Gridiron Guy with Imagination

Perhaps Bruce Kaskey ’85 was drawing inspiration from his college football days under Jim Butterfield and Mike Welch ’73 when he helped his wife, Christy, come up with an idea for a new children’s toy designed to encourage kids to use their imaginations. Their company, Kaskey Kids, recently launched a new product, Football Guys. It includes 26 plastic figures that are painted to look like two different teams, a referee, two goal posts, a felt field—and no batteries. Kids rely on their own ingenuity to move the players around the field.

Bruce has 13 years of sales and international marketing experience with Kodak, and Christy worked in sales and marketing for both Johnson and Johnson and Nestlé, but they opted for a low-key approach to developing and spreading the word about Football Guys. Their three young children, Bruce, Courtney, and Matt, inspired their parents’ effort, and Christy did all the research with parents in their hometown.

Through the entire process the Kaskeys had been convinced they had a solid game plan based on a winning idea and a simple premise: children love sports and want to reenact games using their imaginations. Parents, who often desire alternatives to video games for their kids, appreciate high-touch, low-tech toys. Football Guys scored big when KB Toys agreed to preorder 12,000 sets based on an initial prototype, sold all of them within a month, and ordered 6,000 replacements.

Based on the success of Football Guys, Bruce and Christy are preparing to tackle future markets. Soccer Guys and Soccer Girls are being released this year, and other lines are in the works.