Sand Castles

Long time readers and friends know that I have a recurring problem - I come up with an idea and sometime later I find it on the market. There have been books, pet items, movies, all kinds of stuff that I thought of but someone else developed and marketed. It's like a nightmare. They are making money off ideas I had but never had the power to do anything with.

It happened again yesterday. This idea, I rejected because I thought it was too lame to actually suggest. Almost three years ago I bought a little bonsai kit from an Asian market, this was the second kit of this type I had purchased - you can see the details of these two kits here. This kit was made by a company called Toysmith - they are an importer of cheap toys and novelties from Asia, they are also located here in Washington. They make more than just bonsai kits, they have all kinds of neat little "office toy" kits. For Christmas of 2001, Steph bought me a Zen garden from the same company. Zen gardens in real life are made of lots of pebbles, but in these little kits, they tend to use sand.

This got me thinking. Would a little "Sand Castle" kit be a fun thing? Sure! A little plastic tray, big enough to be fun but not too big, these kits are meant to be small. The tray should be blue, to simulate ocean water. A bag of sand, some shells and rocks, a few plastic tools and some little "buckets" - little forms that will make building the castle easier. They make big versions of these for kids playing on the beach, smaller versions would be cheap to produce and darned cool! All you would need is a little water and you are playing at the beach while never having left your desk!

So, being that Toysmith had produced the kit that inspired me, I found their address and began work on a note. About half way in, the little voices of doubt in my head began screaming. This idea was dumb and it would get me no where. They would never buy it, even if they did they would never pay me for the idea. Why bother?

Yesterday, I went to the little gift shop in the building where I work, and, behold!, there was a new batch of desk kits - one of them was for sand castles! And, the topper, the kit was produced by Toysmith. It wasn't as I had envisioned it, but it was still there.

I'm a moron!

I'm so tired of other people making money off my ideas! One of these days I'm just going to take one of my ideas and run with it! If it breaks me or kills me, I don't care. I'm sick to death of having great ideas and no way to do anything with them. This idea was a throw away and someone still thought it was good enough to produce! Auuuugh!!!