A toy's story BY KEIKO MORRIS STAFF WRITER At Design Edge's Merrick offices. intuition, experience and a good dose of horseplay reign when it comes to developing the next hot toy. Usually it comes out of fun and games. Msaid Matt Nuccio, 32, who is now a partner at the toy design and packaging finn founded and operated by his parents, Mark and Linda Nuccio. Usually we're just joking around and it comes to us.Q One of the company's latest hits, Storytime Theater, was introduced at Toy Fair in February and in the months since has garnered much industry attention and made it on the Holiday 2006 All Stars list of Toy Wishes, a consumer magazine and toy guide. The idea behind Storytime Theater, licensed and manufactured by DynaTe<::h Action, a Canadian toymaker and distributor, is simple. A projector displays pages from specially designed bIxlks on the wall or ceiling. As the page turns, the images change and, and the parent or child can read the story aloud. It also has a bedtime mode, in which Storytime Theater automatically reads the story as the pictures are projected. ~Parents like it because it involves reading,~ said Jim Silver. publisher of Toy Wishes. "Parents can almost consider the toy as an educational toy even though one would never perceive it as an educational toy," Storytime Theater comes with one disk and sells for $39.99. Additional disks with image disks and sound cards, or refills. can be purchased for $12.99. Dora the Explorer, Nemo, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Winnie the Pooh arc among the characters licensed for the product. Andrew Kamondy, DynaTech Action marketing manager, declined to discuss sales figures but described the product as a Qvery, very, very good seller. Let's just say it did well at both WalMart and Toys 'R' Us to the point that we were re<::eiving 70 to 90 calls a day asking where they could find the refills," Ka· mondy said. One of the key factors for Storytime Theater's success. Silver noted, is that no one else has such a product in the market, and DynaTech was able to acquire popular licenses. Nuccio said he could not discuss sales figures, but said it has sold very well. ~Having the hot properties in a toy that's unique all adds up to a winning combination," Silver said. "This is the hottest toy that they have ever come out with." Design Edge was established in 1988, but the company draws upon Mark Nuccio's 37 years in the toy industry as well as the artistic talents of his family. Mark Nuccio has a fine arts degree from St. John's College, where he met his wife, Linda. who holds a master's in art education. The two started the company out of their garage with $7,000 in their bank account. Their son, Matt Nuccio, was brought up in the toy-design industry and has a degree in packaging and advertising from the Fashion Institute of Technology. One of his sisters, Jennifer Llewelyn, a printmaker with her own studio, also worked at Design Edge for several years. And Chris Nuccio, 36, their cousin, works there as a designer. ~Sinee we're Italian, I like to say it's our other family business," joked Mark Nuccio. Toys have always been a part of Design Edge's identity, but initially, packaging was the company's bread and butter, Mark Nuccio said. They have been known to design packaging for items other than toys. One of their recent projects, for example, is creating the packaging for Hanes children's underwear. Since its beginning, Design Edge has been involved in designing thousands of toys. The company, which opened an office last year in Hong Kong, has brought about 100 of its own toy designs to market. In the past few years, the company has accelerated its efforts in creating and producing toy designs in large part because of Matt Nuccio, his father said. There are few, if any, rules in designing toys al Design Edge. They can be as simple as parachute ball - a ball attached to a parachute -to whimsical collector's items like the Bible Heroes with Moses, Jesus, Mary and Noah figurines - and the 24 Seven Crew, vinyl dolls dressed in hip-hop gear and described as hip-hop meets the Cabbage Patch Kids. For the Nuccios, a good idea is obvious. ~you have to wow yourself before you wow anybody else," Malt Nuccio said. A hot gift for kids this season puts the spotlight on its developer, a Merrick design company Design Edge partner Matt Nuccio, with his company's popular Storytime Theater projector, at his Merrick office


At Design Edge, Mark Nuccio and son Matt tap their inner child to create toys kids will love
Where fun is born

BY LAUREN WEBER
STAFF WRITER
Matt Nuccio was just 5 years old when he designed his first toy -a set of action figures based on the ninja characters he saw on Saturday morning Chinese television shows. Meetings with toy manufacturers followed, and soon the figures -along with toy weapons, costumes and other accessories -were on store shelves. Nuccio became known as "the ninja kid."
Twenty-six years later, and an adult by any defmition, Nuccio still spends much of his time thinking about how to tap into children's imaginations.
"It helps that we're both quite immature," said his father, Mark, Matt's partner in Deign Edge, a Merrick-based firm that does everything from inventing new toys to designing, packaging and advertising for other companies' toys.
Right now, Design Edge's Hewlett Avenue offIces are electric with energy as the firm prepares for next week's American International Toy Fair in Manhattan, the largest industry trade show in the Western Hemisphere. There, retailers will peruse thousands of items that will be available this fall for the Christmas shopping season.
One of Matt's latest creations will be introduced at the show. Called Storytime Theater, it's a "reading entertainment" toy that projects a book's pictures onto a wall so that children can follow along as though watching a movie. The toy is licensed and manufactured by DynaTech Action, a Canadian toymaker and distributor.
Indeed, many of the new games and novelties on display at the Toy Fair will have come directly from the fertile imaginations of independent toy inventors. All of the industry's heavy hitters -from MatteI and Hasbro to smaller fIrms such as Spinmaster -rely on inventors like the Nuccios to keep up a steady stream of innovation.
"Big companies know that not all ideas come from one pool or one source of people, so they're always looking for outsiders to come up with opportunities they may not have thought of. It's a fresh source of inspiration," said Reyne Rice, toy trend specialist for the Toy Industry Association, which hosts the show.
"We're like soldiers of fortune," said Matt Nuccio, 31. "We don't have to worry about manufacturing or inventory. We can do what we want without being restricted by marketing. At the big companies, everything is done by committee. A camel is a horse designed by a committee.
"But you can't walk in off the street," he added. You have to be established."
That's where having a track record becomes critical, and Design Edge has been building its record for more than 30 years. After graduating from college with a fine arts degree, Mark Nuccio, 59, took a job working for H-G Toy Co., a Long Beach toy maker.
Just before H-G med for bankruptcy in 1988, partly the result of an ill-starred decision to relocate its facilities to New Jersey, Mark Nuccio founded Design Edge in his garage, with $7,000 in his bank account and a family of fIve to support. "We had a daughter in college and we had to take her out. But she dealt with it. She ended up going to Nassau Community College for six months."
Business took off quickly, thanks to Mark Nuccio's edgy sensibility and the reputation and contacts he honed during 17 years at H-G. Over time, he diversified the business and brought in a team of talented designers. One of them was Matt, who by that time was a painter and "totally broke," he said. "I was already working here weekends, summers, holidays, whether I wanted to or not," he added.
Now, "we're a design studio as well as research and development," Mark Nuccio said. The company's revenues are "in the low seven fIgures," he added.
"We do all these different elements invention, model-making, advertising, engineering, marketing, packaging. That is unique in this business, and I attribute that to the fact that everyone who runs the company has a fine arts or liberal arts background."
Design Edge's most successful and long-running product is Tattoo Graphix, a do-it-yourself tattoo kit for kids. The company has brought more than 30 of its own designs to market, and has also created award-winning packaging for a variety of other toys and games.
The biggest challenge in the toy business, Matt Nuccio said, is "always staying fresh, being creative." One has to constantly replenish the store of ideas, ever on the lookout for knickknacks and images that might spark the imagination.
"I have so much useless stuff," he said, "from guitar pickups to canvas tarps to all different types of springs. I'll buy sneakers and tear them apart to see what the cushioning is made of. I'll take apart motors. I like to see how things work, how things light up."
That playful, curious spirit pervades the Design Edge offIces, where the walls are hung with kung fu movie posters and odd sketches, and an antique dentist chair sits in a corner looking like a horror movie torture device.
"We have water fights, dart fights, balls flying through the air," Mark Nuccio said. "Any sticky, messy screwball thing that can go on here, does."