Original subtitles

- [Adam] I think when people hear about someone

being a visionary in the toy industry,

they start to envision Geppetto,

this cheerful, happy-go-lucky person

creating things to bring joy

to the boys and girls of the world.

- Someone in this office has sold a toy

to one of our clients behind my back.

- That's not Marvin Glass.

- Today, we will find out who.

- [Chris] He could be vindictive

and very difficult to work with.

- I wanna be made partner.

- What is this?

- He was a guy whose personality was as big as his toys.

Glass was one of the last real showmen in the toy industry.

- And his company becomes this hotbed of innovation

in a bunker in Chicago.

- We call it Mouse Trap.

- Mouse Trap, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots,

Operation, Lite-Brite.

They were all designed by Marvin Glass and Associates.

- Marvin Glass is able to bring

hundreds of brilliant new ideas to the toy industry.

- [Narrator] Making him the most influential designer

of his time.

His creations will go on to net

hundreds of millions of dollars,

as he single-handedly reinvents

the business of how toys are invented.

(pieces clacking)

(airplane whirring) (horn honking)

(pensive music)

During World War II,

the American toy industry grinds to a halt,

as factories are retooled to produce war materiels.

- Most toys were made out of different forms of metal,

and during the war all that stuff had to be rationed,

so toys couldn't be made how they were traditionally made.

- [Narrator] And when the war is over,

the small companies that remain struggle to hang on,

(pensive music)

including a partner at a Midwestern toy company

on the brink of bankruptcy.

- Marvin Glass, he was born Marvin Goldberg.

His mother was sent to a mental institution.

His dad abandoned him.

He knew the only way to have stability in his life

was to work hard and try to make money.

- Well, Marvin Glass in the late-'40s

had had a couple of ventures where he had ideas.

One of them, for instance,

was the Christmas tree stained glass ornament.

- They were called Christmas Tree Windows,

which were little stained glass windows

that snapped onto a bulb of a Christmas tree light

and didn't sell.

They weren't even toys.

- He brings 'em to market too late,

towards the very end of December,

so no one's really buying them.

And now it's January and he has a warehouse full of them,

can't sell 'em, and he's $300,000 in debt.

And it makes one thing very clear to Mr. Marvin Glass:

that the real risk in the toy business

is the manufacturing of a toy.

- Excuse me.

I'm looking for a manufacturer.

And if you give me five minutes of-

- How about a piece of advice?

Get outta the toy business.

Takes a fortune to make and market a toy.

And then if nobody buys it, you're bankrupt.

(pensive music)

- Well, I can see why.

You're still making toys outta cardboard.

- What's that supposed to mean?

- So, Marvin Glass is in this really bad predicament.

And in a stroke of luck,

he meets a brilliant toy designer named Eddy Goldfarb.

- Eddy Goldfarb grew up in Chicago

and he was this very inquisitive young inventor.

But then Pearl Harbor happened

and he was shipped off in a submarine.

In downtime on the submarine, he would sketch ideas,

and he had loads of ideas.

- All right, what's in the case?

(gentle music)

(briefcase latches clicking)

- It's plastic.

- We take plastic for granted today; it's in everything.

Everything's made in plastic,

everything's packaged in plastic.

Back then, that was not the case.

- Most toys were made of wood, paper,

cardboard, tin soldiers.

They were really rudimentary

in terms of the modern toys that we think of.

- [Narrator] While plastic has existed

since the turn of the century,

it's World War II that puts it on the map.

- Prior to the war,

a lot of things were made from natural materials:

natural rubber, natural silk.

But silk came from Japan and silk was used in parachutes.

But remember: war, Japan, enemy.

- Whereas petroleum is something we have a lot of.

We are, during World War II,

the largest oil producers in the world,

and so they can turn the oil into plastic

and use this plastic for weapons of various kinds,

for things that people are wearing.

- DuPont came up with this synthetic material

to be used in parachutes that was based out of plastic.

- And so, during World War II,

plastic becomes a major product for warfare

for the US government.

(toy clicking) - Ah.

- Marvin Glass could read the tealeaves.

He knew plastic was a new and exciting land.

It's the perfect opportunity.

- [Narrator] Glass and Goldfarb form a 50/50 partnership

to bring plastic into the world of toys.

While Glass handles business operations,

Goldfarb comes up with new toy designs,

including one inspired by an ad.

- The ad was for a bowl that kept your false teeth in

called the Tooth Garage.

What went into his mind was this pair of teeth

sputtering down the road,

parking on their own, like a car.

And he's like, "Wow, that's pretty funny."

- You gotta understand, the novelty toy industry

was a lot bigger than it was today.

It was stuff that was really inexpensive

that you could readily get anywhere at a dime store

and you could throw it out at a party

or at wherever just for a quick laugh.

- [Narrator] These simple gimmicks

represent the largest sector of the toy industry,

selling $3 million in products a year.

And for Goldfarb,

the perfect showcase opportunity for plastic.

- He went to a dentist and got a pair of false teeth

and he separated the teeth from the gums.

- He was a very gifted caster

and he cast molds to make the teeth and the gums.

- But then it's like, "What's going to be funny?

"What is it about teeth?

"I'm gonna add a wind-up mechanism,"

'cause wind-ups were very popular at the time,

and that allows 'em to open and close,

and not just open and close but run around while they do it.

- He creates something that we've all seen

in all kinds of prank shops, the Yakity-Yak Teeth.

(teeth chattering)

(contemplative music)

- [Narrator] But Glass is determined

to avoid past mistakes.

- Manufacturing is complicated, expensive, and risky,

and he decided to do something

that, at that point, wasn't done before.

He decided to become the idea man,

where he would come up with ideas of toys

and never have to deal with the making

or the manufacturing of the toy.

Sounds cool, but it's very risky.

I mean, why would a toy manufacturer come to you

and quote-unquote buy your idea?

- [Narrator] The Yakity-Yak Teeth are the first test

of Marvin Glass's bold new business model.

- He pitches it to Irving Fishlove,

who owned this very well-known novelty company.

So, with the Yakity-Yak Teeth,

it was sold outright. (teeth chattering)

Marvin gets $2,500 for it.

$2,500 back then was like $25,000 now.

This was great money.

(pensive music)

- [Eddy] All right.

- But Marvin was the only one looking at the books,

and then he would give

whatever he deemed appropriate to Eddy, which varied.

Out of the $2,500, Marvin gives $900 to Eddy.

- [Narrator] It's significantly less

than the 50/50 split they agreed upon.

(door closing)

For now, Goldfarb stays focused

on finding his next big idea.

(car starting)

(teeth chattering)

In 1948, his first creation hits the shelves.

- The Yakity-Yak Teeth was a nationwide fad.

They sold over five million in the first year.

(pensive music)

- Irving Fishlove makes the real money

and Marvin Glass is incensed,

realizing he missed an opportunity.

- The more it stayed on the market

and the more it became such a hit,

Marvin just kept on being so upset

that he wasn't able to get a royalty from that.

- [Narrator] Marvin has a bold idea to rewrite the rules

so he can avoid the risk of manufacturing,

but without losing out on profits

from a runaway hit next time.

- [Chris] And he turns to Goldfarb's original creation

to try it.

- The Busy Biddy Chicken is a chicken

with five marbles inside.

And so, every time you pushed down on the chicken,

it would lay one egg and the wings would flap up.

And you press it again,

(toy clicking) and another marble.

- How much?

- Oh, it isn't for sale...

But I can offer you a license.

- He created a new business model.

It was based on royalties.

When a songwriter writes a song,

that songwriter doesn't make the records,

he doesn't hire the musicians.

The record companies do that.

They pay him a royalty.

This is the same deal.

He's coming up with the toys

and he's making money off the royalties

that come back to him from the sales.

- Well, from then on, every toy that he creates is licensed

to those who will sell 'em.

The toy company gets the egg,

Marvin Glass keeps the chicken.

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] Glass licenses the Busy Biddy Chicken,

which hits the market in 1949.

- It was an immediate hit.

It sold 15 million in the first six months.

They were sold for 39 cents apiece

and Marvin netted $80,000.

- [Narrator] The next year, Eddy Goldfarb creates

the Dipsy Diver diving toy and a dozen more in 1951 and '52.

But while Glass cashes royalty checks,

he's still only sharing a tiny fraction with Goldfarb.

(uneasy music)

- Marvin wasn't always honest about the royalty payments

and wasn't always paying Eddy what his due was,

and Glass was able to get away

with a lot of the things he got away with

simply because he was a bully.

- Put yourself in Eddy Goldfarb's shoes.

You meet this guy, Marvin Glass, at his lowest point.

You create one toy that sells pretty darn well for him,

one that sells extremely well for him,

and he's becoming an incredibly rich guy

and you were supposed to have a 50/50 partnership,

yet he doesn't let you see the books

and you're clearly not making

the same amount of money that he is.

(rising tense music)

- I quit.

- Now, picture this: You're Marvin Glass.

You've tasted bitter defeat.

You've had your first taste of success

because of this idea man and you've just lost him.

(brooding music)

- Take it easy, buddy.

Take it easy, it's business.

- Once Goldfarb left,

Marvin Glass went through a really dark period.

He did not have good ideas, actually got into huge debt,

and things were not looking good.

- [Narrator] But rather than paying down his debts,

he goes on a hiring spree.

- It's a massively risky move.

But one thing he understood about the toy industry

before a lot of people did

is that toy companies live and die

off the strength of their ideas.

- To execute his vision,

which was really pretty revolutionary,

Marvin needed a stable of designers.

- Marvin Glass saw his enterprise as an idea factory.

This is a place that just churns out goods.

He's sending the message to toy-makers,

"Hey, you can count on me."

- [Narrator] Throughout the 1950s,

Marvin Glass's new designers

come up with a steady stream of novelty toys.

- But he was not selling his ideas to the big boys,

like the Parker Brothers or Hasbro, Mattel.

He needed to.

And for that, he really needed to bridge the gap

between novelty toys and the cool toys.

- The thing about novelty toys is they're novelties,

and that was the problem that Marvin Glass faced.

I mean, they keep making these toys

and they're not making a lot of money off of them.

So, they start going, "You know what,

"let's get more bang for the buck."

- [Narrator] Desperate, Glass takes any meeting

that comes his way.

- A salesman knocked on Marvin's door for mouse traps.

And this guy came to Marvin and said, "You're an inventor.

"Can you come up with a new type of mouse trap?"

And Marvin's like, "I only do toys and games, no."

(pensive music)

So, the guy leaves and Marvin's like,

"Well, you know, kids like gadgets.

"Kids like catching things."

- [Narrator] Glass has always left it to his crack designers

to come up with the company's ideas.

But now, he believes he has an idea of his own

that could vault his company- - Burt?

- [Narrator] Into the big leagues.

- Burt Meyer quickly became one of the most important

and close designers with Marvin Glass.

He worked well with model-makers,

he was highly creative,

he's a great idea man.

- [Narrator] Glass looks to Burt Meyer

for help developing a kind of toy he's never touched before,

the board game.

- At this point in history,

board games are dominating the toy market.

And if you have a game like Rummikub or Monopoly,

you are making millions and millions of dollars.

The thing is, Marvin Glass finds them incredibly boring.

- Board games were literally that,

games you played on a board.

They had cards, they had dice, they had movers,

you could move them around, they were flat.

They were, you could say, two-dimensional.

- But Marvin Glass sees something.

Whereas most board games were generally made

outta paper and cardboard, he's going to bring in plastics.

Instead of something flat and essentially two-dimensional,

let's bring in three dimensions, let's bring in color,

make something that is as much a toy as it is a board game.

- All right, guys, so you see this here?

He wants a game to do with a trap, all right?

So- - This.

- Glass has a specific vision in mind for the game's design.

- So, Marvin's like, "I wanna come up with a mouse trap

"utilizing the recipe of a Rube Goldberg machine."

- Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist

who would make, essentially,

very complicated ornate inventions and contraptions

that would accomplish kind of everyday workaday tasks.

So, it could be a 27-step machine

to crack an egg.

(egg sizzling)

(hopeful music)

- So, the challenge of that

is Rube Goldberg gets to make it all up in his mind.

If you're making a game, it's actually gotta work.

So, how do you make that happen?

How do you design it in such a way that it'll work?

- [Narrator] The final design

includes 22 molded plastic parts

that together create an elaborate 3-D mouse trap.

- It lifted everything up above the board.

You'd have a lotta plastic contraptions and levers.

It became the first three-dimensional

plastic action game.

- It's like no other game on the market,

and they take it to the king of board games at that time.

(pensive music)

- Pleasure to meet you, Burt.

- Hey. - Hi, Marvin.

- Hey, Bill. - Hey.

- Hi.

We call it

Mouse Trap.

(marble rolling) (hopeful music)

(pieces clacking)

What do you think?

- No.

It's too complicated.

(pensive music)

- Milton Bradley, they were doing things

the same way for so long,

their immediate response was, "This isn't a game.

"This is a toy.

"We don't wanna have anything to do with it!"

(traffic whirring)

- [Narrator] By early-1963,

most toy and game companies have passed on Mouse Trap.

- Glass had a really hard time placing this game,

not surprisingly because manufacturers would look at it

and go, "Wait a minute!

"That's way too complicated!

"There's way too many pieces!

"How am I gonna make this work?

"It's just not possible."

- So, it's just Ideal Toys left?

- Hindsight being perfect, Parker Brothers, Milton Bradley,

they should have jumped on it, but they didn't,

and that's actually a classic toy industry story.

People passed on Tickle Me Elmo.

People passed on Pictionary.

So, you've got somebody like Glass who's a visionary

who can see 10 steps ahead

and you're talking to a toy company

that's concerned with, "What can I sell this season,"

and you're gonna have some misses.

- We'll let them take the prototype home.

Play with their kids.

(slick music)

- Marvin Glass actually gives the Mouse Trap prototype

to one of the executives at Ideal

and tells him to take it home, try it out,

let his kids play with it.

Mr. Security decides to do something not so secure.

The executive brings it home and his kids love it,

can't stop playing it.

Comes back to the office and makes Marvin Glass an offer.

- [Narrator] Glass licenses Mouse Trap to Ideal Toys.

- [Announcer] Mouse Trap, it's a wonderful game.

- [Narrator] When it debuts in 1963,

the game sells 1.2 million copies in the first year alone,

making Glass a rich man.

- There is before Mouse Trap, there is after Mouse Trap.

It is one of the most important benchmark items

in the game industry.

- Mouse Trap changed the way toy inventors look at anything.

Without Mouse Trap, you wouldn't have games like

Operation or Hungry Hungry Hippos.

It's a game-changer.

(pensive music)

- [Narrator] Mouse Trap's success

puts Marvin Glass's company in the big leagues

and validates his instincts.

- He really had this inherent understanding of play and kids

and what was going to make kids of everywhere want it.

- [Narrator] With their first innovative action game,

Glass has created a whole new market for toys,

and now he wants to put a stranglehold on it.

So, he tasks head designer Burt Meyer

with creating a toy that will capitalize

on one of the most popular American pastimes of the day.

- Boxing in the 1960s was huge

because it was now on television.

- Live television is still in its really primitive age.

It's super primitive technology, it's new,

people are just getting used to it.

And boxing is the perfect sport to start with

because it's not a large field.

It's contained within a ring.

You're not following a really small ball.

It's easy to see who's punching who

and who gets knocked out.

- There is a gladiatorial element to it

that has always appealed to human beings.

But now, for the first time,

it could be in your living room.

- [Narrator] But after months of development,

Glass's boxing game idea hits a snag.

(pensive music)

- At that time, there was a boxer called Davey Moore

and there was a national television boxing match

and Davey Moore was killed,

and this caused a big uproar in the nation.

They tried to outlaw boxing, saying it was too brutal.

- Television brought this tragedy to everyone.

It wasn't just something that happened far away.

People watched it happen.

After Davey Moore's death, the governor of California

goes so far as to try to ban all boxing in the state.

- And so, Marvin is like,

"Well, of course, we can't make a boxing match now.

"This kills the product.

"It wouldn't be appropriate to put it on the shelf."

- [Narrator] Glass begrudgingly pulls the plug

on the boxing game.

(pensive music)

- Burt Meyer knew a good idea and knew a good item,

and he already was working on this mechanism

and trying to get this game to work for a while.

He thought it was just too good

to be thrown into the garbage.

He had to try to find out a way

to get it to work where everybody's happy.

And then Burt had the idea,

"Okay, how about we dehumanize it?

"What if we make 'em robots?"

- It wasn't tied to actually people boxing

or possible deaths or injury in boxing.

These were just robots.

No one got hurt.

It was brilliant.

(lively music)

- [Narrator] Glass licenses Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots

to toy-mark Marx in 1964.

- [Chris] Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots were a huge hit.

- And Blue Bomber's block is knocked off!

- Any baby boomer can probably say to you,

"You knocked his block off!"

(pensive music)

- [Narrator] With back-to-back hits,

the industry starts to take notice of Marvin Glass,

and his rising star, Burt Meyer,

wants a piece of the action.

- Put yourself in Burt Meyer's shoes.

You're an incredible idea man.

You've done most of the grunt work

to create Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

It's your ingenuity that makes them become robots

so they're no longer human.

You don't get credit for it

and you're slowly becoming more and more disenfranchised

from the hard work you put forth for this guy.

So, naturally, he wants more.

(tense music)

- What is this?

- I wanna be made partner.

- Now, look once again at Marvin Glass's perspective.

This is Eddy Goldfarb all over again.

"I've got a great idea guy.

"I've got a guy who can execute.

"I've got a guy who can make a toy that will sell.

"I know the perils of losing a good idea guy."

- Do it,

or I walk.

(soft electronic music)

- [Narrator] After a series of hits,

in 1965, lead designer Burt Meyer gives Glass an ultimatum.

- Marvin was smart and he made Burt a partner

and then gave him a piece of the company,

which he did with everybody else that came along.

- Then he dilutes his power

by promoting a whole bunch of other people

to the same level.

- [Burt] Good to meet you.

- You're late. - I'm sorry, I know.

- And then Marvin Glass, in the ultimate gesture of control,

creates this concrete behemoth of an office complex.

- He moved into a brand new tailor-made studio.

- And it has virtually no windows, an iron gate,

security has to buzz you in.

So, ultimate control now belongs to Marvin Glass.

He can keep everyone and everything

under his watchful eye.

And no matter who's promoted to what,

this is still Marvin's house.

- [Narrator] Now, Marvin Glass's fortress

is the go-to place for aspiring inventors

to pitch toy ideas.

- John Spinello is the university kid.

He doesn't have a lot of money.

But what he does have is this cool idea.

He remembers when he was a kid

and he would put something into an electric socket,

it would electrocute him a bit, right?

It would shock him, and it fascinated him.

- And so, what he did was he made a box

and you would push the stylus in the holes

that got smaller and smaller and smaller.

And if you touched the walls,

(buzzer buzzing) you'd hear the zap.

(Marvin laughing)

But at this point, it wasn't a game,

it didn't have gameplay, but the magic was there.

- And he was like, "I love it, I love it!"

So, Marvin, probably remembering

the Yakity-Yak Talking Teeth story

where someone bought him out

so he never got any royalties from that,

said to John, "I'd like to own this outright.

"So, I'll give you $500 and you can come work for me."

And John took that deal.

- Marvin bought it and paid John cash for it

and then made kind of a desert game.

- [Narrator] Death Valley challenges players to find water

by prodding potential wells with the electric probe

without touching the sides.

- [Jeffrey] If you look at the patent,

it's really kind of a boring game.

And then we license it to Milton Bradley.

- [Narrator] But Milton Bradley has another idea.

- So, Milton Bradley came up with the theme of,

"Okay, what if instead of sticking the rod in,

"it's a tweezers and you're taking something out?

"That seems more exciting."

- [Narrator] Milton Bradley renames the game Operation.

- After all these changes, Milton Bradley says,

"Well, we've made so many changes,

"we don't really have to pay Marvin Glass."

- But the power that Marvin wielded at that time

was so great that Milton Bradley said,

"Well, we need to keep this guy happy, certainly,

"because he's gonna bring us our next big hit."

And they called Marvin and said,

"We're still gonna pay you."

- [Narrator] Operation is released in 1965,

selling millions of units through the years

and proving to be one of Glass's biggest moneymakers.

- It's crazy, the idea that not only was John Spinello

cut outta that deal and never got the job he was promised,

but the fact that Milton Bradley's still paying a royalty

for a game that Marvin sorta was the middleman, right?

It was sort of the pinnacle of Marvin Glass's power.

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] But Glass's grip on 3-D action games

is loosening as more and more imitators crowd the market.

Even Eddy Goldfarb sets up

his own design studio in California,

releasing Kerplunk in 1967.

- Marvin Glass's, you know, real skill

was to know where the culture was going

and he understood how to sorta take American culture

and put it into a new and exciting toy.

- [Narrator] Glass decides the time is right

to reinvent another category of toys: art.

(soft rock music)

- So, you've got Etch-A-Sketch,

but it's all black-and-white.

It's the '60s.

It's all color, it's vibrant,

it's as loud as you can get and as intense as you can get,

and Etch-A-Sketch is monochrome.

- [Narrator] Marvin assigns an up-and-coming designer

to come up with something new.

- Dalia Verbickas graduates from the University of Illinois

and immediately starts work at MGA.

- During the 1960s, Dalia Verbickas became

the very first female independent

toy invention studio's designer there ever was.

She forged the way.

- Dalia Verbickas is trying to find a way

to bring this art movement

that's going on in the '60s that's huge

to children of all ages with ranges and dexterity,

something that's easy to do.

The biggest part of toy design

is that it has to be intuitive.

(contemplative music)

- Toys always reflect their culture

and they always reflect the world around them.

So, in 1967, you've got Peter Max and you've got tie-dye

and you've got flower power

and you've got all of this color.

Well, how can a child do that?

(pensive music)

- Dalia Verbickas came up with the spark of the idea.

She said, "People are doing fiber-optics

"and things like that where you put a light at one end,

"it travels down plastic and it lights up at the other end.

"That would make a great toy."

(reverent music)

- [Narrator] The toy that Verbickas designs is Lite-Brite.

It will become one of Marvin Glass's biggest hits,

but she won't get any of the credit for it.

(pensive music)

It's early-1967 and Marvin Glass brings in Hasbro executives

to pitch them his latest innovation, Lite-Brite.

- It was all Burt's idea.

(Burt exhaling)

This may be our top designer.

- There seems to be a controversy

on who came up with the initial idea of Lite-Brite.

Dalia Verbickas says that she came up

with the spark of the idea.

Burt Meyer was the project manager

and it was his idea to add the black paper,

and that was a big deal

because it blocked the light behind it

so when you put in the pegs, they popped.

She felt like she wasn't getting credit

for her contribution.

She felt like it was a boys' club.

(footsteps clacking)

- [Narrator] After making a deal with Hasbro,

Lite-Brite debuts

and immediately becomes a cultural phenomenon.

- So, the cool thing about Lite-Brite is,

you've gotta remember, it's 1967, okay?

There's no computers, there's no cell phones.

There's no LED lights and everything.

- Lite-Brites were cool because

there was something futuristic about it, you know,

something fantastical about it that you can actually create

all these different images, these different things.

The possibilities were endless.

- To be able to create a picture in light was revolutionary.

- Glass was good not only at recognizing ideas

and what would play,

but also he found some pretty good designers.

- There's no question

he was a very difficult person to work for.

He definitely had his thumb on them

and tried to control them as much as he could.

The contracts that he had every designer sign

were very restrictive.

So, I imagine there was plenty of disgruntled people

that thought they needed

or should have more credit than they got.

(pensive music)

- Dalia Verbickas is, like many,

a very disgruntled MGA employee.

And even though she really created Lite-Brite,

her name never appears on the patent, on the box.

- There's only one person on the patent: Burt Meyer.

- She doesn't see any increased profits or any royalties,

so naturally she's pretty pissed off.

But rather than storm into Marvin Glass's office

demanding credit, demanding money, demanding partnership

like Eddy Goldfarb and Burt Meyer before her,

she actually decides to do a little bit of an end-around.

- [Narrator] After-hours, Dalia teams up

with an old colleague who was fired from Marvin Glass

to design their own game.

- [Adam] She creates a game called Feeley Meeley,

where essentially it was a mystery box

that you could reach in

and you'd have to guess what the item is.

- Dalia, she had a kid at the time in diapers.

How she came up with the idea

is she used to always stick her finger in the diaper

to see what was going on in there, feeley meeley,

so she created a game around it.

- [Narrator] Dalia's secret moonlighting pays off.

They sell the game directly to Milton Bradley.

- To come up with an idea, make it,

go around your boss and pitch it to one of their clients

is against the contract that you sign.

That's why they hired you,

to come up with ideas and make 'em for them.

It's the cardinal sin of being a designer

for an independent toy invention studio.

(door buzzing)

(tense music)

- Unfortunately, I've had to interrupt your work

for a serious matter,

(sighing) something that disappoints me greatly.

Someone in this office has sold a toy

to one of our clients behind my back.

(suspenseful music rising)

Today, we will find out who.

(uneasy music)

(machine humming)

- Marvin gathers all the employees.

"We have a traitor in our midst,"

and he wants to get to the bottom of it.

So, Marvin gets a lie detector.

- [Narrator] Glass knows that one of his designers

sold Feeley Meeley without going through him.

- Apparently, her co-conspirator gets cold feet,

sells them both out.

He admits what he did,

but he doesn't tell Marvin Glass who his co-conspirator was.

So, in a typical controlling paranoia move,

he goes through every single employee in the company

to suss out who the traitor is.

- Just some baseline questions.

What is your name?

How long have you worked for the company?

Have you had any dealings

with any other company?

- None.

- No.

- No.

(machine humming)

(uneasy music)

- Have you ever received or ever given any gift

to any other company unknown to the CEO?

- No.

(machine scribbling)

- Now, this was very traumatic and painful for Dalia.

She was so frustrated by getting the short end of the stick

and not getting the money that she felt was deserved to her.

She just did this to make some extra money.

As an independent toy inventor in a studio,

as long as your salary is being paid by your boss,

all of your ideas are their ideas.

Marvin Glass said, "As long as I'm paying your salary,

"I own your dreams."

- [Narrator] Dalia Verbickas fails the polygraph

and Marvin fires her on the spot.

- Designers are kinda viewed as we're human cameras, right?

We were Photoshop before Photoshop.

The people were very much used as tools.

You really don't wanna share certain tools,

particularly with competitors.

(ominous music)

- [Narrator] Then Glass takes it a step further.

(frantic music)

- Marvin Glass contacts Milton Bradley,

lets them know what happened,

eventually gets them to give all of her royalties

to Marvin Glass Associates

and the game itself comes back to MGA.

(toy clicking)

- Like a lot of visionaries,

he's cutthroat, he's controlling.

But one thing he understood about the toy industry

before a lotta people did

is that it was all about intellectual property.

(teeth chattering)

Marvin Glass's studio

doesn't actually make anything physical.

They don't make the molds for Rock 'Em Sock 'Em.

They don't create the pieces for Mouse Trap.

(marble rolling)

What they are is the idea people.

And when that's your business model,

the only thing you can sell is the idea,

so you have to keep it under lock and key

because the second you lose that idea,

you've lost all of your business.

- He built the business of independent toy design.

It didn't exist before Marvin Glass.

And Marvin was the first one

of the professional inventing companies.

- You know, in football, they call it a coaching tree.

Bill Belichick is at the top and then everyone that work-

Well, you can take Marvin Glass's studio

and you can see that,

well, BMT branched off of Marvin Glass,

and now each of those companies

have spawned other companies.

So, the toy design tree that started with Marvin Glass

now ripples through the entire toy industry.

- And they are huge today in the toy business.

These are the guys who are coming up with ideas

and selling them.

And you can look around Chicago,

which is where he was based,

and see all of these different toy development companies

that can trace their roots back to Marvin Glass Associates.

- 95% of the biggest brands in the toy industry

came from independent inventors.

- So, the man who nearly became a destitute failure

after having a warehouse full of bad ideas

realized he could become an incredible success

selling just that: ideas.