Home > Resource Center > Articles > Special Needs Toys Appeal to All

Special Needs Toys Appeal to All

Bud Fraze didn't set out to forge new ground in the infant and special needs toy markets. In fact, the satellite engineer had no desire to go into the toy business at all.

"My friend Bill (Bridge) wanted to start this toy company," recalls Fraze, co-founder of Bill & Bud Toys, Inc., "and I said no! I've been in business before. It's a lot of work. But Bill had a lot of clever toy ideas for young kids …and he convinced me that's what we wanted to do."

A New Path Appears
While Fraze was working on designing a prototype from Bridge's idea for a Zorp Rocket, a lightweight rocket kids can launch by blowing into a plastic tube, he received a telephone call that would change his life and the course of Bill & Bud Toys. The caller explained that her son had been born with Anophthalmia, a rare condition that results in the absence of one or both eyes, and she wanted Fraze to design a ball for him and other blind children.

"I told her they already have balls for blind kids," recalls Fraze, who had experience working with blind children through the Lion's Club. She replied, "No, you don't understand. They're junk. They have electronics in them and they beep and they won't shut off and he pulls the batteries out and chews on them. They're no good." She wanted Fraze to design a ball that would make a sound so her son could find it but would not require electronics, a ball that would roll and bounce, but not roll or bounce so far that he would lose track of it.

At first Fraze considered the task impossible. "How can something roll but not roll away," he recalls thinking. "How can it make noise if there's no electronics to emit some sort of a sound?" Still, as an engineer, Fraze found it difficult to resist the challenge.

"I made sketches and threw papers away," he says. "It was like in the movies where nothing worked and I got more and more frustrated." Then Fraze, an avid sailor, hit upon the idea of using a material similar to that used for spinnaker sails – which he describes as "very noisy" – to make the ball.

"It was like all of a sudden this thing appeared in my mind," he recalls. "I don't know if you want to call it divine inspiration or what, but there it was." The idea worked.

The ball, which Fraze named "Jacob's Ball" for the young boy with Anophthalmia, attracted the attention of staff at Helen Keller Services for the Blind (HKSB) in Brooklyn, New York. Fraze visited HKSB with some of the balls soon after and when a therapist gave one to a group of visually impaired and blind children, they were delighted.

"She looked at me and said, 'Do you see what you've done?'," recalls Fraze. "I started tearing up and had to leave the room. I've designed a lot of things in my life, but watching that was life changing for me."

Embracing a New Market
After his experience at HKSB, Fraze was ready to plunge into the special needs market, but "everybody in the toy business told us to stay out of special needs," he says. "They said it's a very limited market. It's very expensive to produce toys that are certified for use by special needs people. You're not going to make any money. You'll go broke."

Bill & Bud's resident toy designer, Joyce Lopez, agreed. She told Fraze, "My mother's deaf and I know how to sign, but we cannot get into special needs. You can't make any money at it."

When the company received an order from The American Printing House for the Blind for $35,000 worth of balls, though, Fraze says, "all of a sudden, Joyce changed her tune." She decided to develop a game she'd been thinking about called See It and Sign It, and the company's second special needs product was born.

See It and Sign It includes six games in one and a DVD with live action demonstrations. The original Level 1 version teaches children 60 American Sign Language words as well as the alphabet and numbers 1 through 10. The response has been so great the company is currently developing Level 2. Not only was the game designed by Lopez, who's been involved with the deaf community all her life, Fraze and Lopez asked members of the deaf community to give them feedback on the initial prototype. "We asked what we should change and what we should add and they gave us changes," says Fraze, "so before we went into production it had all that in it."

As their reputation for designing exceptional special needs toys grew, Fraze and Lopez were approached by a therapist who asked them to create a doll that would stimulate and appeal to children with special needs. The result, which they developed in conjuction with a professional artist, is the Buddy Dog, a cuddly stuffed dog with oversized features, high contrast colors, a variety of textures, and a gentle vibrating action that's triggered by pulling his tail.

Finding a Wider Audience
As the company began embracing their niche in the "special needs" market, Fraze realized their toys weren't just appealing to children with low vision and special needs.

"I said, what a minute!," he recalls thinking after designing Jacob's Ball. "All kids like to play with these balls. We had Bill's kids and other kids that came in and they all loved it."

Fraze designed a smaller, more brightly colored version of the Jacob's Ball called a Bizi Ball for the traditional infant and toddler market.

"What we found out was ...almost anything that would stimulate mental activity or stimulate movement or attention or anything like that with a child with special needs also works with any other infant," says Fraze. "That's how we all learn. We learn by touching, feeling and so forth."

Bill & Bud Toys has expanded to offer more "traditional" infant toys, and they continue to offer Bill's original "action" toys such as the Zorp Rocket, but against all the business experts' advice they've built their success mainly on toys designed for children with special needs.

"I just thought maybe if you do the right thing, things will turn out well for you," says Fraze. "That's what my dad always taught me. Just do the right thing."

At BabyClassroom.com, we're proud to carry Bill & Bud's Bizi Ball, Buddy Dog, and See It and Sign It game, along with many other exceptional toys for babies and preschoolers.