Toy-design contest worthy of Play-Doh and Aristotle.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: SMALL biz

One evening last month I found myself on stage in a school auditorium judging toy designs by sixth to eighth graders at Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy, a UPS magnate school in southwest Denver.

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How this happened: Back in March I'd written about Kazoo & Company toy store owner Diana Nelson for a Colorado Ethics in Business Alliance Award she'd won. Someone forwarded that story to Talya Dornbush, a Kunsmiller exploratory arts teacher and toy-contest coordinator who asked if I'd serve as one of the five judges for the competition.

Sure, I said. Toy sales in the U.S. topped $21.8 billion last year. That's a good enough business case for me. And maybe I'd find a Mr. Potato Head in the rough. But then, fearing my low toy I.Q. might be exposed, I prepared with some research. A sampling:

* Play-Doh, named one of Time magazine's 100 all-time greatest toys, started off as wallpaper cleaner before it was re-purposed in the late 1950s as a modeling clay soft enough to be shaped by tiny hands (and eaten). Noah McVicker and Joseph McVicker received a patent for it in 1965.

* Mr. Potato Head, invented by George Lerner in 1949 and debuting commercially three years later, originally consisted only of the plastic parts--noses, ears, eyes, etc.--that could be jabbed into a real potato or other vegetable. Government regulations later forced toy maker Hasbro to include a plastic potato.

* The board game Monopoly traces back to 1903 when creator Elizabeth J. Magie Phillips, a Quaker, sought to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrated land ownership and business monopolies. Her creation, which debuted commercially in 1924, originally was called The Landlord's Game.

* The Super Ball, invented in 1964 by chemist Norman Stingley, initially was so popular that it sold for 98 cents. But what comes up must come down. By the end of 1966, Super Balls were selling for 10 cents in vending machines. Side note: As a promotional stunt in the late 1960s, a bowling-ball sized Super Ball was dropped from the 23rd story of a hotel. It destroyed a parked convertible on the second bounce.

* Only one...