>> ... Next Generation ...

':un And Games

Bloomfield Hills native makes
living as a to maker.

STACY GITTLEMAN I CONTRIBUTING WRITER

eremy Posner calls himself a
Fungineer. No, it does not mean
that he is in a lab somewhere
breeding an exotic variety of
mushrooms. The 26-year-old Bloomfield Hills
native, now living in Chicago, has a job most
kids dream of or adults reminisce about
when watching the movie Big.
Posner gets paid to invent toys.
Later this winter, Jenga Quake — a new
version of the classic toppling wooden tower
game that Posner collaborated on with his
co-workers at Big Monster Toys — will be
marketed and distributed throughout the
United States.
Jenga, according to the website www.
howthingswork.com , is the third most
popular game in the world after Monopoly
and Scrabble. A game that offers lessons in
physics and structural engineering, a tower
of simple smooth wooden rectangular blocks
is stacked. Slowly, and carefully, players one
at a time remove pieces from the bottom
and stack them on top of the structure until
the structure comes crashing down under
the weight of the blocks.
Jenga Quake literally shakes up the
conventional Jenga game by placing the
entire structure on a battery-operated
shakable playing field that erupts at random
times and intensities, thereby adding another
level of suspense to the game.
Posner grew up in a family of game
lovers. A simple card game like solitaire
could turn into a heated competition played
with multiple decks of cards where family
members could build on each other's pile of
aces. At his bar mitzvah party, the evening's
theme was Monopoly.
"You never want to enter a simple game
of Monopoly with my family," Posner said.
"We become ruthless property owners."
Posner and his brother and cousins would
invent games on family vacations on the
beach Up North using nothing but a dollar-
store ball and some shoes.
A believer of games as beneficial to
the mind and family bonding, Posner
wished to pursue his passion for play after
graduating with a degree in mechanical
engineering from the University of
Michigan. While many of his classmates
were getting jobs among the big three
automakers or landing military or defense

j

p i contracts, Posner had other things in mind.
"I didn't want to work for years on the
design of a car part. I didn't want to make
the next greatest cup holder," Posner said.
"Engineers are needed for everything, so why
not toys?"
Posner is thankful for the support of
his parents, who helped him research and
contact toy companies and designers across
the country. After landing an internship with
Mattel, where he worked on the Barbie
product line (think Dreamhouse and Glam Jet),
Posner had the opportunity to be mentored by
Mattel's vice president of inventor relations.
That mentorship led him to his current
position and success with licensing and
marketing his first product to a major toy
company.
However, Posner acknowledges that success
on a toy design is carried by an entire team of
people "with the same mindset yet differing
and complementary talents." While he
thought of the overall concept for the game,
an electronic engineer co-worker programmed
the shaking base and a packaging designer
created how the finished product would look
on a toy shelf at a retail store.
Knowing the rate of how many ideas are
scrapped not long after the prototype phase,
Posner said he feels "very lucky" about his
success with a marketable toy so early into his
career.
"For every toy design that gets accepted,
about 50 or 100 get rejected," said Posner,
advising would-be inventors out there to keep
a positive outlook and not give up.
So what's the next coolest toy or game
that Posner is working on? He really cannot
say, not to even his closest friends or to
his girlfriend. But in the meantime, he
continues to play games with a new set of
20-something friends he made in Chicago.
He truly believes in the benefits of playing
real-world physical board games as a remedy
to his generation's excessive hours of screen
time. He said it "flexes your brain and keeps
you socially tied to other people." And when
it's game night with Posner, turn your cell
phone off.
"Through playing games, I've even become
friends with a great group of Jewish women
here. And yes, they let me into their regular
game of mah jong."

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J111

January 1 • 2015

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