Posted on 11/27/2025 10:54:40 PM PST by algore
The inventor of iconic classic children's toys like Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, Lite-Brite and Mouse Trap has died at 99 years old.
Burt Meyer, who invented the popular games and gadgets in the 1960s, passed away on October 30, according to Rebecca Mathis, the executive director of the retirement community in Illinois where he lived.
Born in Illinois in 1926, he enlisted in the Navy and served for two years as an aircraft mechanic before his toy making career.
Meyer's many inventions were born during his time working at a Chicago toy studio called Marvin Glass & Associates.
The idea for Lite-Brite came in 1966 when Meyer was walking in Manhattan with Marvin Glass, who owned one of the largest toy design companies at the time, and the two men passed a window display featuring hundreds of colored lights.
Engineers at the company doubted that electric lights could be safely adapted for children, but Meyer's insisted it could, according to Tim Walsh, who interviewed Meyer for his 2005 book Timeless Toys.
'There's billions of ideas out there,' Walsh wrote, 'but executing them into a final creative solution is often the hard part.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
How true.
I remember The mousetrap game. So you might say this guy kicked the bucket setting in motion a series of events that caused him to be buried in a red bathtub or something like that.
Heh. I remember Mousetrap and the little plastic mouse. Fun times.
A real life Santa Clause.
He looks more like Mrs. Clause.
When he died, yeah. Wikipedia says he was a mechanic in the Navy from 1944-46. Photos from Google searches show him enjoying an active life in his golden years. He created a lot fun things for kids to enjoy!
I think my husband and his brother had the robots. We saw the ads all the time Saturday mornings during cartoon breaks.
I had the mousetrap game as a kid in the 1970s. But as far as I can recall, I never really played the game. I was interested in only playing with the mousetrap contraption.
I had Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots which was fun until it inevitably broke, and I had Lite Brite which was probably something my parents bought to keep me occupied. I never owned Mouse Trap, but I remember playing it a few times at friends’ houses.
A sad day for the religion forum!
Lite-Brite was cool. I bet a bunch of ER doctors saw a lot of toddlers around Christmas when they ingested their siblings’ pins.
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