Playskool: 2 in 1 Bounce & Roll!

Beneath the umbrella of companies now with Hasbro is Tiger, who focused a lot on fun games and electronics.  

Clearly inspired by Tiger's successful 'Bulls-Eye Ball' game, Playskool decided to produce a similar skee-ball for their preschool line.  It had the same action and electronic score features as Bulls-Eye Ball, just scaled up and having the additional feature of being either a skee-ball or 'bounce' mode, like the classic. 

The creatives at Playskool tapped me to execute some quick sketches exploring what that might look like.
Here are some passes at styling the overall game as well as exploring the folding and ball return function;

    













Here is how the final product turned out;

   

Playskool: Yard Crew & Cool Crew!

It's always been a blast working with the Playskool division at Hasbro.  Much like the Little People line for Fisher-Price,  having a hand in the history of such perennial favorites, in this case toys like Play-Doh and Mr. Potatohead, will always be a highlight of my career.

One of the on-going lines of which I was fortunate enough to be a part was the Yard Crew and Cool Crew toys.
A while back I posted one of those projects on this blog;  The Cool Crew Vacuum.

The first things I worked on were for the Yard Crew toys, starting with an outdoor grill,  a bench top camping stove, a camping cooler, fishing pole, and camping lantern.
I did a few passes of each item in the line, exploring characterizations and expressions, as well as the styling and accessories included.

We followed up at a later date with the Cool Crew line.
It started simple, with a few gardening tools that talked. From there  I got to explore a range of looks for the leaf blower, chain saw, edge trimmer, and lawn mower characters.


.. is it evident that I had a blast coming up with these?

The mower was a challenge, going through more than a few iterations. Part of it was in trying to achieve a great 'chomping' action without his teeth or jaw looking weird. We ultimately landing with a fun combination and a memorable character.

.. And this is how they turned out;

Playskool's Cool Crew vacuum

Some years back I had the pleasure of working on Hasbro's 'Yard Crew' and 'Cool Crew' toys.  These anthropomorphized role-play tools were a successful line for Playskool, and I had a lot of fun coming up with ways to style common objects like flashlights, leaf blowers, and lawnmowers into animated characters.

One of the many items in the line was a vacuum cleaner.  At that point there was nothing defined so I explored a handful of looks and types of vacuums, providing some range from which to choose.  The important features required were common throughout the designs;

Taking the best elements of the upright style and making some tweaks to the characters' faces I generated a tighter version which was rendered for presentation;

Here is the vacuum as it was produced by Playskool.  Since then it has gone through a couple of color changes, even being completely redesigned for newer generations.