One of the highlights of Toy Fair every year is meeting up with our good friend, Chris Byrne, the Toy Guy. Over the past 25 years, Chris has spent some part of every day playing with new toys-not a bad job, if you stop to think about it. He’s the guy the insiders turn to find out what’s hot and what’s not in the toy industry. When Chris is in Denver, we invite him to share his latest toy finds with our viewers at KUSA-TV (NBC). During Toy Fair each year, we pull Chris away from the trade show floor and send a live feed back to Denver. Right before we went on-air, Chris turned to his production assistant and wanted her to find him a bottle of Diet Coke so he could launch a Mentos Geyser during the segment. I only had ten seconds to convince him that the mess wouldn’t be worth the wow-factor (and no one had a change of clothes).

Chris stopped by the Be Amazing! booth to check out the flying soda.

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The opening day at Toy Fair was amazingly busy for those companies who had cool science product, according to a staff writer from CNET News.com. Caroline McCarthy writes, “Amid the madness of the 2007 American International Toy Fair here, a somewhat unexpected trend was visible: apparently, science rules.” Caroline stopped by the booth yesterday to ask a few questions about our new Geyser Tube toy and, more importantly about general trends in science education. She points out some very interesting observations in her article - teachers should read this.

Despite the perpetual debate over whether the United States is losing ground in raising the world’s best scientists, today’s pop-culture climate is remarkably conducive to making science trendy. The ubiquity of science kits and gadgets at the Toy Fair made me wonder–is science actually cool now?

Even YouTube has its influence. Be Amazing, a toy company that specializes in chemistry sets and licensed products from Steve Spangler Science, was drawing massive crowds with its demonstration of a “geyser” apparatus that allows kids to replicate the Diet Coke and Mentos experiments that have resulted in an explosive (literally) viral video sensation.

There’s no doubt that science products were the talk of Toy Fair this year. In just the first two days of the show, we gave away more than a thousand geyser test tube experiments for people to test out at home. That’s a lot of Diet Coke flying through the air.

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Our new Geyser Tube toy made it’s first public appearance at the Toy Fair in New York this morning. If you’ve ever tried to do the Mentos Geyser experiment, you know that it’s tough to a handful of Mentos candies into the bottle of soda before it starts to erupt. The Geyser Tube is a trigger device that holds a stack of Mentos candies directly above the opening of the bottle. Just pull the pin and the Mentos instantly drop into the soda and the soda geyser shoots up through the nozzle at the top of the tube.

Over the past year, we’ve come up with many ways The Geyser Tube attaches to the top of any 2-liter bottle and holdsof sodatrigger device that suspends a stack of Mentos candy above the open bottle of soda. When you pull the pin, the Mentos drop and the erupting soda is funneled updevice that holds

Steve Spangler, a science editor for a Colorado TV station and a toy maker on the side, this week demonstrated his “Geyser Tube” at the Toy Fair in New York. His toy is a plastic tube that can hold nine Mentos candies. A pin holds the candy in place while the tube is screwed to the top of the soda bottle. The opposite end is a narrow opening that acts like a nozzle.

A string is attached to the pin and when pulled, the Mentos plop to the bottom of the bottle, triggering the reaction. The Geyser Tube retails for $4.95 and can be purchased online at Stevespanglerscience.com.

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As teachers, we learn how to do different jobs to supplement our income. One of the ways was to take things we worked on during class and come up with ideas for science toys. In 1991 a collaboration of science teachers got together to invent science toys that could one day make their way to the shelves.

The most popular science toy in the world - the Tornado Tube - was invented by Craig Burnham. Craig was our inspiration. My first science toy was a cute little pet squid called Squiddy.

We simply put these toys in the hands of 50 teachers and their students, and they took on a life of their own. Orders took off and soon my wife had to quit her job because the phone started ringing and we needed someone to process invoices.

Based in Salt Lake City, Be Amazing Toys started with this small group of scientists in Denver, Colorado. Now we have a toy company making 60 different educational toys and, if you walk the aisles of Toys ‘R Us or Target you will know us. A group of teachers who wanted to be amazing, creating toys that came out of the classroom, to give kids something else to play with besides video games.

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I’m in New York this week for the American International Toy Fair, the largest toy trade show in the Western Hemisphere. I’ve been coming to Toy Fair since 1993 when I first introduced a line of educational science toys to speciality toy market. My first Toy Fair was an eye-opening experience. More than 1,500 manufacturers, distributors, importers and sales agents from 30 countries showcase their products. How could my first science toy invention called SQUIDY ever stand a chance being noticed? We were just a drop of water in a huge ocean!

Twelve years later I’m still just a drop of water in a huge ocean, but I’ve learned how to ride on some of the ripples that a drop of water can make. I’m excited to release 6 new toys and science kits this year through a company called Be Amazing! Toys. I’ll share some of the toys with you in the next few days. I’ll also be visiting with other inventors and toy creators finding the latest and greatest new discoveries to share with you. I’ll post immediate pictures to my blog through a technology called Moblogging - a special way to post photos to a blog through a camera phone.

Stay tuned… we’re bound to find a bunch of new things in New York!

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