Smart Cycle
In 1998, parents were concerned that their kids were spending too much time playing video games and not enough time getting exercise. Drawn up as a video game that relied on movement to play, the “Pedal-n-Learn” concept was a win-win for both parents and their children. To play the game, kids pedaled and steered their sit-on stationary bike to arrive at the correct answers to questions posed in the game.
Licensed to Fischer Price in 2004 by another group, The Smart Cycle™ became the highest grossing product launch in history for Fischer Price, generating hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide.
Monkey Lights
Kids have been adding stuff to their bicycle spokes for years—but nothing as brilliant as this! Creating light shows by attaching a strip of LEDs to bike spokes is one thing. Making an image from the LEDs as the bike is in motion is another. It’s that detail that raises this idea to a whole new level.
Taken to market by Monkey Lights, the LED display is a fun accessory that also adds visibility for safer riding at night.
Flat Tire Prevention
When cyclists started moving to tubeless tire set ups to reduce flats, the idea of further reducing flat tires by placing more padding between the rim and the rocks was drawn up. The idea was to place padded material on the edge of the wheel and a little more inside the tire itself. Fourteen months later, Enve patented their Rim Strip, which accomplished the goal of adding more compliant material to the edge of the wheel.
Dropper Seatpost
In the late 80’s, the HiteRite™ was used to quickly adjust your bike saddle up and down while keeping it pointed in the right direction. The only problem was, you had to let go of the handlebars to flip the quick release by the seat in order to activate it. The concept of a handlebar mounted quick release was drawn up, but never prototyped. A shame, because maybe we could have all had workable dropper posts a lot sooner!
Tiger Golf
Bass Fishin’ was a hugely popular LCD game. Along those same lines, we believed using motion sensing technology to create a handheld golf game was a great idea. Just select your club and swing to hit the ball. The idea was passed over internally out of concerns of kids swinging wildly and breaking lamps. This turned out to be unfounded, the company sold millions, and the game was featured on the cover of Sky Mall.
Track Chair
With the goal of helping disabled people to explore nature and the outdoors, the Trail Masher was drawn up as a way to help them explore beyond the confines of smooth paved trails. This all terrain vehicle provides mobility to places they could only dream of before. Drawn up in 1994 while still in design school, the concept was later realized by a couple companies to aid in access to the outdoors for those confined to chairs.