109. George Lucas, Yoda Cloaks, And Ewoks: The Story of Kenner Toy Legend Cathy Veness! (Part 1)

[Music] how do you help someone who is accident prone that was the challenge facing Earl Dixon on a daily basis his wife Josephine Knight Dixon kept burning herself and getting small Cuts as she worked in her new kitchen the options to treat these cuts and burns in 1920 were frustrating A bulky bandage could be applied but on something like a finger it became an even bigger nuisance than the wound itself homemade remedies amounted to tearing pieces of fabric and clumsily applying them to prevent bleeding but getting them to stay was an even bigger challenge Earl worked at Johnson and Johnson at the time which produced sterile surgical products during World War I to help his wife at home he combined two Johnson and Johnson products together gauze and adhesive tape Earl stretched out a long piece of adhesive tape and put a strip of gauze across the center of it he then put a light fabric on top of it to keep the tape from sticking to itself and rolled it up whenever Josephine cut herself she would unroll a segment of it and cut a strip from the roll applying the sticky bandage to her wound it was a quick and easy fix helped to prevent infection and helped Earl and his wife with minor injuries at home but with his creation Earl felt he was on to something much larger than he initially imagined he presented it to his boss at Johnson and Johnson and the idea made its way to the company's President James Wood Johnson who recognized its potential the company acquired a patent and produced the first Band-Aid brand adhesive bandages since then over 100 billion Band-Aids have been sold worldwide Earl Dixon took a simple idea an adhesive gauze and turned it into a household staple that has lasted for more than 100 years in the toy World Kathy vaness changed the industry of action figures dolls and plush Creations as a soft goods designer she played an important role in producing some of the most iconic toys of the past four decades on lines like strawberry shortcake Disney Care Bears and one nearest to all of us Star Wars this is Kathy's story in her own words this is what it was like to work at Kenner and on Star Wars toys in the 1970s and 1980s this is a conversation with a true innovator and a true toy Legend and this is Star Wars prototypes and production [Music] from corusant to Tatooine and every planet in between Star Wars prototypes and production with your host David Quinn vad it's a TR yes master we're going toy have to stand and fight the more you tighten your grip T the more star systems will slipped to me your fers I want to learn the ways of the force and become a Jedi like my father the force will be with you always Kathy vaness is a problem solver that's how she describes herself and there truly isn't a more fitting description for her role during her 50-year career in the toy industry she entered the toy world with a fine arts background before quickly becoming an asset in the creation of girls Focus toys and soft goods items The term soft goods refers to various aspects of toys basically items like capes and cloaks for action figures clothing accessories and hair for dolls and plush and stuffed toys Kathy worked at many different toy companies beginning with nicker boach toys in 1973 after nicer Bacher she became the senior manager of soft goods and doll design at Kenner where she spent two decades working on lines like rose petal place and Star Wars from there she spent time building the girls toy division for major companies like Tao cap toys toy Biz and Playmates Toys and Beyond helping each business to expand its toy offerings in a meaningful way Kathy's designs are still used today and to find many of the toys created over the past half century she has a wildly imaginative mind and she was able to translate ideas that were simple and complex into various Playmates action figures dolls and plush items for children with similar imaginations chances are you probably own something Kathy helped create and if you're a Star Wars fan and grew up with the Kenner toys you'll find Cathy stories from her time on the line fascinating and inspiring to name just a few Kathy made her mark on the 12in dolls the 3 and 3/4 in action figures the talking Yoda and The Lovable Ewoks over our conversations Kathy shared some of her stories with me and I asked her to share them with you today day she has such a vibrant Soul a sharp memory and a true love for toys and her work and in addition to being a kind and wonderful person she's also someone to admire both in her approach and dealing with others and in innovating fearlessly I'm so excited to have you join Kathy and me for a conversation about her career and the impact she made on the toy industry don't forget to grab your favorite beverage I'm going to go with raspberry tea and cranberry honey for this one and pull up a seat next to me I'll go get Kathy now Kathy I don't get to say this enough to many people but I want to thank you so much for playing a part in my childhood and in my sister's childhood in making the toys that the two of us played with growing up and they're now the toys that I collect as an adult it is a pleasure to speak with you today how are you doing I'm good thank you excellent you and I had spoken recently and you would Shar details of your career and your life and it was really impressive and inspiring how did you get into the toy industry well that's very interesting way back in those days there was not really an career of toy people that was popular everybody got into the industry and the design area sort of haphazardly and in my particular case I had a fine arts business in Flemington and a girl in the neighborhood uh went for an interview a job interview thinking it was Scott paper towel design and it turned out to be a to company and she got the job and everybody that was in the office that he was gathering together for his design staff came from all walks of life one was a secretary in the office that kind of seed crafts and things he put her in the design Department he put this girl Jane that I knew in the design department and she came by and said Gee we need somebody who can draw why don't you come by and that's how I got in and how long have you been in the toy industry since the early 1970s so almost 50 years that's incredible and and you first started though with nicker toy company yes I did my very first toy on the market was the Mickey Mouse puzzle blocks and the Redan dollhouse were you working in soft goods at the time no no actually my background is fine arts and very serious Fine Arts s and that was a pretty good basis for understanding how to introduce that into all commercial work or whatever gave you quite an edge and I actually started in the toy business as what you would consider today an industrial designer which is the one who draws the plastic toys I didn't sew I could sew at home but not professionally and so I got I actually got introduced to nicker Bacher and finally took a job there as a industrial designer I did all their plastic toys their dolls their and I gradually got into the soft goods area so we were considered just toy designers so you were drawing the concepts for the toys and then they were being put into production correct I would do the initial idea Draw It Up Put It In Color get it approved and then work with the engineers that everything was on the outside of the company they were all contractors and got um models done and then we went into production from there I did the control drawings for the engineers what was a day at Nick Orbach like a day at nicker Bacher was a lot of fun they in those days none of us really had any um training and sorts but we were all sort of like in those days we're all in t-shirts and jeans and we all enjoyed each other with a lot of laughter a lot of fun a lot of uh ideas going around it was very casual and very creative and we um we were all put in the back of the factory in the room and we were locked in the room all day so we all had a great time and we were very productive and we went from I think once we got the Holly Hobby license we went from 1 million to 99 million in a year and a half and what year was that what year was that you know that's a good question how been uh 70 1977 maybe yeah around 7677 around there because it was right before I that's the reason I went to Kenner was because of that success but but nicker Bacher we were all uh great friends and great teamwork and it was a lot of fun and we all did different things I learned how to sew learned about production and we just did everything and that's how you got your hands I guess we did we we were're Hands-On everything from initial Concepts through samples through I actually did the labels for the plastic toys we did Disney Art I became an approved Disney Disney artist we did everything at that place it was fun it sounds like it was a master class for you in learning how a toy was produced yes we learned I've learned a whole lot we used to have to get our doll heads rooted out in Long Island City we would go from New Jersey all the way out to Long Island City sit in a room wait for it to come back and as we being that the president of the company was our age so it was really a young because I was young in the 70s it was really a young group and he was unreasonable which made us all band together more and he would say Okay I want 25 New Concepts in two weeks and I would we would sit there and look at each other and then we'd have to think of the craziest things we could ever come up with and he would pick one and that's the one we would probably manufacture and so the assignment was sort of like original ideas Revis the line spring line you know his the stuffed toys because nicker Bacher was a stuff toy company initially and I was brought into bringing the plastic toys which was what his idea was and the third idea was knockoffs because we didn't do television so he would send us out to the stores and say look around look what you can see see what we can do we can do with that so it was crazy but it was fun there lot lot of fun so we learned a lot though we did did you find it to be stressful at times or was it that the overall excitement of not knowing what you were going to be doing day to day it was always fun I would not say nicker makaka was ever stressful it was not a stressful job no that's wonderful it was a lot of problem solving on the product line the people that we all worked together we had such a great time together so it was really fun so I I would say the stressful part was was the idea that we didn't make any money we could hardly live at at Christmas time he would say oh we're gonna get a bonus and we'd go in there and he'd flip through the catalog and say oh you worked on this oh you worked on that didn't soand so help you with that one and at the end he would say and what does your husband make what did he get for a bonus this year and all of those were factors on and of course we got next to nothing and so it got to be um he became our common I guess common stress so we would always be uh we're sort of like a little rebellious group I'm s like like a rebel cell like like a group of people uh coming together and yeah okay so you worked at nicer between 1973 and 1979 was there a certain point in which you felt like you leveled up that it really changed for you what you felt you could do you know that's a funny that's funny you said that the thing that comes to mind was we were work we would work on all aspects working with people um I can't remember his last name Joe the one who invented the Cy doll that's how far back it goes was a friend of the whites who owned nicker Bacher um you would work with all kinds of interesting people and sometimes inventors would send in a thing and this uh this girl in California sent in a flat doll that you snap on the clothing tube and they gave it to me because it was plastic so I designed it I drew it up from the you know they send in sort of a prototype and a concept type thing and you have to make it into something salable and I remember being at home and coming up with the name Dolly poops and it was so appropriate and I was so excited about I don't know where the idea came from in my head but I thought oh we could license the the song from way back my boy lollipop and was so excited about that and that's when I think I realized if you could think of it you could make it happen and it was starting to really come together from I'm going to say that point on that it's something I really enjoyed doing it's funny what you just said was similar to a popular quote of Disney where if you can dream it you can do it which seems to be the direction or the Mantra that you took with your own career yes and then at nicker Bacher we didn't have any facil ities in house and we had to go on the outside and be subjected to their knowledge and we wanted to push the envelope because we thought of new things and they said no no no we can't do that and I think I mentioned to you about the doll rooting I would go there and he'd say this is the only way it can be done and I said no I believe it can be done differently and we could change it and it would be better and I could never get him to do it so when I when I interviewed at Kenner walking through the department which was I think three offices and I saw on the on the floor in one of the offices where the ladies were sewing I saw a rooting machine and I inquired about that and they said oh no we do the head rooting here that was a big factor for me coming to Kenner is that anything I could think of I actually could have materialized inside the company was a big draw for me how did you make the jump from nicker Bacher to kener products then at the end of the decade well the it started out probably naively and that is that Bernie Lumis knew that we did such success with Holly Hobby we were doing 6inch vinyl dolls for every every doll line we had from ragged an to mopets to all of them and Holly Hobby was our biggest and I had what I didn't realize at the time was we had worked so closely with American Greetings and they had shown us the Strawberry Shortcake line and we said at nicker Bacher now and I said oh please Rod not no not one more sixin vinyl doll and so we passed on it and when I went to Kenner that's really why Bernie was calling us in the back room where we worked and he wanted me or Karen this other girl who did Holly Hobby and he wanted us to interview out at Kenner so I went she said she doesn't know where Cincinnati is she's not going she wasn't interested at all and I said well I should be and I'm going to go see what that is so I did and that's how I actually went went there is I I took took them up on the U interview offer and figured I had two children and needed College money and as long as they were doubling what Rod was giving us maybe I should consider it so I did and I [Laughter] win was it nerve-wracking for you at all to take that step yes it was it was I don't know where Cincinnati Ohio was and it was Drew Holland that called me at 7 o'clock one morning and said well are you gonna come are you going to take the job and I said yes and I interviewed for both prelim and for engineering and it was kind of uh worrisome because I thought if I went into the engineering department I wouldn't be able to do design work that it would be too technical but as a result of uh and if I went to the preliminary department they really did not do girls toys or girls prelim it was mostly it was a boys company for the most part and and probably crafts or they called it make and play you know that Play-Doh that kind of thing but they really weren't known for girls toys so I didn't want to go to the preliminary Department because they didn't seem to have the same I guess opportunity for me to make things happen so I chose the engineering department which was Drew Holland so I said yes I'm coming and that's that's how I got there what was your first month or so like there did you notice the difference between Kenner and nicker boach well the difference was interesting for me because I thought that the attitude of all toy designers was inclusive and I think that what I noticed in the first month that the people that worked there were kind of exclusive and they were more independent of each other and there wasn't the team effort that I had experienced and I don't mean that there wasn't a team effort there there was but it wasn't as personal as what I was used to at nicker Bacher we were all good friends we're still good friends today we're like family and it Kenner it was very corporate very uh businesslike we would have a lot of paperwork and a lot of um rules and different things that I was really surprised on how structured it was for being a design area or guess a creative and I thought it was wow this is like a business it's like a company you have to understand where I was working before it's like a free-for-all so it's a little different it's it's very interesting to hear your take on it I think most people imagine Kenner to be more casual and kind of looser as a company um from your perspective though it sounds like Kenner was more corporate which is kind of surprising well yes we had a dress code we had uh I had to do what they called man loading which was to tell uh management how many hours it would take each person to do their job on the projects that they were working on I did budgets I did all that kind very I thought it was very corporate but we did have we did have fun I mean that's not you can't help it and there's a lot of um silliness around the toy products of course because just for the nature of what they are they lend and you're an adult so when you have somebody that's smiling everywhere in your office at you you can't help but get a little crazy sure I know you had mentioned you had an Innovative idea to improve a doll's hairline but couldn't do so while you were at nickach but at ker it was a different story oh it was it ker was so exciting in that respect and the fact that it was almost expected for people to be Innovative and there were so many brilliant people that worked there and I took that opportunity to put into actually to materialize some of the ideas that I had had previous to getting there so that they could actually make it to the marketplace and one of the big ones was the periphery on the hair roting and if you're familiar I don't know if you're familiar with doll rooting but it's a circular pattern and it's like a sewing of hair into the vinyl head and it goes in a circle and that's the around above the ears to the back of the head and they put it on a on like a shoe machine which is a straight needle head goes over it and the hair gets sewn through it and I thought that looked really funny it always looked like they had a wig on because the hair was so you know like above their ears so I wanted to bring the hair the periphery line down in front of the ear and then back over the ear because you had to have a a slight tolerance between the ear and the periphery line because it was a bump there the ear made a bump and you had to leave some space so the needle could get through so I thought well we'll put a little a little hair in front of the ear and go back around the head and they said no no you can't do that but when I got more involved in it I found out that how they the reason that they were saying that is because of timing and um cost so what I did with my my people in uh Kenner namely Bev who could work the machine she she would sit there we would get ahead I would get my stopwatch and I'd say okay start and then we figured out when did this how many starts and stops there were in the rooting and how much weight we could put on the head and therefore we made a successful comparison to the regular hair hair rooting and we were able to do it so the first head that we ever put it on was the Leia Princess Leia in the hairstyle that was the second not the first year not the donuts the next year and I thought that it went into production somebody had to tell me no no it never did and I think now that I think back I think there were only two heads rooted with that hairstyle and it was that periphery line and it was beautiful and that was the very first doll ever rooted that way in history and then we decided it was so good and they were willing in production to do it we wound up putting it on Darcy our fashion doll at kener and I'm going to tell you today and it's 2022 since then every doll I almost almost every doll I've seen on the market has that periphery line it revolutionized the entire hair rooting community and that's incredible it is because it the hair rooting was such a creative place we did different lengths of hair different color combinations different all kinds of things that open the door for designers to do with their hair we were always interested in getting ahead of Mattel that was our big competitor so how long did it take to get the hair rooting I don't know well probably about a half hour oh okay I thought it was I thought it was a process I thought of it for years ago and I and you think about it well if you're driving in the car if you're wherever you are you're always thinking about how you would do it and then I'd say why don't they want to do it and then they'd have to tell me why they don't want to do it and then I would think about that and so it's an you know it's sort of a one foot in front of the other and when I saw the the rooting machine I said let's try it and that by then I had a lot of information on production hair rooting and so I knew how to get around everything so that's why it took no hardly any time to actually make it happen as a Star Wars fan and collector it's nice to hear these stories about what it was like to work on the kener line could you share a little more about the creative process and and your experience in working on the Star Wars toys well one of them that I would say that is interesting or maybe just from a designer standpoint point was the Ewoks and years ago when I was at nickach I had learned how to sew production from the other people that were there and I one of my assignments was the Bad News Bears and they were two teddy bears and we were supposed to make them from the movie so I drew the picture and then I had to sew them three-dimensionally so I don't know I didn't have a lot of experience in production so what I did is I cut a hole in his face in the pattern and I inserted his muzzle in a hole and everybody went crazy at nickach laughing and saying that's insane nobody will ever do that in production that's crazy all the pattern pieces have to line up they have to M be matched up and with notches and all this stuff you can't you have to use darts and you have to do this and I said no no I like the way that round ball of a muzzle looks I want to put it in the hole and so they all laughed and it wound up doable I put notches where they where it would work and the Little Bad News Bear had this big fat face and it was I liked it well everybody said it can't be done in production and it did get done in production and it was sort of like what a term in sewing called easing which means it's a little bigger you know it's a little uh bigger than the hole the pattern piece you're trying to fit in well this was hardly but it it was a little bit so when we did the Ewoks and we we spent a lot of time on the Ewoks and by now Star Wars was pretty popular so everybody wanted to be involved in what it looked like and what it was so I actually left Cincinnati came to New Jersey and worked with uh an old friend of mine at nicker Bacher and her and I worked on the Ewok as you see it today and his cheeks are done with the same hole in his face that the bed News Bears have but that was a probably interesting in the sense that the Ewoks are made like no other stuffed toy and why is that because everybody for the most part is done I would say um I would you I'm trying to think of the word most of the toys are done in a more uh more conventional way you know there's certain ways that you make a muzzle there's certain ways that you make a curve and the Ewok was um it was ironic that Jane was the one who said let's put the hole in the face because she's one of the ones who told me way back at nicker bucker it can't be done so obviously she changed her mind and it can be done and it and I think they do it do it today but if you you would use seams you would use more seams at more conventional and it's faster and easier in production for them to understand so when you don't do um more conventional pattern drafting you have to be ready to explain it and make sure you're following it all the way through production that it can be done in a fast and pretty consistent way that was another Innovative thing that the Star Wars um actually was a part of so how were the Ewoks received at the company oh the Ewoks the Ewoks came in this I think it was the second movie and so naturally they would come to my area and say well you know stuffed toy and I got to go to California to see the actual Ewoks and see what they look like and how they walked around and all that stuff so that was really very interesting we it was a lengthy lengthy process because we um had to keep bringing it to that sending it out to California to get approved so finally everybody got real excited about them and I took them out uh because each marketing person that would bring it out there would come back with vague Corrections like make it a little bit fatter make them a little taller make him a little bit something and I never could figure out what a little bit is because each person that told me was a different Siz person so if you're 5 foot4 and a little bit and a little Stout a little bit is a little more than somebody 5 foot 11 that's thin so it got to be we couldn't get the final final approval and and so Dave says you know why don't you just go out there with your Ewok so I went out with Kathy kavar and Howard Ballinger and the three of us went to uh Lucas film and George Lucas came and he got and he looked at the Ewok and he said wow this is really friendly he would say these words like all the things that a toy is and he actually said to Sid who is one of the other people in his group that if he had seen the Ewok toy prior to the movie he would have had the costumes done to look more friendly like the toy which probably to this day was a moment in time for somebody who was Star Struck sitting in a chair mute and stunned and I said oh this is the greatest moment of my toy career that the licensing person who I had so much respect for liked it that much so that was a moment and it became very popular at Kenner the Ewok and all of a sudden it was getting titled the next teddy bear well sometimes you know you can get too much of a good thing and I said well you know everybody it really isn't a teddy bear teddy bears are are for the masses you know whereas Ewoks are for Star Wars people I don't know that you would just take it Ewok like you would to a be so that was a little concerning for me because that the expectations of the sales was way high and yet the marketing people were the boys toy group and they really didn't have a a place to Market it did they Market it with the action figures should they Market it with the baby toys should it have an endcap they didn't really know what position and who their real consumers were going to be and how to really appealed to them to get the volume that they were expecting I guess they felt it was like a Care Bear it was going to take have legs of its own which we know the Care Bears also were marketed extensively and therefore I would say it the Ewoks did I thought okay at retail for the the position that it was with the movie um items I thought that the Ewoks did well but they were disappointed that the sales weren't good and as I told Steve I said well you know if you talk to the management today they always say well the Ewoks would have done better if they looked better so I'm just clearing that up it's not about the way they looked they they look like the movie guys absolutely when you and I for spoke about this you described your role as that of a translator taking something from The Real World or on screen and then kind of finding that balance where it captures an Essence but at the same time it's designed for a totally different medium and for you to do that with the Ewoks and then to have George Lucas the master prefer Your Design to his own I think that was a true and profound compliment it was and you know he might have been not even meaning it in a really deep and heavy way but for somebody who does what I do and the fact that licensing was such a huge part of toys in the 80s and I got really good at it really good at it and so one of the things was being in engineering I also had scheduling and cost so when I would go see a a licensing person like like Lucas film or Disney it was my intention to get an approval so the way you do that is to understand your licensing people and they really have in their minds something that um may not be realistic in a toy they may they may want they want their thing they don't want yours and sometimes from let's say let's not use Mickey mouth let's use a a television let's say personality they want to make sure that that's their biggest compliment in a toy but what they have to understand is that we are simplifying who they are and we are going to make them kid-friendly not realistic and so what you need to do is you have to make it complimentry to your licensing person can't just make it funny for the CH child you have to please the person that is giving you the license and saying make me into a toy so that's how you you know some people approach it with um taking not making that connection you have to understand your licensing person and then you have to understand your young consumer and that there's a road that you go down but I know there was one time where they they found out that you could actually sculpt somebody's head and then turn it into a three-dimensional head and they used to use these calipers to to set where the eyes are these little you know things that held it still and I'm I'm not going to mention names because they'll be upset but there was a a movie and it was not kener was another another company I was at they made the the the star of the movie from this realistic uh sculpting thing I forget the name of it something giant have to remember the name and what happened was they did not take the head and refine it you know into a toy and so they left the little holes in his eyes where they held it with the calipers and then smooth out his face he wound up suing the company and saying that they made him look DED which I don't know struck me really funny for many years because I it was true I thought they did I thought I agreed with him because they didn't go back and make it you know like you would simplify and make your toy and still make it look like him but there is a road you go down from one place to another yeah I I would liken it to animation and you and I had talked about this earlier when Snow White came out in the 1930s Disney used a rotoscoping technique for the character of Snow White and while she moved similarly to a human when you compare her movements to those of the dwarves which the animators use more of a a squash and stretch technique uh that really caricature the movements to capture that essence of motion it seemed to play better on screen I like that the animators use their art to capture something that you know maybe liveaction couldn't it's a simp they simplify it but Disney is probably the best addit ever because they add a sensual to it a a volume to it a softness to it and it's extraordinarily appealing to people they know how to resonate they they know who they're they're talking they there's some things that that go from generation to generation that don't change I know everybody says well you're dated there are some things that don't change from generation to generation that comes from the soul it's in your soul what you think is what warms your heart what makes you smile you have to pay attention pay attention to people and how they feel and what they respond to what makes them happy what makes them smile isn't Kathy wonderful I knew you'd love hearing her talk about her time at Kenner and about her career but our time with Kathy isn't over just yet join me on the next episode for more with Kathy vaness on Star Wars prototypes and production [Music]