, the new and smaller kid on the block can get hurt.

“We have lost sales because people think it’s Pla-Doh, then walk away,” Dieterle said.

A small company can face difficulties reaching a market. It took the founders of Lewisburg, Pa.-based Tibbits International 14 years to get Tibbits, a cross between dice and cards, to the fair.

Inventors Rick Gathman and Jeff Breed devised the idea for Tibbits in 1978, but marketing and production problems delayed manufacture for years. Gathman said they finally got Tibbits into stores last August, then came to Toy Fair to further promote sales.

Some smaller toy makers break into the market through sheer effort.

Julie and William Gibson said they got the attention of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. by writing to the nation’s No. 1 retailer.

The Gibsons traveled to Toy Fair from Billings, Mont., to sell Baseball Wit, a combination baseball card set and trivia game. They also created similar games about national parks and the Civil War.

Even when smaller companies find their place in the market, they may be faced with eviction by bigger rivals who catch on to their ideas.

Huggy Bean, a line of black dolls, has been on the market since 1985.

New York-based Golden Ribbon Playthings sold 50,000 Huggy Bean dolls last year. But now Mattel and another big toy maker, Tyco Toys Inc., offer dolls designed for black children.