How do I get into toy development?

A fair number of people - mostly students, with a few experienced engineers thrown in - have contacted me, asking how they can get a full-time job developing toy electronics, and/or what courses they should take at university to get into this field.

Now, I don't want to put a damper on this ambition - toy development is a fun field - but I need to explain some realities of the toy business to you first. Major toy corporations in the U.S. - such as Fisher-Price, Hasbro, and Little Tikes - have only perhaps one or two toy chip engineers in the company. Most of the chip development work is outsourced. The function of the in-house engineer is mostly to build prototypes (for internal marketing purposes), to arrange audio recording when necessary, and to look at toy ideas and decide if a particular idea is going to be implementable within a certain electronics budget. Almost all of the actual final code is developed overseas. Some of this is done as a "free bonus" by the chip vendors, and some of it is done by the factories that make the toys. The reason that the factory gets final veto on circuit design and firmware is because the factory has to guarantee quality. The US toy company essentially signs a contract with the factory that says, "You can revise the design however you think fit. Here is a prototype that shows how we think the item should look and feel. You make whatever changes you want to be able to make it cheaply and reliably".

If you're looking for this kind of work, and you're still in school, you might want to consider an internship at one of the major toy companies. That internship might or might not go on to generate a real full-time job - but either way, it will be a good introduction to the toy development mindset, and it could be a useful bullet point on your resume.

A more promising field is the small toy invention company. There is still good money to be made by small companies who develop toy ideas and present them to the big companies. (A large number of toy ideas make it to market this way). Be prepared to multiskill; you will need to have the mechanical skill to assemble prototypes as well as designing the electronics, and you'll need to be good at fitting projects into the smallest/cheapest possible circuit. If you're looking for a job that is just all-day coding from detailed specifications, forget about it - all that kind of grunt work is outsourced overseas these days. To have value in the US marketplace you'll need to be able to demonstrate a wider range of skills.

Finally, don't overlook the obvious: If you think you have a great toy idea and the skills to make it real, prototype it yourself! Use a boilerplate non-disclosure agreement and call the three big names mentioned above. Ask to speak to someone in charge of invention acquisitions (ALL three of these companies have rooms full of purchased ideas).

Good luck!

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