#170: Connect 4 – Tic Tac Checkers

The Empire Builders Podcast

Dave

Dave Young had no recollection of this game. Really, he didn’t know. But after hearing this story he applauds Howard Wexler for knowing himself.

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.

[JS Pest Control Ad]

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast. Dave Young here with Stephen Semple. And we’re telling the stories of empires that were built up by people with an idea, business people. And Stephen just whispered today’s topic into my ear and I don’t know.

Stephen Semple:

You know the game. Connect Four.

Dave Young:

Connect Four. I don’t think I’ve ever played Connect Four. It’s a game?

Stephen Semple:

You’ve never played.

Dave Young:

You’re telling me it’s a game.

Stephen Semple:

It’s a game. I’m telling you it’s a game.

Dave Young:

Is it a computer game?

Stephen Semple:

No.

Dave Young:

It’s a board game.

Stephen Semple:

No, no, it’s not a board game either. And that’s what makes it interesting. It’s the one which is a vertical game and you connect four, you drop them in the top and you connect …

Dave Young:

Oh, you drop those little things. Yeah. No, I’ve never played that.

Stephen Semple:

You’ve never played it? Okay.

Dave Young:

No, I never have. I’ve seen people doing it and I thought it was, well, it’s just sort like cornhole or some stupid thing.

Stephen Semple:

But now you the game …

Dave Young:

I’ve seen people playing it with a giant set and beers in their hands.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. Okay.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

All right.

Dave Young:

It’s that game.

Stephen Semple:

It’s that game. Well, despite the fact you’ve never played …

Dave Young:

Let me guess, let me guess.

Stephen Semple:

It’s done pretty well.

Dave Young:

Let me guess. You have to have four colors in a row.

Stephen Semple:

You have to have four colors in a row. That’s it. That’s it. Connect Four.

Dave Young:

All right.

Stephen Semple:

Despite the fact that you’ve never played the game, it has done pretty well. Sorry.

Dave Young:

How many do they sell? Let’s get that in.

Stephen Semple:

About 10 million a year.

Dave Young:

All right. That’s it. Thanks for joining us on the Empire Builders.

Stephen Semple:

Wow. It’s amazing how many times we do this stuff and you know something about the company. I would never have guessed that this is the one that you would not know it.

Dave Young:

Look, I don’t even know if I want to admit this, but yeah, I don’t have friends that invite me to play games.

Stephen Semple:

But I would’ve thought you would’ve at least remembered the advertisement. It’s a pretty iconic ad that has been done. It was back in the late seventies and it was two kids playing.

Dave Young:

This was around in the 70s?

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

Did I just wake up from a coma?

Stephen Semple:

You must have. There was a really iconic advertisement where the two little kids would be playing and the girl would say, “I won.” And the boy would go, “I can’t see it. Where?” And then she would point out the four in a row and he’d be like, “Pretty sneaky sis,” and then pull a little thing and all the pieces would fall.

Dave Young:

Yeah. I have no memory of this.

Stephen Semple:

Where were you from? Nebraska.

Dave Young:

That’s basically it. We were too busy working on cornhole technology.

Stephen Semple:

I guess. Anyway, this is going to be interesting for you as well.

Dave Young:

I know. I can’t wait.

Stephen Semple:

So it was launched in 1974 by Milton Bradley.

Dave Young:

No, it wasn’t.

Stephen Semple:

It was! Wow.

Dave Young:

Go ahead and weave your little story.

Stephen Semple:

They only sell piddly 10 million a year and you’ve never heard of them. Just to haunt you on bringing one to the academy.

Dave Young:

That’s fine. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

So it was invented by a guy by the name of Howard Wexler. And the thing that’s interesting about Howard, Howard has dyslexia. He had a hard time reading in school. He had a hard time reading the rules on games, and he loved making models and building physical things. But people people didn’t know how to handle that at the time. What the heck did you do?

Dave Young:

Yeah, you’re just broken. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

What the heck did you do? Yeah. So he’s in college and he’s taking a course and he learns about dyslexia and it’s like an eye-opening moment for him. And so he gets a PhD in psychology with a focus on child development, which is also remarkable given what he’s struggling with.

Dave Young:

Sure. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

And he managed to get a PhD. And he’s making up toys with the kids that he’s working with in this child development program. And he decides he wants to go all into making toys. So he gets a job at Hasbro making toys. And there’s few people at the time in the toy industry with a science background. So the first thing he does was make the little mobile, mobile, whatever you call it.

Dave Young:

Yeah, you hang above the crib.

Stephen Semple:

Hang above kids. Yeah. That’s one of the first things that he made. And what he did is he made it one that the baby would like. He took it from the point of view of the baby. So very three-dimensional, black and white, high contrast, all of that. And they were the first to do that sort of thing. And it was very, very successful. But he got really frustrated because most of the ideas he created were being rejected. He got really frustrated with that corporate environment of I’d create this idea and it would get turned down. So he decided he wanted to become an independent toy inventor and he left Hasbro. But he’s got this problem.

Dave Young:

Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.

[Empire Builders Ad]

Dave Young:

Let’s pick up our story where we left off. And trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.

Stephen Semple:

Well, he’s got this problem. He’s got no money coming in, needs to find a success, and he gets an apartment near the toy industry and he’s drawn towards strategy games, games like Checkers and chess and Parcheesi. But he notices they’re all horizontal. So he thinks, what if he can make one of these games vertical?

Dave Young:

Wait, I’ve got questions. You got an apartment near the toy industry. Is there a place like that?

Stephen Semple:

Well, basically you got one near Hasbro. Yeah.

Dave Young:

Near Hasbro. Okay. Honestly, I thought North Pole.

Stephen Semple:

Okay, well this is maybe reason why you don’t know anything about Connect Four.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

So he has this whole idea of what if he could take one of these games, make a vertical, right?

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Because he thinks about this stuff differently. So he starts off with playing around with plastic tubes and ping pong balls and he starts playing with it. But he has a hard time defining the goal because for it to be a game, you need to have a goal. What’s the fun? And all of a sudden he realizes, well, what if you could do tic tac toe vertically? And he starts playing with ping pongs, but they’re too big. So he starts going to checkers, which are slim and more familiar. He also finds out playing around with that three in a row is too easy. So basically four in a row ends up becoming a better game.

But the real question comes, how many columns? How many rows? He does lots of experimentation with columns and rows. And the first design of the game has an early flaw because you had to tip the game over to drop the checkers out. Now what he found was the kids love the sound of the checkers hitting the table, but the turning it over was awkward. So he created a little lever on the bottom of the game that would drop the checkers out. And so when you hit that release button, there’s the sound, there’s the tactile nature of all of it. And there’s, there’s the fun ending of the game with it being that way. But here’s the challenge. It’s 1973, and if we think back to the toy industry in 1973, electronics was all the rage.

Dave Young:

Sure. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

And Connect Four had no bells, no whistles, no electronics. And basically he went shopping it around and no one was interested, but he decided that he didn’t give up on it. What he realized was Milton Bradley already …

Dave Young:

So he’s got the pieces.

Stephen Semple:

So he’s got the pieces. All they need to do is make the frame. So he went to them because all they had to do is pick up the grid and Milton Bradley went, “Well, what the heck? We’ll pick the game up because all we need to do is make the grid.”

But they weren’t super enthusiastic. For the first bunch of years, it was buried in the back of the Milton Bradley catalog. It wasn’t even in the game section. But it started to sell a little bit by a little bit to enough that by 1977 they started to advertise. And it’s literally considered one of the most iconic advertising commercials out there with the two kids playing. And the girl’s saying, “I won.” Little boy saying, “I can’t see. Where?” And she points it out and he says, “Pretty sneaky sis,” and then pulls the lever and the checkers fall down.

Dave Young:

I got to find this ad.

Stephen Semple:

It’s called Pretty Sneaky Sis is the name of the ad and sales skyrocket. And he’s still making games. He’s making a lot of games, Howard Wexler. And he’s actually kind of nicknamed in the industry a Toy Doc.

Dave Young:

Wow, okay.

Stephen Semple:

Which is kind of cool. But what I really liked about this is he leaned into his weakness in terms of struggling with dyslexia, moved him towards let’s build a game that’s really simple and easy. As soon as you say Connect Four, and I handed you the game, you would know, “Okay, I got to connect four together.” He basically took something familiar, tic-tac-toe, varied it a little bit and made it vertical.

One of the issues that we forget with these, what we label as learning disabilities or learning challenges, is often the thing is not that it’s a disability, it’s just look at the world differently.

Dave Young:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

And what he was doing is he was looking at things and going, “How can I take these strategy games and make them vertical?”, which I thought was really amazing. But the other part where I admire is he’s shopping the game around. And of course, he first of all went to the places that where he had worked at previously, but then he looked at it and said, “Well, wait a minute. How do I reduce the friction? If I use checkers and I go to a place that already makes checkers, this is a really easy game for them to pick up because the big part of the game, all of these checker pieces, they’re already making.” For nothing, let’s throw some checkers in a box like that. Nothing.

Dave Young:

You could probably include a cardboard checkerboard with the game.

Stephen Semple:

Right. Actually, that would be really interesting. Go back and look at the original size of the box. It was probably a checker-sized box just printed differently. But I just really admire him for looking at and going, “Okay, how can I make it easy for somebody to make this game?” He first of all, went back to Hasbro because he was working at Hasbro, but then realized Milton Bradley would be the one that would be ideal for making this.

Dave Young:

Yeah. Now just as I sit here, I’m racking my brain trying to figure out how did this thing …

Stephen Semple:

How did you not know about this?

Dave Young:

So maybe my parents raised us in a very horizontal household. They were Presbyterian. So was there something about a vertical game that just doesn’t make any sense? And when I google the ad, it says that it’s a 1981 ad. It doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s the case, Pretty Sneaky Sis. But I was off to college by then, so there’s a chance that the marketing slipped past me. I was going to say, there was a decade in my life that I didn’t watch any television.

Stephen Semple:

It may have been just time.

Dave Young:

That was the Seinfeld era. What a cool story. And honestly, as someone that’s a bit neuro-spicy myself, I love the idea that the Dyslexic invented a game that made more sense to him. I think that’s beautiful. And I know that I’ve seen the game. I’ve seen people playing. Just literally, I have never played this game.

Stephen Semple:

You may want to now, I’ll bring you a copy. And when I came across this, I immediately thought of you and I went, “I have to do this because Dave would really …” No, but you would appreciate how he approached this challenge and the fact that he looked at the world differently and allowed him to make this really incredible, incredible, simple, fun, successful thing.

Dave Young:

I’m guessing that when he left Hasbro, he didn’t have a family yet.

Stephen Semple:

I don’t know for certain, by the time makes sense.

Dave Young:

Can you imagine working up the nerve to leave your dream job? You want to work for this game company and you’re working for one of the biggest and best, but they’re not seeing the world the way you do.

Stephen Semple:

Bingo. And look, how often have we experienced that, where it drives you absolutely crazy because you just know in your heart something’s going to work?

Dave Young:

I hand it to him for that to know himself well enough to say, “You know what? They don’t see the world the way I do. I’m going to quit trying to pretend that I see it the way they do.” And that’s honestly one of the biggest challenges for anybody that’s neuro divergent, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, autism is you do this thing called masking where you’re like, “Oh, well, I’ve got to conform.” And so you try your best to not let anybody figure out what’s different about you.

Stephen Semple:

And one of the things that’s great in the world today, look, we always need more progress, but when I look at the school system today, I look what my kids went through versus what I went through. And there’s no question more progress is required, but way more open to adjusting to allow these kids to thrive. Because the other part is, as I said, we label it as a learning disability and it’s really not. It’s just about looking at the world differently. And often that different view can lead to some release.

Dave Young:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I got to hand it to him and now I’m obligated to, I was going to say play the game, but at least watch the commercial.

Stephen Semple:

There you go. It doesn’t cost anything to do that.

Dave Young:

That’s easy. Well, thank you for bringing, what is it, Connect Four, that’s the name of it?

Stephen Semple:

Connect Four.

Dave Young:

Connect four.

Stephen Semple:

That’s the name of the game. I cannot believe this is the one that you didn’t know anything about.

Dave Young:

Like I said, it’s not my fault. I was Presbyterian and Nebraskan. Thanks, Stephen.

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