I have no photos of
the finished puppies, and good old Mattel
wouldn't even give me a catalogue, That's
typical! So the only peek, I can offer you, at
the final product is this snapshot of Eunice in
Miami Beach, holding the "puppy" as
well as the "So Surprised Suzie", we
sent my mother.
Its
not the best picture of Eunice and she probably
will be upset that I sent it, but it will let you
and your readers experience for themselves the
Before and After Surprise that awaits one, when
one sees what happened to their product, once it
has been transformed by the Magic of Mattel!
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The pups were
intended to emulate several different breeds, through
slight variation in sculpture and more dramatic
variation in color. They also had tails that wagged
at the slightest touch and mouths that opened and
closed to display very detailed teeth and tongues. A
hidden squeeker made puppy sounds when the mouth was
moved! And each pup was "flocked" to give
it a soft feel.
As with Baby Face, I
created three Sculpy prototypes, and made what turned
out to be a disarmingly irresistible video tape,
staring "Pee Wee" the movie cat in his
first major role! When "Pee" opened the
front door to find three Puppies waiting to be let
in, he stole the show and Sold the Pups at the same
time! This time to Mattel, who saw the tape and fell
in love with my best buddy, Pee Wee!
Mattel is the
ultimate "Thank You for the product, See you at
Toy Fair", company. So we never heard or saw
anything until Toy Fair. They renamed the product and
called it "My Very Own Puppy"! Alas, the
new name was the only part of the project that had
been changed for the better! The articulation had
been largely eliminated, and the pups had become more
like statues than posable "dolls".
The tails
hardly wagged, The mouth hardly moved.
And the squeekers were barely audible, if they worked at
all.
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 My photos show the original clay
model in progress, and also some shots of the unfinished
Sculpy models, followed by the product board that spelled
out and explained the features, as well as shots of the
three finished prototypes.
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The pups were
packaged in a cute box that was shaped like a dog
house, but the box was badly engineered so it tended
to fall apart in the stores. There were ten or twelve
different breeds produced! They were distributed
throughout the country, but the test markets, where
Mattel ran commercials produced results that were
adequate but not spectacular, so they didn't run
commercials nation wide and the product was allowed
to phase out.
Photo Album Home
Copyright
Acknowledgment: All images of Baby Face and other
Products and Images,
created by Mel Birnkrant, are Copyright © Kiscom,
Birnkrants
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