>"It's called the quadrupler"
Drop the "It's called" it's cleaner that way.
I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
61–70 of 207 posts
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#62At age 13 I pitched a candy idea to Mars Bars as part of a school project to write business letters. I loved Snickers at the time but was tired of unwrapping so many fun-size ones from Halloween. I told them something like - “you should just put the fun-size candies in a big resealable bag, so people can eat as much as they want without dealing with the wrappers. You can call them unwrapped minis. All you have to do…
I sent steve jobs (sjobs@apple.com) an email saying that MacOS should have an unspoofable dialog for the system password authorization, same way they have for DRM videos etc. I also suggested the user could choose a secret phrase or image to be displayed in the dialog during system setup. Never heard back. This was when Steve was alive and in charge. And to this day anyone can spoof the system password dialog and steal the system password…
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#63At age ~11, I sent a MSPaint design of a phone with two SIM cards that you could switch between physically on a phone.
I sent it to Nokia over email :-D. They didn't respond.
Dual SIM phones apparently became a thing that same year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_SIM#:~:text=The%20first%2... Not originally by Nokia, though.
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#64When I was 10 I pitched a game to Lucas Arts. Sent a letter and everything. Their lawyers responded telling me why they cannot make my game. Feel like that opened something in me..
What was the reason? Anything beyond concerns over ownership of the ideas, characters, etc. (which I presume is the boilerplate legalese)? Did they even admit to reading your letter?
In elementary school, a couple friends and I sketched out an entire game's worth of ideas for Mega Man bosses and mailed them to Capcom (this would have been 1990 or so). I remember how thick the envelope was.
I recall their response being very human, warm and encouraging, but it also included all of our original sketches, with a very direct (but kid-understandable) statement that they were obligated to return the originals to make it very clear that they were not kept and thus could not possibly be understood to be "inspiration" for anything that might be in a future game.
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#65Now, with a tear in my eye, I wanna know about Tom. I hope this post gets to him somehow.
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Tom_Fitzgerald
He had just joined WED the same year he sent that reply (1979). Worked there until 2020 in various leadership roles. Seems to have been particularly involved in the making of EPCOT.
A web search shows all kinds of interesting interviews etc.
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#66[deleted]
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#67At age 13 I pitched a candy idea to Mars Bars as part of a school project to write business letters. I loved Snickers at the time but was tired of unwrapping so many fun-size ones from Halloween. I told them something like - “you should just put the fun-size candies in a big resealable bag, so people can eat as much as they want without dealing with the wrappers. You can call them unwrapped minis. All you have to do…
8 months later sounds too short to have taken your idea, I'm guessing launching a product at Mars scale takes like 2 years. This is probably why the always say they cannot take ideas sent by external people... but on the other hand if this came from the CEO, probably could be fast tracked. So 80/20. Do you remember who was the CEO?
It's packaging an existing product differently than a fully new product. Would still require either new machines or adapting existing machines for it.
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#68I once emailed the (former) Logitech CEO asking them to produce a popular keyboard in a different layout than thier current product offering.
I actually got a personal response thanking me for my input!
Then a few years later that keyboard I wanted actually became a product.
Not sure if I really influenced their process or not; but I got that keyboard and its fun to think I did :)
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#69>"It's called the quadrupler" Drop the "It's called" it's cleaner that way.
Note to self. Build time machine and fix this.
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#70When I was 10 I pitched a game to Lucas Arts. Sent a letter and everything. Their lawyers responded telling me why they cannot make my game. Feel like that opened something in me..
What was the reason? Anything beyond concerns over ownership of the ideas, characters, etc. (which I presume is the boilerplate legalese)? Did they even admit to reading your letter?
When I visited the Warner Bros studios, they had a huge pile of paper in a corner, representing all the unsolicited ideas they receive.
They told us they took care to not even read the manuscripts. I don't remember if they return them unopened or destroy them, but otherwise if the ideas from the manuscript end up in one of their productions, they open themselves to legal trouble. It may happen even if it is a coincidence, so they don't want to take any chance.