A Game Maker’s Life by Jeffrey Breslow with Cynthia Beebe; New York: Post Hill Press © 2022; ISBN 9781637-584378; 204 pages; $28.
SAN DIEGO – From creating the games “A Bucket of Fun” and “Ants in the Pants” which basically involved getting pieces into a container before competitors do, Jeffrey Breslow moved up in Marvin Glass & Associates (MGA) organization, eventually becoming the managing partner. MGA didn’t manufacture toys; instead, its designers, and engineers made prototypes which they licensed to major toy manufacturers like Mattel, Milton Bradley, Ideal Toys, and Parker Brothers.
One of Breslow’s creations was “Masterpiece,” a board game involving buying and selling great works of art. Considerably less highbrow was another of Breslow’s projects, the “Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle.”
Breslow’s memoir tells of how these games and others came into being. It also profiles his eccentric mentor, Marvin Glass, who was so security-conscious that there were locking doors within locking doors to prevent any corporate spies to learn what projects his teams were working on.
But while most of the book is a hoot – imagine creative adults on the floor happily expressing their inner children as they experimented with toy prototypes – there are some very serious, reflective chapters as well. In 1976, a mentally unbalanced employee killed two executives at MGA and wounded three other workers before killing himself. The man had a “hit list” and on it was Breslow, who, to take a phone call, had just stepped out of the meeting room where his two colleagues were slain. Breslow discusses the impact of that horrific event on his life.
Additionally, Breslow details a trip he made to the Soviet Union during the era when his fellow Jews wanting to emigrate were stripped of their jobs and rights and came to be known as “refuseniks.”
If ever someone doubted how important in a student’s life a teacher can be, Breslow pays tribute to the late Edward J. Zagorski, who was his industrial design professor at the University of Illinois. Zagorski presented his students with a foot-long block of soft pine wood and instructed them that they could cut the wood three times at any place they desired. From the resulting four pieces, they were to make a wood sculpture. Zagorski “was likable, childlike, and uninhibited in his passion for design,” Breslow observed. “As Professor Zagorski talked, a light went on in my head – this I what I was born to do!”
After his retirement from MGA, Breslow went back to sculpting. His works “New Day” and “Bolder and Boulder” were installed respectively at the University of Illinois and the Willis Tower in Chicago.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com