Aggression Can Be Fun . . . Safe Too : Toys: It’s been 25 years since Reynolds Guyer invented the Nerf ball. It and its cousins sell at the rate of 4 million a year.
The guy in the next cubicle over is making you crazy. Cracking stupid jokes. Swiping your phone book. And what’s he crunching on over there?
Fed up with the stress, you reach into the bottom desk drawer and grab your Razorbeast Blaster--it’s pay-back time.
OK, this is probably just a fantasy. But if you wanted to turn the Razorbeast on someone, at least you wouldn’t go to jail. It’s a Nerf.
For the past 25 years, Nerf foam and plastic toys, from balls to blasters, have been relieving office stress in adults and making it OK for kids to play ball in the house.
Reynolds Guyer was the inventor of the original Nerf ball, snipping a prototype Nerf from polyurethane foam in 1968. Parker Brothers, makers of the Monopoly board game, marketed the 4-inch foam sphere as the first indoor ball. It was a hit.
Today, Nerf, manufactured by Hasbro Inc.’s Kenner Products division, is one of the big names in the $3.8-billion outdoor toy market. Nerf sales have averaged 4 million units a year for the past quarter-century.
But back in 1968, Guyer, of St. Paul, Minn., was just looking to make realistic-looking rocks for a caveman game. It was to be the successor to another big game developed by his family’s toy company--Twister.
Instead of rock shapes, Guyer ended up with the sphere.
“In the invention of toys and games, about one in 95 ever come to the market,” Guyer said in a recent interview. “Probably about one in 90 of those ever last more than one year. It’s an oddity and I’m grateful for it. When they come, you usually know they’re a jewel.”
Nerf is so widely accepted that it is on the verge of losing its identity.
“It’s been jeopardized in that it’s becoming like Kleenex,” said Chris Byrne, editor of Market Focus: Toys, a toy industry trade publication. Byrne said he relieves stress with a Nerf Detonator, which shoots suction-cup darts.
The Nerf ball, named to convey its soft “friendly” nature, has been joined by the Nerf football, soccer ball and some decidedly more aggressive products like the Razorbeast.
Guyer, 59, graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in journalism, but went to work as an artist in his dad’s toy and game business, Reynolds Guyer Design.
“Every success I have had breaks a rule of some sort,” he said. “The Twister game broke the rule that you can’t have close contact in social situations. The Nerf ball broke the ‘you can’t throw a ball in the house’ rule.”
Twister is a game where a floor-mat covered with colored dots allows people to become the playing pieces.
Guyer said toys like Nerf’s Razorbeast and Detonator also puncture the myth that so-called war toys are harmful.
“This is about as benign and enjoyable as you can make,” he said. “I just don’t think you can stop children from pointing their fingers at each other.”
Marianne Szysmanksi, director of the Milwaukee-based toy research organization Toy Tips, said the toys offer kids and adults the chance to channel aggressive behavior creatively and harmlessly. Like Byrne, her office has a small Nerf armory.
Byrne agreed Nerf is a safe way to deal with inevitable conflicts. Besides, he added, “You couldn’t go in with a Razorbeast Blaster and knock over a liquor store.”
The Nerf’s ability to adapt from ball to football to lawn dart to Ripsaw ball launcher demonstrates the product’s success, he said.
“They said ‘we’ve got a great thing going with this soft, safe concept’ and they have looked into every angle of the market and exploited it,” Byrne said.
Although Guyer retains the license for Nerf, he is only nominally involved in production. He splits his time between St. Paul and Florida, and is working on introducing a children’s television character that he hopes will rival Barney.
Guyer also has published songs--including ballads sung by artists Kathy Mattea and the Oak Ridge Boys--for platinum-selling country music albums and the pop charts. His daughter Ree is head of Wrensong Inc. in Nashville, Tenn.
Guyer’s son, Tom, and daughter Cindy head St. Paul-based Winsor Concepts, overseeing development of a number of projects including new toys and games.
Tom said that while there were some drawbacks to growing up with such a creative dad (“we were sick of the Twister game when it came out”), for the most part their home life “wasn’t outrageously weird.”
But Tom said Guyer’s children sometimes need to rein in their father, who still works eight to 10 hours a day.
“He’s a very driven man and he’s accomplished a lot,” Tom said.
