Page 139 - Free the Idea Monkey

Enesco was really good at selling ceramics to moms and grand-
mas and told us they wanted to sell something that would appeal to

their kids and grandkids. At the time,
a favorite idea was the Creatures of
Delight® line. The Creatures were delib-
erately hideous. They were brightly
colored monsters, something that you
might expect to find living under a log

just east of Oz. Really creepy. But we
thought, who knows? This might be
just the kind of thing that kids might
like. They buy Pokémon, right?

What made the idea incredibly
interesting to us was an insight that Enesco uncov-
ered. They found that kids love to build relationships through
learning and exploring, but their new playground—the Internet—at
the time offered few appropriate options. Enesco thought that these
crazy creatures should have their own Internet world made just for
kids. Their idea was to sell the creatures with a code so that kids
could go online and unlock “Creature rooms” using their code, play
fun games and discover more about their creature friends. This, in
theory, would make them want to buy more creatures.

Brilliant right? To us, it sounded like they
were on to something.*

So we went about the work of creating
the fantasyland that these Creatures would
live in, full of techno-color landscapes, secret
passageways and games. We wrote descrip-
tions of each Creature’s likes and dislikes and
tried to give each its own special personality.

*Note: They were on to something. Just look at the success of Webkinz™
a few years later.

124 I G N O R A N C E I S B L I S S . I T I S A L S O E X P E N S I V E .