| |
Outrageous Steve's Review:
The Toilet Bank
A PrankPlace/Big Mouth Toys OriginalThe Toilet Bank – Flush Your Money Down the Drain! Not sure why but I clearly have a fondness for novelty banks. Even when I was a kid, I used to love the mechanical banks I would sell door to door annually as part of a TOM-WAT campaign for the Cub Scouts until I was asked to leave. (More about that later..) My father used to tell me that I loved to throw my money down the toilet, when I was a kid and would buy stupid crap at Kmart, or Bolton Drug. Even as an adult I continue to buy frivolous things (Even for a living now), or throw Money Down the Toilet as Alvin (my Dad) would say.
I will not claim that my version of the Toilet Bank is the first, as others have made them back in the 80’s. But, they disappeared long ago, and we would sometimes get requests for them. Back in 2005, I contacted my factory in China, and asked about making a toilet bank. (We had just finished making the Fanny Bank). The first few samples, were pretty lame, as I was attempting to do it on the cheap, using a blow mold instead of the much more costly injection mold for the shape. When I learned the mold cost was around $ 13,000, I pushed it off and forgot about it. Meanwhile, I had already paid $ 300 to a sound engineer to record and mix a toilet flushing and a urinal flushing sound to compose the perfect flushing sound. (He signed the statement of work stating the sounds were recorded at “The Verizion Building” in Richmond Virginia) Well, in 2008 when the Fanny Bank really started to take off and receiving national exposure, some of our catalog customers demanded, “ MORE BANKS! MORE BANKS!” I wiped away the dust from the old toilet bank prototypes, and set off to try it again.
This time, the molding cost over $ 15,000 (In China, probably $ 100,000 in the US). Believe it or not, making a toy like the Toilet Bank requires about 12 to 15 samples being sent back and forth. We had to evaluate and re-evaluate the flushing mechanism, the sound levels, and the amount of coins the bank could hold. At the very last minute I called an audible and changed the base to Blue from white, to give it some more color. (The factory sent one over that they just painted the base, and we showed it at the Philadelphia Gift Show), but by the last day the paint had all chipped off, and it looked like a gigantic mess!
At any rate after all that back and forth, I am thrilled with the Toilet Bank. You can drop in 1 coin or a handful, and they sit in the bottom of the bowl, until you FLUSH the handle, then they fall down the drain, and a LOUD flushing sound (professionally mixed as described above) erupts. The irony is enormous here, you flush your money down the drain to buy The Toilet Bank, then you save your money in the Toilet Bank. But to save it you must flush it - ugh, it makes my head spin!
Outrageous Steve
Follow me on twitter
@OutrageousSteve
|