Original subtitles

- Today, I'm an East Longmeadow, Massachusetts

in the Cartamundi factory.

Now you may not have heard of them

but I can guarantee you heard of what they make right here.

One of the top games of all time,

played by more than a billion people.

It's a little game from Hasbro that you might know,

called Monopoly.

Some of our top toys and games have endured for generations,

centuries even millennia and the business

of play earns some serious money.

The global market for toys and games is more

than $92 billion a year

and that's not Monopoly money, that's the real thing.

I want to know how this industry continues

to sell our favorite top toys and games

while innovating and creating completely

new ones every year.

How does Hot Wheels design the 130 new car models

introduced every year?

And how is Mattel using cutting edge tech

to bring He-Man to a new generation of fans?

So the spinners landed on me

and it is my turn to find out, game on.

This is Modern Marvels, Top Toys and Games.

[upbeat music]

Hasbro was founded in 1923 with three brothers

with the last name of Hassenfeld, hence, Hasbro.

Who in the beginning,

their fledging Rhode Island company made ends meet

by selling textile remnants, pencil cases, school supplies,

eventually they branched out to include paint, crayons,

even toy doctors kits for little boys and girls.

Today, Hasbro is one the largest toy manufacturers

in the world with annual revenue in the neighborhood

of five billion Dollars and one

of their all time best selling items,

the classic beloved board game, Monopoly.

It's as popular as it ever was.

It's available in 114 countries

and it's been translated into 47 languages.

To keep up with that massive demand, Hasbro partnered

with Cartamundi, an established card

and board game company with roots going back to 1765.

Today, Cartamundi is one

of the largest board game manufacturers

in the entire country.

We're going to tour their 1.2 million square foot facility

where 400 workers create

two million monopoly games a year and so much more.

I'm gonna meet plant manager, Gary Brennan to find out

what has kept Hasbro and Cartamundi winning

all these years and hopefully, pass go and collect my $200.

I call dibs on the race car.

- [Adam] Just walking through here, the variety

of how many games that are

in this very building, it blows my mind.

- We make over 200 items,

but we're usually focusing on about 20 at any one time.

Items like Monopoly, Scrabble, Yahtzee,

Sorry!

Trouble, items that we all grew up with.

I don't think there's any household in America

that isn't familiar with some

of the products that run through here.

- What is the number one seller?

- [Gary] Monopoly and or Connect 4.

It's a race every year.

- No kidding and how many games roll

off the line here at Cartamundi everyday?

- At peak period, we'll make a million games a week.

- And it all starts right here?

- Yes it does.

- Will you take me through the making of Monopoly?

- It would be my pleasure.

- Everyone knows this game is all about making money

and these bills get shuffled, traded,

held and spent for hours.

So they have to made from the best quality paper

and printed with a very detailed printing process

in order to withstand years of wear and tear.

I'm meeting with Jim Hare, the technical manager

of printing at Cartamundi, who is going

to show me how they print half a billion Dollars worth

of Monopoly money every week.

Jim, how are you, sir?

- How are you?

- I'm excellent, so tell me what's going on here?

- So this is the unit,

this is where actually the ink goes into the press,

up here, ink fountain, holds a reservoir of ink,

ink ball, see it spinning around, conductors coming up,

taking ink off, going into a series of rollers on the front,

the white looking thing is the plate,

that has an image burned into it,

where the image, we'll take the ink,

where there's no image, it takes on water.

- [Adam] Jim explains to me

that each aluminum printing plate they use

has an etched image of monopoly money.

When they run the plate through the machine,

water is attracted to all the blank areas.

Ink is attracted only to the etched surface.

So when the plate rolls onto the paper,

only the etched images of Monopoly bills are printed.

- This is a cutting unit and you can hear it.

- That's the sound of the blade cutting?

- Every 28 inches it is cutting the sheet.

- When the money's being fed that fast,

how do you know that it's being cut precisely

and not cutting in the middle of one of the bills?

- So we have an inspection area here.

To get a sheet up, we'll hit this button right here.

- Okay.

- Set comes up, you take that sheet, go ahead and grab it.

Yeah, bring it over to the table.

- These cut marks make sure

that all the Monopoly money is the exact right size

so that when you hold all that Monopoly dough in your hand,

it all matches perfectly and

when you're printing half a billion Dollars a week

in Monopoly money,

you can't afford to make mistakes.

Next, Tim Stowers is gonna show me

how they cut these sheets of Monopoly money into bills.

How are you sir?

Pleasure to meet you.

- Pleasure to meet you.

- [Adam] Tim says he cuts 18 to 19,000 bundles

of Monopoly money a day but he's not doing all

of those one at a time.

All right, will you show me how that's done?

- All right, we bring it right over here.

- Wait a minute, wait a minute,

how the hell did you move that stack with two fingers?

- Gee, must be that air table, huh?

- [Adam] Air table?

- [Tim] Yes.

- Wait a minute.

That's got balls on it.

- Yes, balls with pressure underneath them,

it's like in the old days, if you've ever played air hockey.

- Air hockey!

- Same thing.

- Similar to the way an air hockey table

makes the puck glide above the surface,

this table is covered with hundreds of rubber balls.

When weight presses down on them,

it releases tiny jets of air

that makes moving heavy stacks of paper effortless.

Can I try?

- Sure.

- That is crazy.

Look at that.

It's a little bit like air hockey.

That is insane.

Sometimes it's the simple things that could be the most fun.

In fact, some of the most memorable toys

had the most simple origins.

Like in the case of one, Potato Head.

In 1952, Hasbro revolutionized the toy industry

with that very special spud,

Mr. Potato Head.

It has sold more than 100 million units

in over 30 countries.

The toy was the brainchild of the inventor, George Lerner.

In 1949, Lerner created toys

by taking small plastic body parts

with prongs and sticking them

into actual potatoes and other vegetables.

The first kits came with a styrofoam head

but suggested kids use their own potato torso.

Potato Head toys flew off the shelves,

raking in four million Dollars in the first few months.

In the year after its debut,

Mrs. Potato Head was introduced

and a whole potato family would follow,

with Brother Spud and Sister Yam.

All right, so we slide these things

on down effortlessly with the air table,

they go into the cutter, what's the next step?

- Okay, make sure it's square.

We got about a 1,000 isobars of pressure.

- One isobar represents the weight of the atmosphere

or the weight of gravity a person would feel standing

on the surface of the Earth.

Multiply that pressure by a 1,000

and you'd have the amount of force

that this blade is using on these stacks of money.

That stack is solid paper,

about six and a half inches thick and it's going

through it like a hot knife through butter.

So it's moving forward for the length of each bill.

- Correct.

- Does it give you a warning,

like is there a noise or something?

- That's what I go by, I go by sound.

- [Adam] When Tim is done, each one of these thick stacks

of paper will become 1.3 million Dollars worth

of Monopoly money.

That's enough money to fill almost 65 games.

Tim, thank you for your time.

- Yes.

- Onward we go.

- [Adam] When people talk about their favorite toy cars,

there is one brand that is always at the top of that list.

With over 20,000 different variations

and more than 6 billion produced,

one of the top toys of all time are die-cast cars

that look and race like the real thing,

I'm talking about Hot Wheels, invented by Mattel in 1968

and to see how they've maintained their top toy status

for 53 years,

we're getting an inside look

to see how they're designed at Mattel.

[gentle upbeat music]

- I'm the design director for Hot Wheels die-cast vehicles

and we're here at the Mattel Design Center.

This is where the magic happens.

These are toys that are first and foremost designed

to appeal to kids but at the same time,

it's got a appeal to adults as well

because we have a huge adult fan base and

when we were able to do is because many of us,

myself included, actually come from the auto industry,

so we're not just toy designers, you know,

coming up with fun toys,

we're also car designers creating really cool aesthetics

that we know are gonna appeal to both a kid and the adult.

For a Hot Wheels basic car,

it takes basically 18 months from start to finish.

It's a lot of fun.

- [Adam] Mattel designs over 130 brand new cars

every year and

that process starts as a 2D concept

or a sketch from a designer.

In the past, someone would carve the concept

into a clay prototype but today,

it goes from 2D to a digital 3D model

but to give the designers something they could touch

and feel and inspect, this 3D image

becomes a tangible object in the Mattel 3D printing lab.

- [Man] Right now our PolyJet 3D printer is printing

various Hot Wheels cars, the different colors,

it uses quite a few different resin materials instead

of just inks to give us the highest quality prototype.

Here we just scrape our PolyJet card off.

- [Adam] When the prototypes come off the 3D printer,

they have to be cleaned from all the excess resin,

so that the designers can inspect them and make sure

that the cars look just the way they planned.

When the founder of Mattel invented Hot Wheels,

he hired a rocket scientist

to make sure that these cars could race

and perform the way a car should.

This performance is one of the reasons

why Hot Wheels are still so popular,

so each model has to be able to do the things

that a kid wants them to do on the track,

like the loop, the corner booster and the power launcher.

- And then the last thing is the gravity drop.

This is a test that we have a lot of fun

with internally, we do our own internal competition.

It needs to be able to roll at least 25 feet,

if it doesn't, it doesn't pass and we'll go back

to the drawing board and make sure

that we get everything just right.

All right, three, two, one, go.

Oh yeah, that's good.

- [Adam] One reason why Hot Wheels still attracts

as many adults as they do kids is because

of their Garage of Legends which are cars

that were so popular as toys,

they made them into actual cars.

- All right, well, here we are.

This is the Hot Wheels Garage of Legends.

As you can see around me,

a bunch of really cool life-size cars.

So the first Hot Wheels car every produced

was actually this Camaro right here,

this is the 1967 Camaro,

so we got this one for the kid and of course,

the big one here for mom or dad,

the Hot Wheels fan that never grew up.

- [Adam] Hot Wheels aren't the only top toy

that you can hold in your hand,

one of the top toys of all time comes in a form

of a puzzle cube with more

than 43 quintillion possible combinations.

- Rubik's Cube was developed in 1974

by a guy in Hungary named ErnQ Rubik,

he was a professor looking

for a way to teach spacial relationships

and spacial modeling to his students.

- [Adam] The US, the name was changed to Rubik's Cube

and it was an instant hit.

Within the first three years after its release here,

it sold 100 million units around the world.

- And if doing it with your hands wasn't difficult enough,

there was actually a guy by the name

of Jakub Kipa from Poland who solved it with his feet.

- There are also some people

who can solve a Rubik's Cube blind folded within 17 seconds.

The Rubik's Cube remains popular today

with speed cubing tournaments being held

around the world and people being able

to solve the cube in under four seconds.

Our top toys and games are ones that we love

at first sight and have an iconic look

that we've come to love over years of playing.

Here at Cartamundi,

they make almost 44 million games a year.

When you see one of these games at the store

or in your closet, it's the iconic look

that makes you want to play.

I'm going to see how this world famous game gives

that signature look that makes you

want to pass go and collect your $200.

How many games does this represent?

- This is gonna be about 10,000 games.

- 10,000 games.

And how long will it take the factory

to produce 10,000 games?

- [Gary] We'll run these off at better than 2,000 an hour.

- [Adam] Oh my gosh.

- Monopoly is a global brand,

there's 147 countries, 14 different languages,

it is critical to the customer that the colors

that are seen in the United States match up

with colors that might be printed

all throughout the world.

- [Adam] Jim, the printing manager is going to walk me

through the process of getting all these colors just right.

Oh my God, that's terrifying.

So this massive thing is a giant printer?

All of this?

- [Jim] Correct, all 125 feet of it.

- This looks like if a tractor and a printer had a baby,

it's something that's pretty intimidating to stand near,

this looks like it would kill you.

Tell me first of all,

how many sheets get loaded on average for the typical run?

Or does it depend?

- This type of material, we normally run 80,000 a shift.

- That is amazing.

- Let me take you through the press.

- Please.

Your standard desktop printer

at home prints all four colors at the same time,

but Jim explains that here,

each sheet goes through a separate printer unit

for each color.

The first pass prints the black ink, then,

they print cyan or blue right on top of it,

then magenta or pink on top of that,

then yellow and finally, the unique pantone,

345 Monopoly green.

- So we combined all that,

this is what we get for our end result.

- Look how beautiful that is.

- What we have is crosshairs, we use a magnifying glass

called a loupe, we put all that crosshair exactly

on top of each other.

So you've got all five colors right there.

When it looks like one black, you're doing good.

But all five are right on top of each other.

- [Adam] Each time a color is printed onto the pink,

it prints eight tiny crosshair,

if all of the ink levels are properly aligned,

the crosshair will look black

and have clear, straight edges.

If any of the colors are off,

the crosshairs will look blurry

or tinted with a certain color.

So, you want it to look like black and clean.

- Correct.

So we went through the top press,

the middle picture is what we're printing.

That's a live camera, it's taking shots

as the sheets are going through.

- Wait a minute, that's not a stopped image?

- No.

- That's actually something-

- That's actually moving.

- [Adam] So it's like an ultra high speed camera.

- Exactly.

- Can you show me how this beauty works?

- Right this way.

What we have up is the camera,

shooting through the catwalk in the floor.

That's actual taking a picture

of every sheet as it's running by.

- That camera is shooting through a slit

that's barely an inch an a half wide

and getting a full image?

- [Jim] Absolutely.

- [Adam] At that rate?

- [Jim] At that rate.

- Now something tells me,

that a printer card on something like these,

it's not like Hewlett-Packard at home.

- No, we have eight pounds cartridges of ink.

- Oh my God.

- It's going back and forth scanning the ink fountain.

- Oh, look, look, look.

- [Jim] Yep, there is goes.

- A big bloop about the size

of like a Hershey kiss just dropped right

on to the roller.

This looks like the coolest queso fountain ever.

It's just like, if NASA made a printer,

this would be it, I'm gonna let you get back to it.

Let's go check out the rest of the process.

Games like Monopoly are top toys

because they inspire the imagination

of the would-be entrepreneur

but other top toys open worlds of adventure.

- [Spokesman] Only G.I. Joe

is G.I. Joe.

- [Adam] Possibly in response to Mattel's Barbie,

Hasbro introduced G.I. Joe in 1964

as the worlds first action figure

and it became an instant hit.

Within two years, G.I. Joe figures made up 66%

of Hasbro's profits.

- [Adam] The first figures were 12 inches tall

and reportedly,

Hasbro sales team was prohibited from using the term doll.

Worrying that boys wouldn't want to play with it,

so they coined the term, action figure.

And G.I. Joe blazed a trail for generations

of action figures to follow but ultimately in 1978,

G.I. Joe was taken off the market.

Then in the early 80s

with the success of similar toys,

like the Kenner Star Wars figures,

a smaller version of G.I. Joe was brought back.

In the first year back,

the new G.I. Joe made more than 50 million Dollars.

G.I. Joe has remained in the zeitgeist ever since.

[children laughing]

- [Adam] The action figure toy market

is a 1.6 billion dollar industry

and with G.I. Joe blazing the trail,

action figures have been one of the top selling toys

for decades.

And in 1982 here at Mattel,

they created a classic series that sold

over two billion Dollars worth of action figures,

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

This series that some say was based

on Conan the Barbarian warded over 20%

of the action figure market in the early 80s.

- At the time, there was nothing else

like Masters on the market.

These were figures that were

of a totally different size

and scale than kids were used to,

they were these beefy,

chunky five and a half inch characters that were muscular.

They were heroic and this was at a time

when the biggest players in the game would have been Hasbro

with their G.I. Joe line and of course,

Kenner with Star Wars and those were 3.75 inch figures

that had a much thinner frame.

- [Adam] But there was something extra special about He-Man

and the Masters of the Universe that made it

so powerful for kids and kids

were apart of how it all began.

- Kids actually drove the I have the power classic

He-Man statement when he transforms,

some years ago in a testing session

in a consumer panel with kids,

kids kept talking about power,

they kept talking about the weaponry

and they helped create the expression, I have the power,

which has now transcended

Masters of the Universe and has

become a pop culture iconic statement.

- They had five years of glory, 82 to 87 was just massive.

They ended up selling $400 million worth

of Masters of the Universe toys

in 1986 and then selling 7 million in 1987.

It crashed spectacularly.

- [Adam] But true top toys never die.

Starting in 2021, He-Man is back in a huge muscular way

with a new Netflix series and an all new line

of action figures designed right here at Mattel

and we get to see how they design this top toy.

- I design the action figure and see it

through the process from concept into final production.

Back in the day, the vintage figure only had six points

of articulation and what we're doing now

is modernizing it with being a bigger scale,

more detail, more articulation,

about 30 points of articulation.

First we start by getting the animation reference

from the Netflix animation.

We start off with a drawing,

in this case, He-Man,

you need to translate this 2D art

into a 3D action figure and then we have

to make a sheet outlining what comes

with the figure, what are the specs,

the sizes and what we want as far as articulation.

- [Adam] Next, it goes to the 3D animation team.

- Here in the sculpting department,

we get the designs from our designer and we bring it

in a computer and we just start using the reference

that they give us and we use this special device

called geomagic touch

and using this it's just like a pen,

but in 3D, we can move it around.

It's just like sculpting with hand

but we just do it on the computer instead.

It's sort of like a really high-tech mouse,

stylus and when I'm touching the piece in the computer,

I can actually feel it.

It gives me forced feedback sort of like,

you know, your game controller when you get shot,

you can feel that little rumble.

So this kind of gives me that feedback

so I can feel it as I'm sculpting.

So it kind of mimics that hand sculpting motion

that you can't really get with a mouse.

So here we have Skeletor

which is He-Man's main nemesis and I can come in here

with a tool and manipulate his face a little bit.

Let's give him a nose.

There's a rough nose on Skeletor.

He doesn't look as evil.

Interesting.

I've never seen him with a nose before.

With this program, if designers can dream it,

we can pretty much make it.

- [Adam] After this, it's off to 3D printing.

[gentle upbeat music]

- Today we are printing a couple of Master

of the Universe figures, we have a He-Man and a Skeletor.

- [Adam] Here at Mattel's 3D printing room,

they use a stereolithography 3D printer

which fires a laser into liquid resin

curing it almost instantly.

The tray lowers itself by very small increments

until each layer of the model is completed.

Then, after a quick power wash,

they hand them back to the design team for review.

- Here we have the final He-Man and Skeletor action figures,

looking at all the pieces I can remember

all the functionality that I specified

on the figure and I think it turned out pretty good.

And I think kids are gonna have fun playing with this

[making fighting sounds] Chu, chu, chu...

and adults as well.

[upbeat music]

- [Adam] There are so many top games

made right here at Cartamundi,

but I'm taking a break from Monopoly to see

how they make the board of another game

that families were playing even before Monopoly,

it's a game based on the Indian crosses and circles game,

Parcheesi

but you know it as Sorry!

So break down the process for me,

what happens along the line?

- The machine has a divider that separates two panels.

The two panels get fed into the wheel,

so you have one, two, three stations

that fold all four sides.

- Leo explains that the process starts

with chip board, they'll take some Sorry! game sheets

hot off the printer and glue it

onto the chipboard, then it gets cut, scored and folded.

What is this?

- That's glue.

- You said this is the glue?

- Yes.

I've got a tank on the other side

that'll actually melt it as it's needed.

- So this is how it's loaded, just like this?

- Yeah.

- Or do you load it piece by piece?

- [Leo] No, no, you put the whole thing in there.

- It smells like grade school.

- [Leo] Does it?

- This glue has to be heated

to just the right temperature and spread

over the boards at the same rate

that they're flying through the machine,

it's a finely orchestrated ballet.

Is it that roller that puts the glue?

- Yeah, this machine is being fed from the bottom.

- [Adam] Okay.

- [Leo] So it's picking up your labels from the bottom,

throwing that right on to the glue roll.

- It goes against the whole glue roll.

- Yes, glue roll and then it's separated back

to the drum and that's how you get your label

onto the board and your backing onto the board.

- Now, what happens there?

That machine is punching down, what does that do?

- That's your die cutter.

On one side, it cuts through

and the other side is scored only halfway.

- Ah, so it makes this cut and then-

- Score is only half a cut

and then it goes through the folder.

- [Adam] All right, so it folds length wise-

- [Leo] Yeah, over the side and then it goes

into a stacker and the stacker counts 10 boards in a pile.

- [Adam] How many to a pallet?

- [Leo] 2,400.

- And that represents only about a 10th of

what you're gonna put out today.

- [Leo] Yes.

- My God.

The technology of these machines is

what allows the people at Cartamundi to keep up

with the constant demand of the worlds most sought

after games and the numbers they put out are just staggering

but they wouldn't be able to meet the demand

if it wasn't for some pretty amazing machines

and the incredible people who run them.

Will this machine run Sorry! boards the whole day?

- Make Sorry!, Clue,

Candy Land, Shoots and Ladders,

we change it to different sizes, Risk.

- Right here.

- Huge board.

- And they go through the same cutter.

- Same cutter, yes.

- There's a lot of moving parts here,

a lot of things could go wrong,

I want him to pay attention, so-

- [indistinct]

- I'm gonna give you some love,

I'm gonna pat the glue,

I'm gonna go down and check out the rest of this machine.

Monopoly is one of the top games

of chance and strategy and it begins

with the roll of the dice but the dice were around far

before this iconic game was dreamt up.

In fact, dice are among the oldest known gaming tools.

In what's now south eastern Iran,

they found a set of dice that dates back 3,000 years.

The earliest known boardgames are even older.

The Egyptians played boardgames 5,000 years ago,

we don't know exactly what the rules of those games were,

but other games from ancient times

are still played today and those include chess and Go.

Go, is possibly the worlds oldest board game

still played in its original form.

Thought to have originated

at least 2,500 to 4,000 years ago in China.

Some ancient board games aren't exactly the same

as their modern version, the earliest forms

of chess were invented in India in the six century

and one specific military war game called Chaturanga

was probably the one

that most closely resembles modern day chess.

- Our brains need to be reactivated in a way

that chess allows you to activate your brain

so that we are able

to problem solve the new problems that we are facing.

We don't have all the algorithms and chess allows us

to strategize and figure things out.

- [Adam] Some of these games have been around for 1,000s

of years and perhaps humans will be playing them

for 1,000s of years to come.

Some of our top toys and games are quite simple to design.

What could be more basic

than a box with a 25 watt bulb

and some colorful plastic pegs?

More than half a century after it was invented,

Lite-Brite remains one

of the most remembered and most loved toy.

Lite-Brite was conceived in 1966 when executives

of a toy company were walking down 5th Avenue

in New York City and stopped to marvel

at a window display made of 100s of colorful lights.

They set out to develop a toy that would allow children

to create their own designs using lights

but instead of 100s of lights, their concept

included a light box with a single low watt bulb

with colorful plastic pegs that could

be punched through a piece of black opaque paper.

The prototype was pitched to Hasbro who signed the deal

within an hour, the first Lite-Brite sets hit the shelves

in 1967 with 400 plastic pegs and a variety of colors.

The first sets were nine inches wide and 12 inches high

and came with templates for things like a boat,

a train and animals.

Later, came numbers, letters, cartoon characters

but the real appeal was the ability

to unleash the imagination

and create almost any picture

with light and 54 years after the first Lite-Brite

sets hit the shelves, this nostalgic classic

is still loved today

and sometimes bigger is definitely better,

like gigantic light boards that fill kids and adults

alike with wonder and artists

who use the same basic technology

to create amazing works of art.

Playing Monopoly is not all chance,

players have to plot and plan to win

and games of strategy can take the shape

of different kinds of contests.

Whether it's a battle on the high seas,

solving a murder mystery

or even plotting for world domination.

In the early 1950s,

the famous French film director Albert Lamorisse,

invented a board game called

La Conquete du Mond.

Which translates to Conquest of the World

and the game was introduced to the US in 1959

but it went by a different name.

Risk.

More than 100,000 units of the game sold in its first year.

Another game of strategy that centers

on warfare has origins that are less clear.

It's been said that Battleship was invented early

in the 20th century enjoyed by soldiers

of World War One and played with pen and paper.

Today, between video game apps and electronic versions

of the Milton Bradley game,

they've sold over 100 million units.

And strategy games aren't set entirely

within military context,

one of the most well-known games of strategy may be Clue.

The game was released in 1949 and was invented

by musician and crime aficionado, Anthony Pratt.

Some estimates say there have been

over 150 million games of Clue sold.

Whether you're trying

to figure out if it was Colonel Mustard

with a candlestick in the library or

how to conquer the world, the appeal of the contest

of strategy will always be among our top games.

One of the top toys for the past 60 years has sold more

than 175 million units and comes

with two little white knobs, no batteries needed.

For the past six decades, 100s of version

of Etch A Sketch have been brought to market.

Not only is there money to be made in selling Etch A Sketch

but also in using it.

- I am an Etch A Sketch artist,

my art work sells for between 100 and up

to $5,000 for an original rendition.

So I spend full-time Etch A Sketching now.

I can't believe it, five years.

Growing up, I had no idea

that I could ever make a business out

of drawing on a Etch A Sketch of all things,

if I had to guess just

how many hours I've logged into an Etch A Sketch,

it's been over 25 years of me actively using the toy so,

I've done that 10,000 hours

to become a master at this point.

My Etch A Sketch portraiture can take up

to 15 to 20 hours for the most detailed work.

So today for this drawing,

we're actually going to use the Pocket Etch A Sketch,

creating an Etch A Sketch rendition

is a multi-step process.

First I am provided with a reference photo

from the client as a one-to-one scale reference photo

to the size of the Etch A Sketch screen.

That helps me to figure out

the portions on the Etch A Sketch

and I'm also going to use a larger version

of the photo so that I can pay attention

to more intricate details that may not show up

in the one-to-one scale reference photo.

Etch A Sketch is a unique artistic medium.

The drawing is comprised of one continuous line,

it is an extremely unforgiving medium.

So you have to be really confident

and commit entirely to the line that you're drawing.

I wanna get to the facial details first

because if I make a mistake, I wanna make it early.

That's always a big bummer if you spent all

of this time creating something and then realize

at the very end that oops, you've flubbed.

And I have to turn both knobs simultaneously,

that allows me to accomplish curves and diagonals.

Etch A Sketch is inherently a nostalgic toy

so it lends really well

to recreating famous masterpieces

'cause it's almost like an irreverent art form

but I'm still revering the work, it's just in a,

more of a low brow sense maybe.

And here we are.

Viola.

I'm one of the top Etch A Sketch artists in the US,

it has opened the most incredible doors to me,

I travel the world all thanks to this magical little toy.

- [Adam] We all have our favorite top toys and games,

playing with them is the perfect way

to relive our favorite childhood memories

and build new ones with those we love and many

of those favorite memories come packaged

in a brightly colored box made and assembled right here

at Cartamundi in East Longmeadow, Massachusets.

We've seen how the money, the boards and the boxes

of Monopoly are made, now, we get to see

how it all comes together so that

when we open up our favorite game,

it all looks exactly like we remember it.

- This is the final assembly area.

This is where it all comes together.

- So before the customer opens it,

this is the last step that happens>

- That's exactly right, the machine right here

is making a box cover

and the machine right here is making the box bottom.

The box will be offloaded onto a conveyor

which starts the assembly process

and then the parts will travel

all the way down the line and eventually go

up our spiral conveyor and right

into the finished [indistinct].

- Monopoly, the cards, the money, the rules,

all have to get in and be in very specific areas of the box?

- Correct.

- I have to see this.

We've seen the machines make the boxes, let's go fill them!

- Let's go.

Oh yeah, I'll pass and go.

I'm collecting $200,

I'm getting out of jail for free

and I'm building a hotel on Baltic.

The attention to detail from all the folks

at Cartamundi all comes down to this.

Packaging it into that classic box

that we all know and love.

I'm just astonished.

After seeing the efficiency of those machines,

to then just see people being as efficient

as the machines are.

- Let me introduce you to one of them.

Hi, Laura.

I wanna introduce you to Adam Richman.

- How are you doing?

I'm sorry to interrupt you.

- Nice to meet you.

- Good to meet you too.

So how long have you been here?

- 42 years.

- [Adam] 42?

- Yes!

- Four decades, so what is it about this place

that's made you stay so long?

- Oh I love the games-

- What's your favorite game?

- I love Monopoly because my grandson love to play it.

- When someone opens a Monopoly box that you've worked on,

what do you hope they feel when they take it home?

- Good!

I hope they feel, I want them to feel wonderful.

That I did that, that I made somebody happy.

- You guys are like ninjas, is there a trick

to being as efficient as that?

- You know, once you get in the groove

and the rhythm of it, it's a piece of cake.

Do you wanna try putting one in?

- Yeah, I'll try, I'll try.

So I'll go here, I'll go here.

- Yeah, can put one in.

- Yes ma'am.

- Just put it in there.

- Does it-

- Yeah, just sit it down.

- All right, we'll partner, we'll partner.

- Yeah, [indistinct], I'm gonna give you a million Dollars.

- Yeah, there we go, wait, wait.

I'm gonna make it rain,

I'm gonna make it rain, make it rain.

You know what?

I would stay here for 42 years

if they tell me I'm working with you, you're awesome.

- Oh, thank you, thank you. You're awesome too.

- Of course, I mean it, thank you, keep up the good work.

Be it that you've been here for 42 years,

I've probably been the recipient of your hard work.

So thank you so much.

- Thank you, thank you-

-You're a rock star, I'll see you.

The famous author, Roald Dahl, once said,

life is more fun if you play games.

Well he also wrote a book about a very lucky boy

who got to tour a chocolate factory.

Now, while this incredible facility doesn't make chocolate,

it makes something else equally sweet and wonderful,

memories, laughter, joy, nostalgia,

that's the magic of games and toys.

They bring us together and they make life worth living

and so the next time you open up a Monopoly game printed

by someone like Jim, unfold the game board made

by someone like Leo or his wonderful team or unbox a toy

or action figure made by the good folks at Mattel,

you'll realize that a lot of very good people spent a lot

of hours at work so that we can spend hours of playing.

Any night can be a game night, so go ahead,

pull that old box of joy out of that closet,

put the phones away, clear off the living room table,

call over your friends and your family and indulge

in your favorite games and toys.

The magic, the madness and the Modern Marvel of it all.

See you next time.

[gentle upbeat music]