Passionate Products - Anecdotes & Ideation from a “Girl Dad” / Brand Manager

This Month’s Story: A Fence for Puppies

We just got puppies. Baloo and Cranberry joined our family December 2024, they are a couple of labs that are just approaching six months old. They are chewing on everything, growing way too fast and above all wonderful to watch with L. They all love each other so much.

To note, we already have a zoo, we love animals at our house. We also have three cats and four frogs; as well as an aquarium and a pond, both full of fish.

L is a director and mediator at heart and loves all of her animals. She is very aware that the cats may not want to be around puppies. So she set up a plan to start building safe spaces for them within our house. One of the most important spaces is the cat tree, which she wanted to make sure the pups couldn't get too close to. This was not only to keep the cats safe from inquisitive sniffing, but to keep both of the dog’s noses safe from cat scratches, which had already happened once.

This is where I want to give massive props to a toy we love in our house. Magna-Tiles are L’s most consistent toy. We’ve grown her collection for years, while they dont always stay at the forefront of play, they have been a consistent foundation for almost every form of play she’s had. Off the top of my head, they have been used as Spider-Man buildings for city swinging, dinosaur paddocks for Gabby Cat’s curated zoos, parking garages for Hot Wheels and Monster Jam trucks. I grew up with K’Nex and LEGO, and while we still love those too, the ease of play and replay with Magna-Tiles has been a mainstay. I find myself playing with them and trying to design modular board games, but I digress.

Back to keeping dogs and cats safe. L confidently knew she could build a perimeter fence to keep the dogs out of the cat tree area. Her design was (and is) sound: cubes upon cubes, each made with six Magna-Tiles each. The cubes were to be stacked about five high with an incorporated small entry in one wall. She drew it out, planned foundations and then started to build. 

A problem was discovered quickly, we didn't have enough tiles to wrap our cat tree on the required three sides with a wall five Magna-Tiles high. Frustration

How could we make this fence higher without the immediate acquiescence to her plea of: “Dad, can we go to the store and buy more Magna-Tiles?” When I knew I could play with my daughter to grow her S.T.E.A.M. understanding, and this fence.

We worked on a lot of strategies together to build this fence better, but in the end L figured out that the six-sided Magnta-Tile cubes were the biggest culprit. By pre-building them and then stacking them, each wall was double-wide and heavier. This wasted a lot of building material and made the higher floors of her fence unstable. This caused a second wave of frustration as L didn't want to rebuild what we had already made together. She had a full sunk cost fallacy that I could see in the moment and she couldn't. I couldn't rush the process of this gear change and I also couldn't immediately just buy more Magna-Tiles, even if I personally wanted some too.

After a day had passed I could tell this was still a real project the L needed to complete. So, while she was busy in a different space I built a small section of this slimmer wall that she designed, when she saw her design in practice she started the rebuild right away. She also adjusted the design further and showed me that we didn't need outer walls either, which made little shelves. This made this whole project a lot more fun, for now she could hide cat toys in those areas.

In the end we could only build this adjusted fence three cubes high. I was close to getting more tiles, however to my surprise, L had decided this was actually enough. She had restructured her expectations and realized that what we built met her needs already. Our puppy fence was completed!

Of course, our puppy fence was immediately destroyed when both Baloo and Cranberry plowed through it less than an hour later. 

Ideating on the Anecdote - Building With Less

Making more with less has become a daily consideration in the toy and game industry, especially when it comes to talent pools. We’ve all seen recent layoffs within our respective companies, and of course, people tend to move to new careers frequently in our space. Both of these moments leave weird voids behind. Accepting these vacancies, especially those that there are no plans to refill, isn't easy. But maybe I need to equate L’s same sunk cost fallacy in not wanting to rebuild with fewer Magna-Tiles to our collective need to rebuild workflows with a talent void.

When I re-equate this anecdote’s parent/child dynamic to that of manager/employee I realize I sit in my child’s shoes. I’m the one asking “Why can’t we get more Magna-Tiles?” while not seeing the whole picture. While much of this is not on me to answer, I need to understand that maybe my employer actually can’t afford it right now, even if they aren't saying that outloud. Or maybe some of those Magna-Tiles got left out in the sun, got warped and don’t work anymore so they got thrown out (True story, Whoops). Maybe a replacement "Magna-Tiles set" is coming, but I just cannot know what my Birthday present is. I need to learn to build fences in new ways while being patient, just like L did.

I think it's safe to say that we need to assume that we need to build or rebuild our fences/workflows/teams without those missing pieces when people leave. So, how can we do that to benefit ourselves, our companies and of course our end Passionate Products for the consumers that want to play with them? Personally, I know I need to take refresher courses on the design tools that I haven't been formally trained on since college. I know after I get back from the GAMA Trade Show, I will be looking at my employee benefits to confirm if I get education credits that I haven't been using. Assuming I do, I might also use them for classes in real 3D sculpting and printing. It’s something I’ve always wanted to learn, but haven't made the time. Both of these classes would help me in pre-visualization to better sell my ideas to others.

I also need to understand “Creative AI Tools” better. Not to use them, but to understand how others might. I am a huge advocate that AI art is theft, especially when used in a finished product; but, the tools are going to exist and are going to get harder to notice while being easier to use. We all need to be better at detecting it.

Another separate thought comes to me too: It’s not just a lack of Magna-TIles/people in L’s desire to not rebuild, it’s also the term: “We’ve always done it that way.” This is something I know I've both heard and said a lot, I need to be a champion in stopping that. Daniel Zayas, a newer hire on our PM team, has been passionately redesigning workflows and finding new, better processes since he joined in 2023. While I was never resistant to these changes, I was not passionate about them, knowing the way we had always done it "worked". This was to my detriment. He is closing on finishing this year's long project and what we have for product management now is better. We can do more with less because we can see more. If I had been more helpful during this time we might already have had it completed so much earlier.

Being satisfied at a new stopping point is another take away I have from L’s construction project. She hit a point where she reassessed and realized she had hit her goals. I know I am not good at changing gears this way and I do need to be better. When I incept a new product, especially in the Tabletop RPG space in which I passionately play in, I go BIG. I build lines that are multiple products deep and believe have multi-year legs. I am positive these things will land well, but my Passionate Products are untested. There is a point where business needs meet passion to forge something out of that friction. Maybe, just maybe, there is a point to be made that less is more that I cannot always see when it comes to product offerings too.

The most important thing that I am starting to grasp however is that a smaller, more focused line, almost directly correlates to a bigger, more focused marketing message. Eyes, time and shelf space are fleeting in our shared marketing and sales space. Getting attention and holding it really is impossible if you have to tell a huge story to tell to someone who is uninitiated. My new larger lines can still be realized in time, but they need to build a foundation of passionate fans kindling the brand so it can explode into the size I originally saw landing all at once.

All of this said, I do want to note L’s mom and I can actually afford more Magna-Tiles. If L’s fence project truly needed more, I believe I wouldn't have been short sighted enough to not get what we needed to finish it. As I noted before, Magna-Tiles have been a foundation of play at our house, so more Magna-Tiles would have found their place in the toy box and still be used in the future.

So I leave this month’s Passionate Play blog with this question. Is there a Magna-Tile set that your company needs in its toy box to finish your fence? I can think of a set we need where I work. After I post this blog I am going to start working on an email that will hopefully have a bit more supporting arguments than “Dad, can we go to the store and buy more Magna-Tiles?"