History
The Etch A Sketch toy was invented in the late 1950s by André Cassagnes,[1][9][10] an electrician with Lincrusta Co, who named the toy L'Écran Magique lit. 'the magic screen'.[4] In 1959, he took his drawing toy to the International Toy Fair in Nuremberg, Germany. The Ohio Art Company saw it but had no interest in the toy. When Ohio Art saw the toy a second time, they decided to take a chance on the product. L'Écran Magique was soon renamed Etch A Sketch and became the most popular drawing toy in the business. After a complex series of negotiations, the Ohio Art Company launched the toy in the United States in time for the 1960 Christmas season with the name "Etch A Sketch". Ohio Art supported the toy with a televised advertising campaign.[11]
Originally, the toy used a plate glass screen, which was criticized by safety advocates for being easily broken and a danger to children.[12] In November 1970, Consumers Union filed a petition with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, asking for emergency action under the 1969 Child Protection and Toy Safety Act.[13] The Food and Drug Administration responded that the toy had been redesigned, replacing the glass plate with plastic.[14]
The Etch A Sketch toy was featured in the 1995 Disney/Pixar animated film Toy Story, in a scene where a sentient toy performs a "quick draw" duel with Sheriff Woody. This 12-second feature had been enough to give a significant sales boost, requiring the production line to work overtime to meet demand. By 1999, the company had again fallen into severe financial trouble from canceled orders of various products, reaching a point where the solvency of the company was in question. However, the company recovered with the prudent decision to agree to again have an Etch A Sketch appear in an animated feature film – this time in the 1999 sequel Toy Story 2. This scene featured an Etch A Sketch being used to present sketches related to the investigation of Sheriff Woody's kidnapping by Al McWhiggin, the toy collector and the owner of Al's Toy Barn. At 45 seconds, the scene is much longer than the scene in the original film. The exposure from the highly successful Pixar movie resulted in sales of the toy increasing by 20 percent and ensured survival of the company.[15][16]
Etch A Sketch was manufactured in Bryan, Ohio, U.S. until the company moved the manufacturing plant to Shenzhen, China in 2001.[17]
In France, its country of origin, Etch A Sketch was sold under the name of "Télécran",[18] rather than L'Écran Magique.
In February 2016, the rights to the Etch A Sketch name and design were acquired by Toronto-based Spin Master Corporation.[19]
Etch A Sketch Animator
The Etch A Sketch Animator (known as "The Animator" in Canada, and simply "the animator" in Europe), debuted in 1986,[11] and featured a 40 × 30 dot matrix display and used two knobs for drawing, like a regular Etch A Sketch, with several buttons to manipulate the drawings. The initial price was US$89.99 1986. It had two kilobytes of memory, capable of storing 12 frames of pictures in any combination up to 96 times. It contained a speaker, which made static-like sounds when the knobs were moved and during animations.[20]
Etch A Sketch Animator 2000
With the return of the home video game market in the mid-1980s and the relative success of the Etch A Sketch Animator, Ohio Art decided to release a high-tech sequel to the Animator, known as the Animator 2000. Ohio Art released the system in 1987, at a suggested retail price of US$139.99 1987. The unit itself does not resemble a traditional Etch A Sketch: The classic knobs are replaced with "The Magic Touchpad", the system's form-factor resembles a laptop computer, and the unit features a large 6040 LCD screen. The unit contains 196 KB of "powerful computer memory" which is a significant upgrade over the roughly 2 KB of the original Animator. This memory upgrade allowed the system to have 22 frames in which to store drawings, and these frames could be animated in sequence up to 99 times.
