Rest In Play - 2020 - 2029

Philip Goodall was born in the UK in 1930. From a very young age, he developed an interest in flying, and he completed his National Service in the RAF and decided to stay and train as a pilot, eventua...lly joining Bomber Command. He spent 25 years in the RAF, flying various different aircrafts, from a Canberra to a Concorde. He retired in 1975, and the same year, he and his wife, Helen, purchased a family-run cycle business. Helen came up with the idea of introducing toys, and the independent toy store The Pied Pedaller was born. The store became one of the largest independent toy shops in the country. The Pied Pedaller eventually joined the Andover based toy buying group, Concorde. Philip was a director of the group for several years before leaving to join Toymaster for a few years, before switching to Youngsters, with whom the business stayed. Philip also joined the committee of the National Association of Toy Retailers (NATR), now the BATR, for which he was chairmen for five years. Philip retired from the business in 2004 and in the following years authored a book, titled ‘My target was Leningrad’, covering his years in the RAF and the Cold War strategy.Show more

Rob Auerbach owner and CEO of CandyRific, was born on March 28, 1952 and passed away on May 7, 2024. Rob was an industry icon, a toy and novelty candy creator for over 40 years. He first founded Ra...inbow Blossom Natural Food Markets in 1977, before founding CandyRific in 2000. Rob ensured that his candy not only tasted delicious, but was free of synthetic preservatives, artificial colors and flavors. Outside of his career, Rob was an avid pilot, loved horse-racing (he attended the 150th Kentucky Derby on May 4th, just before his death), as well as cycling, beekeeping, live music, and traveling. He will be deeply missed by all that knew and loved him.Show more

Jane Garner was born in 1963 and passed away in early May, 2024. Jane's career was on the PR side of the licensing industry. She started out running the PR department at Copyright Promotions before se...tting out on her own and creating Kilogram Media, her own agency, where she specialized in supporting licensors and licensing agents from the UK and the international market. Jane attended Reading University and started her career in journalism, editing Pony Magazine, before moving into the licensing industry. Jane was an animal lover, surrounding herself with dogs and horses. She will be deeply missed by all those who knew and loved her.Show more

Shelly Morick, a former Mattel sales executive, was born on December 21, 1937 and passed away on May 7, 2024. Shelly attended Cornell University as well as Thunderbird School of Management in Inte...rnational Business. Throughout his 50+ year career, he worked for companies like Mattel, where he was the Executive Vice President of Sales. Shelly also enjoyed traveling, exploring the jungles of Africa, the Pyramids of Egypt, and even the North Pole.Show more

Salvatore Anthony Mucaro was born on December 13, 1934 and passed away on May 16, 2024. As a child, Salvatore enjoyed building balsa wood model airplanes, playing street hockey and stick ball and ...racing pigeons. He attended Christopher Columbus High School in NYC before joining the US Army. Afterwards, he married his wife, Rosemarie. He enjoyed playing softball, golf, and bowling, and loved getting involved in his children's activities, like Cub Scouts and ballet recitals. He was also involved with Our Lady Queen of Peace Church's annual Country Supper Show, where he became passionate about singing and performing in front of an audience. This eventually led to his lifelong love of karaoke, which he participated in until just a few weeks prior to his passing. He married his second wife, Cindy, and together they moved to Ferandina Beach, FL. After her passing he reconnected with his childhood sweetheart Dorothy Piano and they spent many happy years together until her passing in 2016. Salvatore worked in the toy industry as a toy designer and a package designer, and worked for Remco Toys, Aurora Products Corporation, Mego Toy Corp., Ideal Toy Corp. and Coleco Toys, before starting his own development company Studio Geppetto with longtime friend and coworker John MacNett.Show more

Richard Keats was born on April 1, 1927 and passed away at the age of 97 on April 7, 2024. Richard Keats graduated from Brown University and served in the US Navy. Afterwards, he joined his father...'s company, Buddy L Toys, in 1948. He worked there until 1990, when it was sold to SLM, and even took over running the company in 1976, when his father retired. After leaving Buddy L Toys, he founded Kaywood Industries, continuing his passion for design and invention. Kaywood also licensed a number of products to companies like Fisher Price, Mattel, Hasbro, and Spin Master. Some of his company's most successful products include Brush Your Teeth Barney, Playtime Big Bird, Flatsy, MakeUp Mindy, and many more. Richard Keats was a dedicated attendee of Toy Fair and the Dallas Fall Toy Preview trade shows. He will be deeply and dearly missed by all those that knew and loved him.Show more

Jack McAllister was born on December 13, 1926 and passed away at the age of 97 on April 19, 2024. Jack graduated from Robbinsdale High School and the Dunwoody Institute, following his education by ...proudly serving his country as a Navy Veteran during World War 2. After serving, he worked many jobs. He worked for Coast to Coast Hardware in Robbinsdale for many years. He was a toy designer for Sifo Toys as well as for Centuri Rocket Company. He designed cereal box premiums for General Mills. Jack worked as an engraver at Jostens and was employed by North States Industries as a designer and machinist. He also worked at Priemier Plastics as a designer and mold fabricator and was a machinist at NW Swissmatics. But one of his proudest achievements was being the creator of the games Bunkerball and Racehorse checkers. "The absolute best picnic game for families, churches, and parks. Play like Softball only that the fielders use paddle bats to get fly or ground balls into the ring shaped bases for a put-out," he described it. He was also a dedicated member of his community: an active member of the Robbinsdale, Crosby and Wright County Historical Societies. He was also a naturalist, and enjoyed sharing his expertise on ancient Native American portage trails which traverse throughout Cuyuna country. In fact, he was instrumental in clearing the pathway for a scenic mountain bike and hiking trail located in Ironton, MN and was even featured in a documentary on PBS. Jack will be dearly missed by all those that knew and loved him.Show more

Trina Robbins was born on August 17, 1938 and passed away on April 10, 2024. She was an American cartoonist, an early participant in the underground comix movement, and one of the first women in the m...ovement at that. Trina was born in Brooklyn and had an early fascination with comic book heroines. She attended Cooper Union for a year, where she studied drawing before moving to California in 1960. In 1996, she moved to Manhattan, where she worked as a stylist and ran a clothing boutique called Broccoli. She designed clothes for Mama Cass, Donovan, and David Crosby, among others, all while making herself at home in the 1960a rock scene. She was actually close friends with Jim Morrison and members of The Byrds, and was the first of the three "Ladies of the Canyon" in Joni Mitchell's classic song. Trina's first comics were printed in 1966, but left New York for San Francisco and worked at the feminist underground newspaper It Ain't Me, Babe. She also produced the first all-woman comic book, the one-shot It Ain't Me, Babe Comix with fellow female artist Barbara "Willy" Mendes. Trina was very vocal in speaking out against the misogyny and "boy's club" of comics creators criticizing underground comix artist Robert Crumb for the perceived misogyny of many of his comics, famously saying, "It's weird to me how willing people are to overlook the hideous darkness in Crumb's work ... What the hell is funny about rape and murder?" In 1990, Trina edited and contributed to Choices: A Pro-Choice Benefit Comic Anthology for the National Organization for Women, published under her own imprint, Angry Isis Press. In 2000 Robbins introduced GoGirl! — superhero stories designed to appeal to young girls. In 1986, Trina got involved with Wonder Woman. She drew the comics for The Legend of Wonder Woman, which was a four-part series written by Kurt Busiek. In the mid-1990s, Trina criticized artist Mike Deodato's "bad girl art" portrayal of Wonder Woman, calling Deodato's version of the character a "barely clothed hypersexual pinup." In addition to her comics work, Trina was an author of nonfiction books on the history of women in cartooning. She wrote Women and the Comics, A Century of Women Cartoonists, The Great Women Superheroes, From Girls to Grrrlz: A History of Women's Comics from Teens to Zines, and The Great Women Cartoonists. In 1997, Trina was a Special Guest at Comic-Con in San Diego, where she was presented with an Inkpot Award. In 1989, she won a Special Achievement Award at Comic-Con for her work on Strip AIDS USA. She was a three-time winner of the Lulu of the Year, was inducted into the Friends of Lulu Women Cartoonists Hall of Fame in 2001, and in 2002, she was given the Special John Buscema Haxtur Award. In 2013, she was inducted into theWill Eisner Hall of Fame, and in 2015, she was ranked #25 among the best female comics creators of all time. ComicsAlliance named Trina as one of twelve women cartoonists deserving of lifetime achievement recognition in 2016, and in 2017, she was chosen for the Wizard World Hall of Legends. All in all, Trina Robbins was an extremely talented artist and feminist icon, and will not only be deeply and dearly missed by those who knew and loved her, but by the world of comics as well.Show more

Argentinian developer Jeremías Babini passed away unexpectedly over the first week of April, 2024. Jeremías worked with Daniel Benmergui on 2023's Storyteller as both an artist and a co-designer..., having worked together in the past on 2017's Fidel Dungeon Rescue. Jeremías first started working in the game industry in 2010 as an animator at Atommica. In 2012, he worked at Heavy Boat as an artist and Ludomancy as an art director. In 2015, he co-found Wonbats in Buenos Aires. At Wonbats, he worked as an art director on some Cartoon Network titles, like Steven Universe: Sword Dancers and Regular Show: Demonic Naptime. Before he passed away, he was working on Piopow for the NES and Famicom.Show more

Pamela Osborne of Osborne Sports & Toys in Rushden passed away on March 25, 2024 at the age of 91. Pamela worked for 60 years at her family-run store Osborne Sports and Toys in Rushden, a job she ...loved dearly. She came to the area originally to take a job at Chichele College as a PE teacher in 1954. She married Jim Osborne in 1960, and became a partner at the toy shop a few years later, holding this position right up until her death. Osborne’s Sports and Toys celebrated its 65th anniversary in 2020, when special 65th anniversary jigsaws were commissioned. Other noteable moments in the business’s history include when Lego thanked the Osbornes for their brand loyalty by cladding the entire shop front with 277,500 Lego bricks for a weekend, and Playmobil selecting Osbornes’s as the launch pad for Playmobil: Star Trek’s USS Enterprise playset, supplying a 5ft Mr Spock and a model of the USS Enterprise. The local community has responded to the news of Pamela’s passing with condolences, happy memories and high praise for what many described as a ‘lovely lady’, a ‘local celebrity’, and ‘an integral part of many of our childhoods.’Show more