Original subtitles

(tense music)

- Dr. Lonnie johnson is maybe the coolest,

Most interesting guy you've never heard of.

- By all accounts, brilliant, mechanical engineer,

Nuclear engineer, he was in the air force,

He worked on the jet propulsion lab.

- [narrator] in 1982, engineer, lonnie johnson

Is on the verge of a discovery that will touch millions.

- Lonnie johnson was a nasa engineer

And he was working on a water pressurized heat pump,

That was his objective, his goal.

But one day while he's in the lab,

A little accident happens.

- And there is this enormously powerful jet of water

That streaks across the room

And at that moment, there's a light bulb in his head.

- [narrator] lonnie's idea won't have anything

To do with nasa, or rocket science.

Instead, it will reimagine a century old novelty.

- To call it a squirt gun is an injustice.

Super soaker is an entirely new invention, really.

- The 80's were all about space tech,

New tech, high tech, so why not toy tech?

- [narrator] lonnie is at the cutting edge of a tech boom.

- Pump this five times.

- [narrator] that will trigger the reinvention

Of tired, old toys.

- [toy] I love making new friends.

- [narrator] rocketing their creators to breathtaking highs-

- You got yourself a deal.

(intense music)

- [narrator] and devastating lows.

- Pack up your stuff and go home. We're done here.

- [narrator] as they fight-

- Ahh!

- [narrator] to push the toy industry into the modern age.

(intense music)

In the early 1980s,

The toy world is rocked by a new innovation,

Video games.

- The very idea that you could be playing video games

In your home is out of this world,

And so the more traditional toy companies

Are a little threatened by this

Because if parents are spending money on video games,

They may not be spending money on things like barbie,

Masters of the universe, g.I. Joe,

And they don't know what the answer is.

- Video games sets a new horizon.

Every toy has to now achieve that standard.

Kids in the '80s weren't going to be satisfied

With the toys of the '60s and '70s.

(futuristic beeping)

- [narrator] to survive,

The toy world is in need of an upgrade.

(upbeat music)

- Lonnie johnson, a young, black nuclear engineer working

In the nasa space, that was not

A common combination of features.

As a child, lonnie was extremely curious

And so he started learning,

And reading all that he can about rockets.

- [narrator] lonnie earns a spot working

At nasa's jet propulsion lab.

His basement soaking mistake,

The direct result of his work on the galileo space probe.

- They're sending an unmanned vehicle to jupiter,

And once it's out there by jupiter,

They're able to take measurements,

Pictures of the planets, moons.

- He wanted to create some kind of heat pump

For the galileo mission that replaced freon

With high pressure water vapor.

- So lonnie saw that water shoot across the room

And he thought, hey, I might be onto something.

What if this was a squirt gun?

That's the mind of a real inventor.

- And the moment that happened, lonnie saw an opportunity,

But he was still committed to his employer,

So he put it aside.

- [narrator] while for now, lonnie opts

To focus on his career,

Another creator has left his stable job

To go after his dream.

- How are we doing with the motor? Good, okay.

- [narrator] ken forsse is a former disney imagineer,

Once responsible for working on the animatronic attractions

At disneyland.

- He was a local kid around anaheim,

Growing up loving disney, knowing disney.

He started in its mail room.

He saw walt disney as a bit of a role model,

And he wanted to create a world of his own

With his own characters

And his own fairy tale story structure around them.

He's been doodling around

With this really incredible fantastical storyline

For the past decade and a half.

He creates this mythology

And fairy tale about the land of grundo

On the island of rolonio.

- There are creatures called fobs, there are bounders,

There are monsters, there are trolls,

There's even a wooly-what's-it.

Ken knows that a map is important,

That's right out of tolkien.

Ken creates a world of fantastical creatures

That all have their own personalities,

But they're just images on paper.

- Give that a try.

- [narrator] but for the moment,

Ken has to take whatever work he can get.

- His idea is that I'm going to make a company using

The animatronics that will get its foot in the door

Into the entertainment business.

- His vision and his dream was putting

The animatronic technology into costumes

To create an animatronic entity

That you could interact with.

- Hold on, let me try something.

Wait a minute, got these the wrong way around.

- [narrator] and he sees an opportunity

With his old employer that will pay the bills.

- The disney channel was just starting

And ken talked them into letting him do one character,

And if it worked, then he would get the contract

To do all the characters for welcome to pooh corner.

- How you doing, jose, got that?

- Yeah, good, good.

- Let's roll, guys.

- He has to figure out a way to both make this speak,

But also send commands to make it operate,

Make its eyes move, make its mouth move, and so on so forth.

- And he has to do it with a fraction of a fraction

Of the budget that disney has.

(intense music)

- The voice was recorded on one track,

And then they would program the character's mouth,

Eyes, and eyebrows in time with the voice.

- Whoa, now we're getting somewhere, all right.

- We got the contract because pooh worked.

- Ken is absorbing these technologies

And the engineering behind them,

And there's in the back of his mind this idea

That he could make it accessible to the average consumer.

- Ken was focused not only on that contract,

But the technology, what is it gonna be?

Who could use this and what would they do with it?

- You see, what did you doubt me?

Come on (laughs).

(cheerful music)

- [narrator] meanwhile, lonnie takes a new job

With the air force, working on a stealth bomber by day

And on his squirt gun project at night.

- Lonnie was working in the technical space

And then he thought, "I could work in this toy space

For a bit, make some money, and then that could help continue

To fund my more serious inventing."

- [narrator] lonnie sees an opportunity

To radically improve an age old design.

The first documented squirt gun is patented in 1896,

Sold as the usa liquid pistol.

- The first squirt gun

Was actually sold as a self-defense weapon,

Probably not too effective though.

- [narrator] the cast iron toy gun was soon replaced

By plastic versions.

- They were inexpensive, 49 cent throw away items,

Almost like party favors.

They notoriously would shoot a foot, start to leak,

Stop working, and be thrown out.

- The mechanism was the same.

You had this trigger and this siphon of water

From the reservoir and it would squirt out.

It really went unchanged for years.

- For lonnie johnson the challenge was,

Well, how do I go from a heat pump to something

That a kid could pressurize by pumping?

- Lonnie dismisses with the notion of this siphon tube

That would run into the reservoir,

And works off the pressure of a chamber.

- And if you ever taken a soda can and shaken it,

It's higher pressure on the inside

And that's exactly what you're creating inside

Of that pressure tank, all that water wants to come out,

Everything wants to be at equilibrium.

(intense music)

- [narrator] two years after his accidental discovery,

Lonnie has a prototype.

- This prototype, it's not even in the same realm

As a squirt gun, it shouldn't have even been called

A squirt gun.

I guess it wasn't, it was called the power drencher.

- So anika, I want you to pump this five times.

3, 4, 5, then you fire, okay.

(intense music)

- Ahh! Ohh.

- And it splits any seam in the water gun, all begin to leak

Because it's made from two halves and glued together,

The amount of pressure that he's building up in the pump

Is stronger than the structure of the water gun itself.

- He had the water tank actually integrated into the body

Of the squirt gun, and that's a problem.

You can't really hold pressure that well

With plastic pieces that are then just glued together.

- [narrator] lonnie's forced back to square one

While ken forsse struggles to follow up on pooh corner.

- When that contract was up, we were scrounging for work,

We would take anything and there was a restaurant

That was going to open in las vegas and we got the contract

To build a volcano and to build a band,

And then there wasn't any money.

- This is incredibly expensive technology,

It's rapidly losing money because there's just simply not

That much of a demand.

- People, everybody.

Everybody, please stop what you're doing.

- So ken forsse realizes that he is going broke.

- I'm gonna need you all to pack up your stuff

And go home 'cause I'm outta money, we're done here.

- [narrator] in 1984, ken forsse has just laid

Off his entire staff.

- Ken forsse has carved a niche for himself

Building animatronic costumes, but the problem is

There's simply not that much of a demand.

(door creaking)

- What's going on? Guys?

- It was amazing, 27 people show up for work

And we didn't get paid,

I don't think that happens very often.

- Sometimes with the entrepreneurial creative types,

Creative people who truly believe in the product,

They'll make personal sacrifices to see the vision through.

- What's going on?

- We believe in you.

- Now everybody at alchemy is sitting there wondering,

Okay, what's next?

- Ken forsse needs to find a way

To take this animatronic technology,

And create something new that will save his business.

- He's looking at these dolls and he's thinking to himself,

"can I shrink this technology down

To fit it inside of a toy?"

- Guys, get around here.

I wanna show you something, everybody.

Got an idea.

Why don't we go like home scale, toy scale?

- It's this idea that, let's take this technology,

Which we always see as futuristic

And let's invest it into these objects

That are very familiar and very safe.

- Ken has the idea, kids have teddy bears,

Everyone has a teddy bear,

So let's make an animated talking teddy bear.

- Little boys and little girls both want a teddy bear,

It's cute, it's cuddly, it's non-threatening,

It's a gold mine.

- The 1980s is seen as a transformative moment

For american families, a plurality of families

For the first time live in suburbs.

Parents are both working,

We are seeing in the 1980s a much higher divorce rate.

- You have young people coming home from school

And having at least two hours

To fill before their parents come home,

And so what are the toys that will fill that void?

- Ken's siblings are much older than he is,

He was very much an introvert.

This became a way for ken to create the type

Of companion he might have wanted in his own childhood.

Ken felt the talking toy is about being a child's friend.

(ken chuckles)

- Talking toys have been around for quite a while,

Going all the way back to thomas edison.

He had a somewhat creepy doll

That captured the earliest sound.

- [doll] hi, my name is (indistinct),

I play the (indistinct).

- It's kind of the thing of nightmares.

- [jordan] then you had chatty cathy,

Chatty cathy was a pull string toy.

- [chatty cathy] let's play house!

Please change my dress.

- But still, even though chatty cathy sounded okay,

It still sounded synthetic.

- They've got maybe three or four sentences

That they say, there's no life to it

Because there's a difference between hearing a toy talk

With no mouth movement or eye movement.

- [doll] stacey and I are having a tea.

- And what ken's thinking.

- This is way too big and bulky.

To make the world's first animated talking toy,

Ken needed it to figure out

How you take a multi-track system and put that into a toy.

In the disney parks at the time,

It's a 24 track tape system where the sound is on one track

And the other 23 are controlling the motor skills

For all these animatronic characters.

- Now a cassette tape has two tracks, right?

- Right.

- Well that's enough, as long as we can cram

All the programming onto one of those tracks.

- And so he realizes all I need

At the very least are two tracks.

- He knows one track is going to be the audio

And the other one is going to send the commands to the bear,

Telling it how to perform.

- The idea of a cassette tape controlling a toy

The way ken's envisioning it is revolutionary.

He is on the cusp

Of having something nobody else has ever had,

(mechanics whirring)

An animated talking toy.

- [narrator] but ken's disney instincts

Tell him he needs more.

- Now you have a great toy, a toy evocative of disney,

But what you don't have is what disney does, a story,

A fairytale and a mythology around these toys,

Then ken realizes he does have a story.

- In the land of grundo, ken had created a world

Of fantastical creatures.

There is a deep backstory,

There is a real sense of soul.

- [narrator] and the grundo universe even comes

With a built in lead character.

- Ken's looking at this monkey like character

And he realizes if I just change the snout,

He can look like a bear,

That is the beginning of teddy ruxpin the talking toy.

- [narrator] as ken makes a breakthrough,

Lonnie johnson continues to struggle

With his prototype water gun.

- The way the gun was manufactured,

The water would literally pressure

And separate the glue seams and began to leak.

- Water guns at this time held water in a reservoir

That was in the handle.

So he realizes that the issue lies

In the structural integrity of the gun body itself.

To solve the structural issues,

He realizes he needs some kind of external tank,

An external reservoir.

- He's back working on the stealth bomber,

His job is pretty overwhelming,

But he continues to tinker in his spare time.

He has this almost childlike curiosity

To keep figuring out and to get it perfect.

He makes the prototype by hand, he uses plexiglass,

He uses pvc pipe, he uses a soda bottle.

- One piece of plastic that is blown into this shape,

No seams at all.

If you create one solid environment

That is structurally sound, you can build up all

The pressure you want.

- And eventually he has what will later become

The super soaker, though at this time he's calling

It the power drencher.

(tense music)

- [narrator] in california,

Ken has a working prototype of his own,

But now he needs investors.

- Gem hansen loved it,

He was fascinated with the technology,

But he thought it would take too long to develop it,

And that happened with several other companies

And individuals, entrepreneurs.

- [narrator] then, ken lands a meeting

With hasbro.

- [doll] hello, I love making new friends.

Do you wanna hear a story?

(man laughing)

- So you see, when teddy tells us stories to kids,

He's bringing them into a whole new world

And we can sell that world through tapes and books.

- Well, I like it.

If we fast track it, we might be able

To release in three years.

- Three years, that's the fast track?

(intense music)

Sorry guys, I can't wait that long.

- It's hard to think that anyone would pass on hasbro,

But ken forsse doesn't have time,

He's been hemorrhaging money.

- They're burning cash,

This company's gonna be dead in three to four weeks

If they don't get something now.

- [narrator] by February of 1984, ken forsse's company

Is running on fumes and he still hasn't found a buyer

For teddy ruxpin.

- Hey guys, sorry to keep you waiting.

- Hi.

- Ken forsse begins contacting anyone he knows

With production experience and quite frankly anyone he knows

With money to help him bring his project to life,

Bring it to market, and hopefully stop bleeding money.

He eventually goes back

To an executive he met named don kingsborough,

One of the founders of atari, to see his new innovation.

- Tell me about this bear. - This is teddy ruxpin.

- Okay.

- We're gonna sell a lot of these.

- Great.

- Hello, I like having new pals.

- [billy] when don sees teddy ruxpin

For the first time talking, blinking its eyes,

Don is smitten.

- Do you want to hear a story?

- He falls in love.

He realizes this has to happen and it has to happen yesterday.

- I love making new friends.

- In a world of working parents,

Suddenly there's this tool for them,

This toy for their children that'll actually read them

A story and it's a teddy bear on top of it.

- Ken forsse has been in every boardroom

Of every toy company in the united states,

Which means they all know that animatronic toys

Is the next wave of technology,

And if they don't pounce on it,

Every company will have beaten them to the punch.

- Yeah, I definitely wanna work with you guys.

- [narrator] kingsborough agrees to manufacture teddy ruxpin.

- He's offering to basically be the businessman

That ken wasn't.

- Worlds of wonder was formed to market

And distribute teddy, and they paid us royalties

And alchemy 2 maintained creative control.

- Don kingsborough's tells them, "make sure

We're on toy shelves for the holiday season.

We're gonna get this out in six months."

- This is incredible.

- [narrator] in omaha, lonnie johnson is ready

To test his new bottle based design.

- All right, so anika, gonna hold it up.

Okay, perfect, and you're gonna pump it

Five times for me, okay?

1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Perfect. Okay, ready?

Hold it up.

Three, two, one, go!

(cups flying)

(laughs) awesome.

- [narrator] lonnie's power drencher sends water

Up to 40 feet, dwarfing any other squirt gun

That came before it.

- This thing changes the game for water guns.

After someone can spray someone down

With that type of pressure,

Who's gonna be the kid on the block

Who shows up with the little squirt gun?

No one, because the point of a water gun fight

Is not tag you're down,

It's who's the most drenched is the one who lost.

- And I think this was the first barometer for lonnie

That he absolutely knew he had something.

- No!

- [narrator] but it's still just a prototype.

(dog barking)

- His first instinct is to just manufacture it himself.

He goes to a potential manufacturing partner

And they price out what the tooling

And initial startup costs would be for him.

- So to produce a thousand power drenches,

It will cost me how much?

- $200,000 minimum.

- Thanks for drawing this all up for me,

But I can't afford it.

- Lonnie realizes even if he had the money

To put this into production,

This would mean that his toy would cost $200 a unit

And obviously no one's going to buy that.

- Still a long shot to create a toy.

You're losing time with your family,

The other career opportunities within your field.

It's not like he has a day job that is simple.

This is just devastating.

- [narrator] with just six months until christmas,

Don kingsborough and his newly formed company,

Worlds of wonder, race to get teddy ruxpin into production.

- It's don. Yeah look, I've got this new project

That I think you might be interested in.

- [narrator] with no manufacturer,

No staff, and no money.

- Okay, thanks.

- [narrator] all he has is his rolodex.

- Hey jack, how's the weather in hong kong this morning?

- Don kingsborough knows that there are factories

In hong kong that were literally just making ataris,

So he knows that they're familiar with circuitry

And mass producing it and without him,

Teddy ruxpin doesn't happen.

- I'll cut straight to the chase here,

Are you taking on any clients?

- They don't really know what they're doing yet,

But they're gonna have to figure it out

Because christmas season of 1985 is just around the corner.

He knows that if he doesn't go for broke, it's all over.

- [narrator] forsse's team at alchemy 2

Is also feeling the pressure.

- We were creating everything that surrounded the teddy toy,

So our job at alchemy became intensely busy trying

To get the books and the audio tapes done.

- [narrator] in a final move, forsse hires actor phil barron,

Who plays winnie the pooh's piglet, to voice teddy ruxpin.

- We hid in the bushes until gimmick

Was almost right next to us.

- Teddy's voice was soft, it was gentle,

And it was trustworthy, so he provided that security.

- You put the cassette tape into teddy,

And teddy wakes up and teddy starts telling you this story

And you follow along via the storybook.

- [doll] we left our homeland of rolonia

And set out on our great adventure.

- It's the first toy that can really talk to children

That seems alive.

- Teddy moves and talks, and tells you a full-on story.

So this is a far cry from a little pullstring

And get a little catchphrase,

We're talking hours of entertainment for a child.

- Teddy ruxpin came along and sort of changed

The entire game for teddy bears.

No longer did you have a bear

That you could just sit with, and look at,

You all of a sudden had a bear that would talk back to you

With facial expressions and more importantly, a real voice.

- [narrator] re-imagining the traditional teddy bear

Using animatronics now has one more obstacle.

- They're concerned about the price tag.

At the time, teddy ruxpin would sell for roughly $70

Which was about $160 in today's money.

It's a pretty tall order to expect any family

To spend $160 on a teddy bear.

- If the teddy ruxpin talking toy flops,

There is no more worlds of wonder,

There is no more alchemy 2,

Everything is riding on this toy.

There was going to be a lot of chapter 11 filing

If the talking toy did not succeed.

- [narrator] so don kingsborough pulls out all the stops,

Tapping madison avenue to create a series

Of ads for teddy ruxpin.

- There's a lot of high quality production going

Into these commercials.

They include one year straight to kids.

My personal favorite, a little boy brings his teddy ruxpin

To show-and-tell and one of the little kids goes,

"another teddy bear?" and boy's a little nervous.

The teacher just helps him turn on teddy.

- I really enjoy talking to people.

- And he starts talking and the kids are just like, (gasps).

- [announcer] comes with illustrated book and cassette.

- [narrator] while teddy ruxpin is set to hit stores

For christmas 1985, lonnie johnson is still

Looking for a buyer.

- As a first time inventor,

Learning that process as you go can be kind of frustrating

And disheartening.

The realities of the cost of manufacturing,

And the difficulties of pursuing those kinds of deals,

It can be daunting, he has a steep hill to climb.

- Laramie was a company who was making water guns,

Just the little, small pea shooters.

And the president of laramie told lonnie saying,

"listen, I love the idea of what you're saying.

If ever you are in town, give me a call."

But then before he hung up, he told lonnie,

"but don't make a special trip."

- Sorry to keep you waiting, lonnie.

- Upon hearing, "don't make a special trip,"

Lonnie said, "that's just the thing that I need to do."

- I appreciate you coming all the way out here,

But we're not looking for a new water gun.

- If you tell lonnie, "don't" or "you can't."

- Lonnie, seriously, you're not in the market.

- And lonnie will do.

- Lonnie, se- (intense music)

- So, what do you say?

- You got yourself a deal.

- That meeting was really marvelous,

Lonnie told me that it's a boardroom

And he gets out his prototype and pumps it up,

And shoots the stream across the boardroom,

And the guys at laramie were like, whoa.

- What better way to demonstrate a power drencher

Than to go ahead and shoot across the boardroom

And they're sold.

- [narrator] finally, the power drencher has a home.

Now, laramie and johnson are going to need a strategy

To sell it.

Meanwhile, it's September of 1985

And teddy ruxpin hits store shelves,

Priced at $70, over $160 today.

But in just one month, 41,000 units are sold.

- There's a mad dash as shipments come in,

There'd be a line of people waiting up for them.

People would try to coerce the employees

And that toy sells out pretty much instantaneously.

- I remember it was such a big deal

When my cousins bought one for their younger brother.

No one could believe they got their hands on one,

Let alone could afford it.

- To meet the demand, worlds of wonder had

To start selling out more money

By chartering private jets to fly these toys in right off

The assembly line in hong kong.

- [narrator] teddy ruxpin is the biggest toy

Of christmas '85, selling a million units

In its first six months.

- Can I sleep with him tonight? - [mom] you can.

- [narrator] and in its first year,

Teddy rakes in $93 million, more than $350 million today.

- Worlds of wonder, a company that didn't exist, puts out

The single most popular toy in the entire nation

In less than a year, it's remarkable.

- [narrator] the massive profits give don kingsborough

Leverage to double down on a new idea

Hoping he can repeat the magic formula.

- Just like worlds of wonder brought

The magic of disney audio animatronics into the home

In the form of teddy ruxpin, don wants to bring

The next big craze out of the public sector

And into the home and its lazer tag.

- Lazer tag was this toy where it would come

With this somewhat realistic looking gun

And a piece that a kid would wear on their chest

And determine if they get hit a certain amount of time,

Then they're out of the game.

And you could basically play this game in the real world,

Which is really, really cool, really novel, really exciting.

- [narrator] the home version of the arena game

Is the hottest selling toy of christmas, 1986.

Worlds of wonders trajectory from startup

To back to back best sellers is virtually unprecedented.

(upbeat music)

Meanwhile, lonnie johnson gets a step closer to his release.

- Let's change the name.

- You don't like the power drencher?

- We were thinking the super soaker.

- Not bad, I like it.

- Super soaker, I happen to think that's a better name.

You've got that alliteration, it's easy to remember

And it's somehow more evocative.

Rain can drench you, soaking is something deliberate.

- The super soaker was a really tough sell originally

Because water guns before the super soaker used

To cost a dollar, but the super soaker wanted $14.99

And that was a really big ask.

- It's a marketing problem,

People aren't going to pay 20 times

The cost of a normal water gun.

- I think the kids will love it, they've just gotta see it.

- [narrator] laramie readies itself

For an unorthodox promotional campaign.

- Laramie decided to rely on word of mouth.

That, frankly was very risky

And there was no guarantee it would pay off.

Here you have a product that is commanding a premium price,

And they decide we're not gonna put any marketing behind it,

That's crazy.

- Laramie says, this toy will speak for itself,

This toy will show its own merit

And justify its own expense just in the using of it.

And the belief is if you get one kid in each neighborhood

To buy one, well then you'll have an arms race.

- [narrator] but worlds of wonder's latest hit, lazer tag,

Is about to throw a wrench into lonnie's plans

For the super soaker.

- Lazer tag looks too much like a real gun,

And a 19 year old kid who was playing

With his friends at an elementary school

Was shot by a sheriff's deputy.

- It's a story that rocks the nation,

And at the time the sheriff's department blames

The manufacturer for creating a gun

That looks like a real gun

And this starts this movement away from realistic guns.

- It's terrible timing, everybody hated toy guns,

But johnson just doesn't quit, he's really determined

To figure out how to make it work.

- And so this weighed heavily on lonnie.

How irresponsible is the industry making a product

That's intended to be fun, look real enough

To get a kid dead?

- [narrator] in 1987,

A tragic shooting death causes worlds of wonder's lazer tag

Sales to collapse and their other cash cow, teddy ruxpin,

Isn't keeping up.

- Wow had over manufactured product,

At the same time they just could not sell

The product they had.

- Worlds of wonder goes public, now they have shareholders

To be accountable to.

They have to keep the revenue flowing,

Every major brand that you can find,

They are scooping up the license

For that to make a talking toy before somebody else does.

And so people are gonna get sick of talking toys.

- [narrator] then, on October 19th, 1987,

The entire economy suffers a huge shock,

A stock market crash that will become known as black Monday.

- Often when we think about financial panics or crashes,

We go to 2008 or 1929 and the stock market crash

In that moment.

But in fact, 1987 witnessed the largest drop

In the stock market in u.S. History.

- [narrator] world markets plummet, hong kong loses a third

Of its value and the dow drops 22% in a single day.

A gut punch to a newly formed public company.

- Worlds of wonder is still a startup company,

It's two years old, so it was never on firm foundation.

So all these problems that it experiences over the course

Of 1987 are just too much for it to handle

And it starts to crumble.

- [narrator] two months later,

Worlds of wonder declares bankruptcy,

Bringing teddy ruxpin's creator down with it.

- Worlds of wonder declared bankruptcy owing alchemy

$7 million in royalties.

Your dead as a company unless you have something else

That's bringing in enough money to support 158 people

And 28 departments and we didn't have that.

- [narrator] as alchemy 2 goes under,

Lonnie johnson attempts to overcome

The nation's backlash against toy guns.

- He was careful to make absolute certain

That this toy gun could not possibly be mistaken

For a real gun.

He insisted that the gun was almost comical,

That it was larger than life,

That it had a bright orange tip, white shaft,

Big bulbous balls, different colors, neon colors.

- [narrator] finally, the redesigned super soaker is ready

And hits the market in 1990.

- Once a kid in the neighborhood had a super soaker,

You had to have one because you couldn't compete.

This was a revolutionary experience.

Suddenly being able to blast streams

Of water 10, 20, 30, 40 feet,

It's an entirely new way to spend your summer.

- Super soaker was like a water gun on steroids.

Before that, a squirt gun was like, (unimpressed mouth noises)

You could hit one guy like, a foot away

And that was actually it.

Personally for me, I want a toy

That I know will damage someone five feet away

If I hit him with it, that's a cool toy.

- It was a whisper network of people excited

To spray other people with water.

Word of mouth spread so quickly that in its first year,

Super soaker had over $200 million in sales.

- [narrator] super soaker's success proves lasting

With the product generating over 1 billion

In sales over its lifetime.

(dramatic music)

Teddy ruxpin comes back to life in a few re-releases over

The years, but none recreate the original magic of 1985.

- Teddy ruxpin has an interesting legacy,

It is the first technological babysitter

That we've really seen in society.

Even though it's not tucking you into bed at night,

It is bringing you some amount of comfort.

And over time we have seen many companion pets

That are little robot animals,

And I think that that really stems from teddy ruxpin.

- [narrator] after super soaker's success,

Lonnie johnson isn't content to rest on his laurels.

- Nerf has released a nerf dart gun

And he realizes, "I can make that better too."

So using pressurized air, he creates a foam dart gun

That far surpasses what nerf is putting out.

So hasbro comes to him and then he creates

The best nerf dart gun on the market

And he uses his profits from all these amazing toys

To create his own r and d lab.

And so all of this toy warfare is actually going

To really make the world a better place

By one of the coolest and most knowledgeable,

And engaging men that you've never ever heard of.

- The 1980's to me will always be remembered

As this time when these classic toys actually went

Through an upgrade process.

All these classic toys we grew up with were invigorated

With all this new technology that made them instant classics

For future generations.

- I like having new pals.