Students from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design have designed toys for Kinder Worldwide, so that children from around the world, who purchase Kinder eggs, are exposed to these toys.
What started as an experimental exercise in one of the undergraduate courses in industrial design at Bezalel, has become an international collaboration with the international company.
As part of the unique collaboration, students experience designing the toys that are in Kinder's surprise eggs.
The works are presented for examination by Kinder's global representatives, who decide whether to incorporate the students' products in their toy series.
Two toys designed by two students and four on the way are now being marketed, but have not yet been marketed.
Yaron Loveton, a senior lecturer in the Department of Industrial Design at Bezalel, told Israel Today
"The toy design course has been running in the department for 16 years. There are all kinds of work with the students: we invent toys from scratch, think about future toys and more. Sometimes we have collaborations with leading companies in the world like Spin Master, Lego and more.
When asked how they got to the international company, Loveton answered
"Over the years, I have done for students a warm-up exercise that I would ask what your fantasy is to find in a kinder egg, when there are no rules as long as it goes into the egg."
The late Omri Rothschild, who was one of the most talented toy inventors in the world, sold concepts to the most successful companies in the world and he linked me to Danny Kishon who was in London and he connected me to Kinder.
He said we would present it to Kinder and we would surely make something out of it.
He showed them this and it took four years until the collaboration was formed, which lasted several years.
Every year we manage to sell them concepts from what was done in the course.
There are concepts that have gone out to development and some have already come to production.
"There is something very surprising about developing Kinder toys in that it is a very long process. The gap between choosing a concept and it coming to market is a gap that can take three years of Kinder work. This is because they do a lot of safety tests, child fit and sometimes the concept is too expensive. "Teaches the students that there is an end customer with a demand. Although it is not everything in the studies. It is important that they have freedom of thought and on the other hand it is important that they experience the constraints of the market because it exists."
The toys, which have already been manufactured and marketed worldwide, were marketed by students Omar Yitzhakov and May Myerson.
According to Loveton "Yitzhakov designed a dragon that is placed on the finger and when you move the finger there is a beautiful movement of wings. Myerson shaped the lazy animal, which climbs a rope and they converted it into an alpinist, a climber.
Sometimes it's not about inventing something from scratch, but also putting your finger on an old idea and putting the spotlight on it.
This is a method that is used a lot.
For example, Beyblade at the end is a spinning top.
They did not invent anything new except the story. "
Kinder works with several institutions around the world.
According to Loveton "Every year they tell us that this is the academy that brings the freshest ideas and also that they can be implemented. They come back to us five years ago, we probably do something good.
Of course the students were very excited when the toys were marketed. Every day in academia, especially when it comes to a company of a size that rolls in billions of shekels.
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