The toy business' lifeblood—its product designers—received some much overdue recognition in November at the first TAGIE Awards, presented at a gala during the Toy & Game Inventors Expo held annually in conjunction with the Chicago Toy & Game Fair. The event, held at the city's Museum of Contemporary Art, honored recipients for excellence in the categories of Game Design, Toy Design and Rising Stars, plus presented a lifetime achievement award to Big Monster Toys' Jeffrey Breslow.

“The TAGIE Awards were as historic as they were emotional and magical,” said Mary Couzin, director of the Chicago Toy and Game Group, and prime mover of the TAGIE Awards. “These inventors have touched the lives of probably everyone of us, yet have not been recognized for their contributions. We are honored to celebrate them now and in the years to come.”

The 2008 TAGIE winners were Steve Rehkemper and Jeff Rehkemper of Rehkemper Invention & Design (Toy Design), Garry Donner and Micheal Steer of Random Games & Toys (Game Design) and Joyce Johnson and Colleen McCarthy-Evans of Toying With Games (Rising Stars).

Couzin expects to open industry voting for 2009's TAGIE nominees in September and begin taking votes from the public on the finalists by November 1.

For 2008 TAGIE Award Excellence in Game Design winners Garry Donner and Michael Steer, patience has always been a virtue. The president and vice president, respectively, of Random Games & Toys, have maintained a partnership that's lasted more than 30 years, during which success in the world of toy and game creation arose slowly. And while that might not have been the initial plan, it's set Random up to be where it is today: a steady provider of new ideas for a host of clients ranging from industry titans Mattel (Tumbling Monkeys) and Hasbro (Express Games) to specialists like Out of the Box (Chain Game) and Patch Products (Buzz Word).

Long past are the days when Donner, who founded Random back in 1974 while moonlighting from his job in computers, and Steer, who joined the team in 1976, spent five years trying to sell their first idea. Last year, they had 70 products on the market. It's a result that reflects the philosophy the partners have developed towards longevity in the design field over the course of three decades.

“Some of [those 70 products] pay very small amounts and others pay very well,” Steer says, “but that's one of the things that is different between our approach and a lot of other inventors: We're really after singles. We want to build our foundation one brick at a time. Big hits are nice, but what we really want are a lot of products on the market—it allows us to be patient with the others.”

Winning was incredibly exciting,” says Joyce Johnson, co-founder of Toying With Games with Colleen McCarthy-Evans, the recipients of the 2008 TAGIE Award for Rising Stars Inventors. “To be acknowledged by our colleagues and those who have supported us was just incredibly touching and was a really great thing to happen at this point in our work.”

The “point” the pair are at today is six years removed from when the two first met at a toy design workshop and began what, initially, was only intended to be a monthly chance for two toy business neophytes to toss around ideas. Since then, the partnership has produced numerous marketed games, led by Gamewright's In A Pickle, which has since sold more than half a million units. The duo's credits also include Aunt Millie's Millions (Gamewright), There's a Fly in My Soup (Basic Concepts); Pokémon Pokéball Flip (Pressman), Disney Fairies Fancy Flight (Danawares) and Hat Stackers Party (Dowling Magnets), among others.

Like any start-up, it wasn't easy getting to where their company is today. “It took us three years to say we were self supporting,” says McCarthy-Evens. “We didn't quit our day jobs right away, but we did eventually take that leap. And it's serious business for us to make this work and continue to put out great games. You never know which way a year's going to go—it's a mystery—but that's something we like about it. We like the unknown. That might not work for everybody, but it seems to work for us.”

And their games, it seems, work for many others—from kids to adults—in large part, the partners say, because of the way their designs play. “We always try to approach our games with a very fun factor in there,” Johnson says. “We like to add something a little bit unique; a part to the game where you maybe have to do something creative.”

“We're most pleased when we hear a lot of laughter coming from the game table,” adds McCarthy-Evans. “For me, that's a really important part of being in this business: that the games provide joy and laughter to players.”

Jeffrey Breslow, recipient of the first TAGIE Lifetime Achievement Award, is a toy design institution.

The Chicago native, recently retired, was a toy inventor for 41 years, having spent most of his adult life thinking up new ways for the young—and the young at heart—to have fun.

Breslow's long career in toy design began in 1967, two years after graduating from the University of Illinois with a degree in industrial design and a short stint designing medical equipment for a hospital supply company. In 1969, he joined the legendary toy design firm Marvin Glass and Associates, the Chicago-area incubator for many of the toy industry's most notable designers over the past quarter century. Within two years he had been named a partner in the firm and went on to serve as managing partner for 12 years until the company's end in 1988.

Post-Marvin Glass he formed a new design firm with partners Howard Morrison and Rouben Terzian—Breslow Morrison Terzian and Associates—that would see its founders inducted into the Toy Industry Association's Toy Industry Hall of Fame in 1998. The team's accomplishments included a gaggle of well-loved, well-remembered games and toys, including Ants in the Pants, Guesstures, Brain Warp, California Roller Baby, Real Talking Bubba, Masterpiece, My Size Barbie and Jennie Gymnast.

Breslow Morrison Terzian would later become Big Monster Toys, which Breslow led as president and CEO until retiring in 2008 to more actively purse life as an artist. The company he founded remains the largest independent toy design studio in the country. Its products are credited with generating hundreds of millions in sales for its toy and game clients.

TAGIE Excellence in Toy Design winners Steve Rehkemper and Jeff Rehkemper, principals of Rehkemper Invention & Design, have for years been the “power” behind many of the most technologically innovative playthings.

The Chicago-based company, founded by the two brothers more than 25 years ago, has grown into a product invention juggernaut, credited with more than $1 billion in combined sales for some of the world's largest toymakers, including Fisher-Price, Hasbro, Mattel, Spin Master and Tiger. It's best known for its integration of innovative electronic or mechanical elements in its toys. Among its recent products are several technologically driven playthings, including Spin Master's Air Hogs Sky Patrol, which the company calls the world's first radio-controlled electric helicopter “inexpensive enough, safe enough and simple enough to be called a toy”; the highly interactive Winnie The Pooh Chat Pals and Let's Pretend Elmo plush for Fisher-Price; and Tiger's successful Gigapets virtual pets. Among the company's patents are those for the Rehco Rocket, a miniature air motor the size of a sugar cube that, because of its size, allows entire products to be “smaller, lighter and less expensive”; the Yo Air, a yo-yo that's said to have a 34 percent higher energy-to-weight ratio than traditional designs and features a “unique” open-frame design; and—outside of the toy space—it developed the AquaSonic WaterJet Oral Care System, its first product for the consumer healthcare market.

In 2007, Rehkemper's toy design efforts were recognized when it won that year's TOTY Game of the Year Award for Techno Source's Rubik's Revolution, an electronics-enhanced update of the classic puzzle toy that took what was once a single, solitary play pattern and added to it several addictively simple game options with the addition of a few “why didn't I think of that?” light and sound elements.