Rest In Play - 2020 - 2029

John Boyce was born on January 5, 1972 and passed away on February 21, 2026. John was passionate about the arts. He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the Cleveland Institute of Art and spe...nt a lot of time in his mother's pottery studio, which sparked his passion for drawing. John went on to design toys for Hasbro in Rhode Island. He was part of the relaunch of Star Wars toys and GI Joe action figures, and is one of the few that can say he's had a GI Joe figure made in his name and likeness. He contributed original designs to recent Spiderman movies and met with sports figures and entertainers to transform them into action figures. John married Robin Kubas in 2008. They had three children together, Noah, Cameron, and Evan. He will be deeply and dearly missed by all those that knew and loved him.Show more

Lam Leung-tim was born on March 30, 1924 and passed away on November 10, 2025. He is best remembered as the inventor of the yellow rubber duck. Lam was born in Hong Kong but his family fled to mai...nland China in 1942. There, Lam worked as a farmer and a vendor at a village market. Four years later, Lam returned to Hong Kong with a strong enthusiasm for toys. This led him to the plastics industry, as he believed good toys could be made from plastic. He worked at Winsome Plastic Works in 1948, when he came up with the idea of mass-producing the very first yellow rubber duck. This yellow rubber duck became a symbol of the Hong Kong toy industry. In 1955, Lam left Winsome Plastic Works to found his own toy factory, Forward Products Company Industries. Just five years later, he merged with Winsome Plastic Works to form Forward Winsome Industries Limited. His company went on to produce toys for American companies including Mattel, Hasbro, and Hallmark. Lam became known as the "father of Transformers in China" because he opened up the Chinese market for Hasbro to bring their hit toy to China. He received the Federation of Hong Kong Industries' Industrialist of the Year Award in 2015. In 2019, the government awarded Lam the Bronze Bauhinia Star in recognition of his contributions to Hong Kong’s industrial development. Even at over 90 years old, Lam was still a sharp businessman. He founded another company, Funderful Creations, in 2014, and produced and marketed yellow rubber ducks. Lam lived to be 101 years old. He was avidly involved in philanthropy, donating to universities all over the world.Show more

Sam Kieth was born on January 11, 1963 and passed away on March 15, 2026 at the age of 63. He was best known as the creator of The Maxx and Zero Girl and the co-creator of The Sandman. Sam started ...becoming well known in the comic book world in 1984, when he inked Matt Wagner's Mage. A year later, he inked Fish Police. Then in 1989, he penciled the first five issues of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. He collaborated with Alan Grant on a Penguin story, and illustrated two volumes of William Messner-Loeb's Epicurus the Sage. He drew an Aliens miniseries for Dark Horse comics, and then The Incredible Hulk vol. 2 #368, which was where he got his started drawing covers for Marvel Comics Presents. In the 1990s, Sam left Marvel to create the original series The Maxx for Image Comics. It went on to ran 35 issues, all of which were plotted and illustrated by Sam. The Maxx was then adapted as part of MTV's Oddities. Next, in 2001, Sam created the series Zero Girl for DC Comics' Windstorm imprint, and followed that with Four Women later that year. In 2004, he launched the Scratch series featuring a teenage werewolf. Beginning in 2007, Sam wrote and drew the five-issue series Batman: Secrets. Kieth wrote and illustrated the original hardcover graphic novel Arkham Asylum: Madness, which ended up on The New York Times' best seller list. in 2013, Sam won an Inkpot Award at San Diego Comic-Con.Show more

George Atamian was born on December 27, 1937 and passed away on October 15, 2025. He was an educator, scientist, astronomer, and inventor. George co-founded the Talcott Mountain Science Center in ...Avon, CT which opened in 1967 on a former Nike missile tracking site. He joined Bushnell, a division of Bausch and Lomb, where he worked in the Astronomical Telescope Division. In 1992, he joined Educational Insights, where he developed and sourced many educational toys. He also proudly served as President of The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys where he remained until his retirement. George married Maryann Hamparian in 1959 and they had three children together: Elizabeth, George, and Hope. He also was a proud grandfather to Eric George. He will be deeply and dearly missed by all that knew and loved him.Show more

Stuart Moore was born in 1937 and passed away in 2025. He is best remembered as the creator of Tiny Tears. Stuart knew the career he wanted to be in from the start. He joined Cascelloid straight ou...t of school and worked in the factor. After two years of National Service, he returned to Cascelloid and started sculpting new dolls for the company's new Palitoy brand. During the 1950s, Stuart took on the task of completely redesigning Palitoy's doll, Patsy. He turned Patsy into one that cried real tears, and Patsy became Tiny Tears, which was an immediate hit. Stuart went on to become Doll Design manager and sculpted and designed many other dolls, including Teeny Tiny Tears and Teeny Weeny Tiny Tears in addition to designs like Carrie, Winnie the Pooh and Girls World. When the Palitoy design department was closed down by the new American owners in 1984, Stuart continued to work as a sculptor and designer until he retired.Show more

Tomonobu Itagaki was born on April 1, 1967 and passed away in October 2025. He was a Japanese video game designer best known for creating the Dead or Alive series as well as reviving the Ninja Gaiden ...franchise. Tomonobu was born in Tokoyo and graduated from Waseda University's School of Law in 1992. That same year, he joined Tecmo as a graphics programmer, starting his work on the Super Famicom Soccer video game. His first career breakthrough came in 1996 with Dead or Alive, a game based on Sega Model 2 hardware and created in response to a request from the Tecmo management when the company was in financial trouble. Then came Dead or Alive 2, which only increased his popularity. With Dead or Alive 3, he moved to Xbox, citing how much more powerful, developer friendly and easier the Xbox's architecture was to work with compared to other consoles. Tomonobu was appointed the head of Tecmo's third creative department in 2001 and assumed leadership of Team Ninja that same year. In 2004, Tomonobu came out with Ninja Gaiden with his sights set on creating "the best and the ultimate action game." In 2008, he announced he would be resigning from Tecmo and suing them for 148 million yen for withholding a bonus promised for his previous works. In 2009, IGN named him as one of the top 100 game creators of all time, and in 2010, he and a few other members of Team Ninja created Valhalla Game Studios. In 2021, Tomonubu unveiled his own video game studio, Itagaki Games. Tomonobu leaves behind a wife and daughter.Show more

Robert "Rob" Wieland passed away on October 12, 2025 at the age of 47. He was an accomplished freelance writer and game designer with over 20 years of experience. Rob was especially involved in the... tabletop roleplaying game space. He was the guest of honor at several conventions, hosted charity games for philanthropic causes, and wrote often for Forbes and the Milwaukee Record, among other publications. He also published a comic book, Girls' Heist Out, and a coffee table book, The History of Choppers. In addition to writing about the space, he helped design many different games, his credits including Star Wars Saga Edition, Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun, Firefly, and various World of Darkness supplements. He also designed some original games, including Camelot Trigger and Save Game. Rob leaves behind his loving wife, Lindsay, and their daughter, Louise. He will be deeply and dearly missed by all those who knew and loved him.Show more

Adrian Carney passed away in September 2025. He was a senior commercial manager at Jazwares, where he spent the last nine years of his career. He started his career as a trading analyst at Ocado, then... in buying at Tesco. In 2013, he joined Entertainment One, before making the transition to Jazwares. He was hired as employee number six in the UK, where he contributed greatly to the growth and success of the business. Adrian leaves behind a loving wife, Anita, and two children, Polly and Joey. He will be deeply and dearly missed by all those who knew and loved him.Show more

David "Dave" Wallace was born on February 16, 1958 and passed away on August 25, 2025. Dave was the founder of The Fantasy Shop in St. Louis, a popular shop that offered comic books, tabletop games, a...nd many other toys, games, and knick knacks. Dave was an active member of the toy and game industry since the early 1980s. He gave presentations at the GAMA trader show and wrote the Specialty Retailer Handbook as well as the Store Manager's Training Guide. Dave was a passionate advocate for professionalism in game retailing, arguing that the industry deserved to be treated as a profession rather than a hobby. He invested in his company: he always had inventory, he dedicated space to back office operations and warehousing, he even organized meetings with other St. Louis retailers and encouraged stock balancing among stores to deal with overstock. His wife, Kell, has taken over operations at The Fantasy Shop, but Dave's absence is felt by everyone in the community. He is deeply and dearly missed by all those who knew and loved him.Show more

Drew Struzan was born on March 18, 1947 and passed away on October 13, 2025. Drew was an artist, illustrator, and cover designer best known for his film posters, including The Shawshank Redemption, ET..., Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, and over 150 others. Drew attended ArtCenter College of Design and then joined Pacific Eye & Ear as a staff artist. There is where he started designing album covers for artists like the Beach Boys, Bee Gees, Black Sabbath, and Earth, Wind, & Fire. He then moved on to Pencil Pushers, where he started doing film posters. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he created posters for films like Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, The Muppet Movie, and The Goonies, among others. By the 1990s and early 2000s, he was working on film posters for movies like Harry Potter while also exploring other outlets, like comic books, limited-edition art, and the collectible market. Though Drew announced his retirement in 2008, he came out of retirement in 2012 to do a collaboration with Mondo for a cover of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, and again in 2015 to design posters for the documentary Batkid Begins: The Wish Heard Around the World and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In 2019, Drew also came out of retirement to create three separate posters for the How to Train Your Dragon film trilogy. Drew: The Man Behind the Poster, a documentary about Drew's life, came out in 2013. In 2017, to celebrate Drew's 70th birthday, Robert Townson, Varèse Sarabande and the Golden State Pops Orchestra produced the tribute The Magnificent Movie Poster World of Drew Struzan – live in concert which featured Struzan's artwork displayed to the live orchestral performance of associated film music.Show more