Child's Play

Start-up attempts to sell a positive-message-stuffed doll to kids.

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Carolyne Greene says her F.R.O.Y.D. doll is unique because it encourageschildren to achieve their dreams -- but is that a message a kid can understand?

It's a steamy August day in Manhattan, and business is slow at Bloomingdale's. On the second floor, near the tiny, nearly customerless toy department, Carolyne Greene is valiantly trying to break into the toy business. Her invention: a taxicab yellow, big-nosed doll named F.R.O.Y.D. To promote him, she has brought along a "live" six-foot version of F.R.O.Y.D., which now bobs and sways to a scratchy recording of his theme song.

Nattily dressed in yellow and black to match her creation, Greene offers F.R.O.Y.D. buttons to passing children. A curly-haired moppet catches sight of the giant doll. Spotting her, too, F.R.O.Y.D. bends down and beckons. Shyness battles attraction, and then the little girl succumbs, delightedly accepting a button. From that moment on, she doesn't take her eyes off F.R.O.Y.D.

This, you might think, is what being an entrepreneur in the toy business is all about. Fun. Kids. Toy love. But you'd be wrong. As Carolyne Greene, a 34-year-old with waist-length blond hair and Betty Boop eyes, is discovering, toys can be brutal. More than half of the Barbie wanna-bes, Nintendo would-bes, and other new toys that debut at the annual American International Toy Fair in New York City every February don't survive beyond their first year.

But Greene, who's prone to giggle and partial to the phrase "really cool," may have more insight into kids than your average toy executive does. This is a woman who named her cats Disney and Henson in honor of her role models. A woman who sees herself as the heroine of a legend in the making. Tears rolled down her cheeks, she will tell you, when she watched children in a focus group happily playing with an early version of F.R.O.Y.D.

She is also a woman who wants to be rich. "I like making money, and I hope to do a lot of it. I believe more than ever that F.R.O.Y.D. will be a megahit."

F.R.O.Y.D. was born in 1979, when Greene, then known as Carolyne Fischer, was working as a free-lance jewelry designer. From a series of sketches, she developed a forerunner of F.R.O.Y.D., a tiny doll with removable sunglasses, which was known then as Pocket Person.

Working on the doll was no idle pastime for Greene. Trained in design, she had created line extensions for Sasson Jeans Inc.: handbags, lingerie, and costume jewelry. Such licensing of famous names was well established in the fashion industry and was just becoming a popular marketing strategy in the toy industry. Previously, the licensing of a character had always followed long-established commercial success in at least one medium. Snoopy dolls, coffee mugs, and lunch boxes didn't materialize until after the beagle became a well-known comic-strip character.

But Greene's idea was to make it happen all at once. Knowing success depended on the invention of a character, not just a doll, she had developed a personality for her Kilroy look-alike, taking her cue from their own "relationship." She recalls, "I thought, F.R.O.Y.D. is my best friend." Kids, too, would like to have a friend who believed in them, she reflected. She had named her character F.R.O.Y.D., which stands for "for reality of your dreams." F.R.O.Y.D., Greene decided, would encourage children from ages 5 to 13 to achieve their dreams.

Greene believes the concept is unique in Toyland. It's not violent, a rarity among the G.I. Joes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and other warrior playthings. Yet F.R.O.Y.D. isn't as saccharine as non-violent hits such as Care Bears or My Little Pony. And F.R.O.Y.D.'s message, Greene believes, is certain to please parents.

For Greene the marketing possibilities were tantalizing. As F.R.O.Y.D. Inc.'s 1989 business plan put it, she wants F.R.O.Y.D. to become "synonymous with 'dream fulfillment' much the way a rabbit's foot or four-leaf clover symbolizes good luck. . . . This concept creates a very large merchandising opportunity -- owning the commercial rights to F.R.O.Y.D. is owning the commercial rights to dreams."

In addition to further developing the doll, which grew to 13 inches and went through several kinds of "skin," Greene worked on F.R.O.Y.D.'s message. To encourage kids to focus on their goals, every doll comes with a postcard on which kids list their name, age, address, gender, and dream. Sending in the postcard to Dream Team Headquarters (D.T.H.) entitles them to receive a Dreams Come True Poster (D.C.T.P.) of F.R.O.Y.D. and some star-shaped Official Yellow Dream Stickers (O.Y.D.S.s). Kids are supposed to place a sticker on the poster each time they accomplish a goal.

Besides allowing Greene's affection for acronyms to run wild, the postcard ploy enables Greene to track her customers. Ultimately, F.R.O.Y.D. owners will become part of a fan club, which will likely be formed when the last element of Greene's concept -- an animated television show -- is put in place. Using a talk-show format with F.R.O.Y.D. as the host, "Friday Night F.R.O.Y.D. on Saturday Morning" would feature more of Greene's creations: The Princesses of Procrastination, Dr. I.M.I. (It's My Idea), H.O.G. (Hot on Girls), and Buzz Humming Nerd, among others. Unfortunately for Greene, however, toy sales have been sluggish for the past six years. Though the ubiquitous Turtles are an authentic megahit, the industry scraped together only $13.4 billion in sales in 1989, a bare 5% gain over the previous year. The unpredictable boom-and-bust sales cycles that plague toy companies have killed some -- such as Worlds of Wonder -- in recent years. The last thing toy makers want is a risky new product like F.R.O.Y.D.

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