The following excerpt was taken from a recent article, one of a couple that hit newstands in August.
Tucked inside a downtown Minneapolis building, this small creative team is quietly modernizing a nearly 40-year-old global toy company.
You might recall the pivotal scene in the 1980s movie Big when Tom Hanks’s character—a 13-year-old boy in a man’s body—questions a group of toy marketers about their latest prototype that transforms from a building into a robot. “I don’t get it . . . what’s fun about that?” It’s a question Jeanne Bleu, creative director of Manhattan Toy, says she and her team of five regularly ask one another as they develop products for the company that moved from Manhattan to Minneapolis in 1991. “We’ve got a lot of Peter Pan types here,” Bleu says fondly of the design team. “We really play with the toys. We invite kids to come in and play. We’re trying to create the cherished childhood toy of the future.” Read the full article A Day in the Life of a Toy Maker.
Photos, editorial and links courtesy of Mpls.St.Paul Magazine © 2017 MSP Communications, Inc.
Take a tour of Jeanne Bleu’s Lake of the Isles home and see more behind-the-scenes photos at mspmag.com/manhattantoy.
Read the full article A Day in the Life of a Toy Maker.
The above photo spotlights Jeanne's creative talents. In fact, the watercolor Jeanne painted of this bunny scene was used as our latest catalog cover. Take a flip through the pages of our digital 2017 Midyear Mahattan Toy Catalog. She's in the midst of creating a beautifully inspiring Holiday Gift Guide complete with exclusive holiday savings. Email us your mailing address to get your hands on your very own Holiday Gift Guide to flip through this fall.
Happy Campers
Manhattan Toy in Target®