Halloween Industry Pioneer? You Decide...
BEING AHEAD OF YOUR TIME MEANS YOU STARVE UNTIL THE REST OF THE WORLD CATCHES UP.Unfortunately, this is a quote I have both coined and experienced firsthand. I would also offer that the key to success - in one's own lifetime, anyway - is to be JUST ENOUGH ahead of everything; say, 6 months to a year out. Certainly no more than 5 years out.
This Halloween season, I had a bittersweet experience while shopping for some craft tools at Joanne Fabrics (is it wrong to admit I dig arts & crafts stores? I've certainly made some nice coin, courtesy of that industry). While at the store, I noticed a pumpkin carving product from Pumpkin Masters that "borrowed" (i.e., stole) a concept I pioneered with X-Acto with my "Halloween Carving Kit" years ago: Self adhesive sheets for the pumpkin templates.
Granted, Halloween truly is "knockoff city." Most of the craptastic products are made in China, they come & go within a year or two, and it's extremely difficult - if not impossible - to police your proprietary goodies. It takes months to develop a lot of the stuff, get the prototypes overseas, manufacture it, etc. And then it takes 3 months "on the water" to get from China to US ports. The fight is usually won or lost by the time the fall season hits. Fact is, if you ever want to learn the real-world difference between copyrights and trademarks - and which one has more teeth in a US court of law - I invite you to enter the Halloween industry.
For the record, I'm pretty much out of the industry these days - I really could care less if I never carved another pumpkin as long as I lived. I do, however, do a select few for my own purposes as gifts to companies or people I want to start a dialogue with and/or reward. But that's another story - here's the rest of this one.
THE WHOLE REASON I DEVELOPED my pumpkin carving kit for X-Acto was pretty much as a response to the shitty shitty pumpkin carving kits on the market at the time. These Pumpkin Master kits not only featured AWFUL, flimsy saw blade tools that broke if you breathed on them the wrong way; they also had a STOOPID technique where they wanted you or a kid (with an attention span of a gnat) to punch a boatload of holes around the image on their templates (patterns) to outline the design. Right. It took forever before you could even start to carve the image - totally lame.
I had been doing carving demos at Chicago's Navy Pier for about a month, and quickly figured out that trying to accommodate hundreds of kids with any sort of urgency was not going to go well with the Pumpkin Masters method. Instead, I created my own templates, featuring adapted art for everything from Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, "The Scream," sports logos, aliens, etc. From there, I used some spray adhesive to slap the templates on the pumpkins, and they were ready to rock. FYI, I also never saw anyone else do this: I used a door-handle circular saw-tooth bit to clean out the insides of the pumpkins.
From there, I thought the same idea would work without the spray, only we'd use self-adhesive, peeloff sheets on the templates. And it did work, and that's what X-Acto did for my kit.
NOTE: I just took a look around online for an image of their product (didn't find it); but I have to say one thing: After looking at all the different pumpkin carving kits I could find, I challenge anyone to show me a better-produced kit than what I did for X-Acto. In addition to my original template designs, it also featured a solid tool (interchangeable heavy-duty X-Acto saw blade with handle); inner booklet with illustrations by Monte Beauchamp; history of Halloween, recipes, etc.
In case anyone is wondering if it's possible Pumpkin Masters arrived at this idea themselves, the answer is..... hell no. I vividly remember the PM owners checking out my stuff while I exhibited at the Halloween & Party Show in Rosemont, IL, years ago; while they are certainly no strangers to "knockoff city," they cannot claim they weren't aware of my technique years ahead of them. What, no kiss? Not even a thank you?
So here's me, looking at a "new" product stolen from my archives, wondering yet again - why is it that all these thieves & copycats seem to thrive without repercussion, while the artists, originals & pioneers get kicked to the curb with nary a dime?
Labels: monte beauchamp, pumpkin masters, rock n roll halloween, rock n roll kitchen show x-acto carving kit
