PM: In 1992, your game AHA was released and won awards from Parents Magazine, GAMES Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune among others. How would you describe this game? 

MR: ‘AHA’ is a game of matching patterns. A deck of cards shows all the possible patterns you can build with five balls in a row using 5 dark and 4 light balls. (In AYA, the German version, they use yellow and blue balls.) Balls are arranged in a linear trough with a play zone in the middle comprised of five balls. On the two ends of the trough sit four additional out of play balls, two at each end. You can remove any one of the five balls in the play zone and place that ball at the either end of the trough which forces the inner most of the two out of play balls on that end into the play zone creating a new pattern.

PM: How did AHA come to exist?

MR: Remember those one inch wood balls? I revised ‘Archiball’ twenty years later as ‘AHA’ which started my second toy company, B&R Mindworks. John Beaupre, a friend and highly successful restaurant owner from Santa Fe wanted to get into the toy business. To me this is like wanting to get into the movie business, -- pretty crazy. John was instrumental in the beautiful aesthetic design of ‘AHA’.

Wood’s a tough ingredient for product. It’s organic. Grows on trees. One week the base for ‘AHA’ cost a dollar. Next week, four dollars. And each piece of wood -- since we are using quarter sawn, red oak and black walnut -- looks different. Fine woodworking creates art, not product. I did a stand alone show at Bloomingdale’s in NYC and we sold out, mostly to European and Japanese customers. Got a special order from Japan’s JETRO organization. FAO expressed interest. We shot a point-of-purchase video but a management shake-up (theirs) stalled the deal.

Meanwhile, through my agent, Howard, we licensed the European rights for ‘AHA’ to a German company, ZOCH, who produced a very high end, composite material, industrial version called ‘AYA’. I understand that as the ‘author’ of ‘AYA’, I am highly regarded in German gaming circles. Don’t know for sure, never been there.

Next, through my agent again, we licensed the North American rights to Mag-Nif and they produce it as ‘Match 5’ in plastic. They use plastic one inch balls, I believe.

PM: You’ve also developed the unusually named Oops, which later became a GAMES 100 Award Winner.

MR: Dawn coined the puzzle ‘Oops.’ Because when players stacked the pyramid, if it collapsed, they usually exclaimed, "Oops." She thought this was a good name for the ten ball pyramid. When I asked her what we should name the twenty ball pyramid she said, "Oops Again." I used these as ‘working titles’ and Channel Craft kept them. What can I say? ("Oops," I guess.)

The ‘Oops’ pyramid puzzles also have an interesting history. Remember those one inch wood balls? Yes, those same ones. I made my first pyramid puzzles out of them in the early seventies and sold some of these, personally, on the arts & crafts circuit, prior to my induction into corporate surrealism at Ideal Toy.

Years later, sometime between ‘AHA’ and ‘AYA’ to be exact, I called up Dean at Channel Craft -- who at one time distributed ‘AHA’ -- and asked him if he was interested in seeing some puzzles. (This is the luck in relationship thing.) He said, "No." But, since communication is not one of my strong points, I went to see Dean anyway.

Anyway, prior to our agreed meeting (which I doubt Dean was even aware of), I salvaged a bunch of -- Yes! -- one inch wood balls from some ‘AHA’ games, painted them the required colors, and glued them together to make some (relatively) brand new ‘Oops’ prototypes. I’m big on presentation, so made two samples of each. I showed these to Dean (don’t you ever do this!) at his booth during Toy Show in New York.

He was agog! Not at the concept of my puzzles, but at my audacity. While we stood there, him speechless and me grinning like an idiot, this lovely woman from ‘The Games People Play’ store in Cambridge, Massachusetts walked up. She asked Dean, with considerable curiosity, what the puzzles were. Dean, kindly, deferred to me to explain. Which, I did. She ordered several boxes of each and walked away. Dean turned to me and said, "Well, I guess we’re manufacturing these now!"

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