CHICAGO — Jeffery Breslow’s life and the lives of those he worked with making toys for children were shattered on the morning of July 27, 1976, when another employee named Al Keller walked into his place of work with two handguns and began to kill.
“I heard only a popping sound when Keller fired his pistol. I didn’t recognize the noise and guessed it might be a toy gun,” writes Breslow, whose name was near the top of the 14 names later found on the killer’s “hit list.”
This tragic event lasted only two minutes inside the fortresslike headquarters of Marvin Glass & Associates at the corner of LaSalle Street and Chicago Avenue, at the time the leading toy design company in the world. Three employees died and two others were severely wounded. The shooter died by suicide.
That day, so numbingly common now in this gun-crazy land, was not common then, and it still casts a long shadow. Now nearly five decades removed from that bloody day, Breslow feels it, writing, “Before the shooting, I always felt in control of my life … (afterward), I understood I was not always in control, and no one else was either.”
But “A Game Maker’s Life: A Hall of Fame Game Inventor and Executive Tells the Inside Story of the Toy Industry” (Post Hill Press) is about so much more, a compelling memoir peppered with joy and family, resilience and creativity. It is about how a kid from Albany Park, a self-proclaimed “imaginative, driven, but failing college student,” began his life as a toy designer who in a 40-year career created some of the world’s most popular toys and games, first as the youngest designer for Marvin Glass and later with his own Big Monster Toys, creating playthings for such companies as Mattel, Hasbro, Milton Bradley and Fisher-Price.
Perhaps you fondly remember some of those items and, if not, memories will come rushing back when Breslow writes about such popular diversions as Ants in the Pants, Bucket of Fun, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, Guesstures, Hot Wheels Criss Cross Crash, Masterpiece or Simon, which Smithsonian Magazine noted “ushered in the era of electronic games.”
The highly regarded industry publication Global Toys News once estimated that Big Monster’s toys had been or were in 85% of U.S. homes. Breslow and his partners Howard Morrison and Rouben Terzian were inducted into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame in 1998.
The book offers a rare intimate look at Marvin Glass, one of Chicago’s most notable if enigmatic characters and one hardly remembered since his death in 1974. He hired Breslow in 1967 as the youngest employee of his company, called him a “boy genius” and made him a partner in the firm in less than two years.
Glass was, Breslow writes, “a brilliant but secretive businessman, the Steve Jobs of the toy industry … a love-him-or-hate-him kind of guy … an irrepressible, hyperactive genius who lived on the edge … I loved him.”
He is equally affectionate when writing about his lifelong mentor, a “hippie industrial design professor” at the University of Illinois named Ed Zagorski, writing, “Talking with (him) ... I realized I’d found the thing I didn’t even know I was looking for.”
Especially timely (and amusing) is the story of his and the company’s mid-1980s encounters with a fellow named Donald Trump during the creation of a game called, immodestly, “Trump: The Game,” which was marketed by Milton Bradley. A later creation, “The Apprentice Game,” never got off the ground.
The book is fast-paced and lively, personal and philosophical and very insightful about the toy/game business. Breslow is tender about his family, parents and children, and generous about his friends and colleagues. He is, especially in light of his many accomplishments, a model of modesty.
Breslow’s co-author is also a person who knows more than a bit about life’s dark sides. Cynthia Beebe lives in a cozy blue house in Evanston, Illinois, and is the author of “Boots in the Ashes” (Hachette Book Group). That fine book is shadowed by dark events because she was employed as a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for nearly 30 years. Her life was, as she told me a couple of years ago, “a violent world of murders, gangsters and bombers. I learned why people shoot, burn and blow up each other. I have seen terrible things.”
She says, “I first talked to Jeffrey on the phone in 2020 and knew right away that I’d like to work with him. I remembered happily playing with some of the games he invented, especially one of my favorites, Masterpiece, and it took us only five minutes to decide to work together. I trusted him and he trusted me, and we’ve been writing partners and friends ever since.
“I thought it was important to clearly convey to the reader what happened inside the Glass building on that terrible day of killing, and also wanted them to understand the remarkable steps Jeffrey later took to help the employees deal with the aftermath. He is a sensitive man, very smart, collaborative and energetic. He’s a lot of fun to work with and I loved telling the story of his life and work.”
I first met Breslow a decade ago, shortly after he had begun the second act of his career. After leaving the toy realm, he became a sculptor and a talented one.
He was then working in bronze but found the process frustrating. So, he started working with wood, sugar maple mostly, that he discovered on long walks on the property he owns in Vermont. “I never cut down a living tree,” he told me, adding, “For all the success I had in the toy business, in the art world I am just a beginner.”
His work, whimsical and beautiful, is crafted in his Near West Side studio. His work has been shown at the University of Illinois and Lurie Children’s Hospital, and is on permanent display in Vermont, California and New Jersey.
“It has been an easy transition,” he told me. “The biggest difference is this is an individual pursuit. The toy business is a collaborative effort. I never woke up in the middle of the night with a great idea but rather worked in concert with 35 other people to create toys.”
