This article takes me back. This guy had a full life.
Burt Meyer in an undated photo. âThere was a little mischievousness in him,â another toymaker said. âHe was joyful and playful, like a kid, and treated toy design as an art form.âCredit...Gile Meyer
By Richard Sandomir
Nov. 21, 2025
In the early 1960s, the toy inventor Burt Meyer went to an arcade in Chicago with his boss, Marvin Glass. One of them put a coin in a game that pitted two humanlike boxing figures trying to nail each other in the chin.
âWe knew we had a great idea for a game kids would love,â Mr. Meyer told The Chicago Tribune in 2011.
He began to sculpt models of two fighters, the first phase in developing what would become Rock âEm Sock âEm Robots, which was first produced in 1964 and is still being made.
But he initially struggled to make the concept work.
âWe were having trouble getting some realistic motion in it, which would allow the figures to fall over,â Mr. Meyer told Tim Walsh, who wrote the 2005 book âTimeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them.â
Then Mr. Glass shelved the project when a boxer, Davey Moore, died from a brain injury after a featherweight title fight against Sugar Ramos in 1963.
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The Chicago Bulls mascot Benny the Bull played the game with the teamâs point guard Coby White in 2023.Credit...Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press
Mr. Meyer revived it, however. He changed the combatants from humans to robots â the Red Rocker and Blue Bomber â which made the violence feel less extreme.
âObviously, they donât fall over dead,â he recalled thinking when he was interviewed by the blog Deadspin in 2011. âMaybe their heads can pop up.â
In the final version, players control the robotsâ lefts and rights by pressing buttons on joysticks. And if the jaw of one is hit dead-on, its spring-loaded head indeed pops up.
Mr. Meyer conceived a toy box full of fun during a quarter-century at Marvin Glass & Associates, a top toy designer, where he started in about 1960. He collaborated on other products, including Lite-Brite, which lets children create colorful pictures with plastic pegs that seem to glow; Mouse Trap, which lets players build a Rube Goldberg-like contraption; Toss Across, a play on tic-toe-toe; and Mr. Machine, a walking robot.
Glassâs creations were licensed to manufacturers such as Ideal, Mattel, Hasbro, Parker Brothers and Louis Marx and Company, which made Rock âEm Sock âEm Robots.
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A 1960s promotional photo of a family playing the board game Mouse Trap, in which players build a Rube Goldberg-like contraption. Mr. Meyer helped design the game.
Mr. Meyer, whose license plate read TOYKING, died on Oct. 30 in a retirement community in Burr Ridge, Ill., southwest of Chicago, his son Steve said. He was 99.
Lite-Brite, Mr. Meyerâs favorite among his inventions, was a result of his encounter with a vast display of hundreds of lights at a building in Manhattan. Users press small, translucent colored pegs into a plastic grid of holes, which sits on a piece of black construction paper blocking an electric light source. As each peg perforates the paper, it lights up, bringing the patterns of the pegs to shining life.
Mr. Meyer devised the toy working with Mr. Glass and Harry Stan and then showed the prototype to Merrill Hassenfeld, the chief executive of Hasbro. Mr. Hassenfeld quickly agreed to a licensing deal to produce it.
âI dimmed the lights and plugged it in,â Mr. Meyer said in âTimeless Toys.â âAfter he tried it himself, he sat back and said, âThatâs my item!ââ
The Strong National Museum of Play, in Rochester, N.Y., which inducted Lite-Brite into its National Toy Hall of Fame in 2022, described it as âtruly unique upon its introduction,â adding that it recalls â19th-century mosaic toys which provided colored marbles for children to arrange in pleasing patterns and shapes.â
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Lite-Brite, Mr. Meyerâs favorite of all his inventions, was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2022.Credit...The Strong National Museum of Play
Mr. Walsh, the author of âTimeless Toys,â estimated that at least 20 million Lite-Brites have been sold since 1967. Time magazine ranked it 55th on its list of the all-time greatest toys in 2011. Rock âEm Sock âEm Robots came in at No. 49.
Burton Carpenter Meyer was born on April 18, 1926, in Hinsdale, Ill. His father, John, was a pharmacist, and his mother, Esther (Carpenter) Meyer, ran the household.
After serving in the Navy from 1944 to 1946 as an aircraft mechanic, Mr. Meyer went to a pre-college prep school to expand his mechanical skills. He attended West Georgia College (now the University of West Georgia) for a year before moving to Chicago, where he graduated from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology with a bachelorâs degree in product design in 1952.
He didnât work for a year, until he was hired as a design director and teacher at the Atlanta Art Institute. He then worked at companies that made store and trade show displays, cabinets and jukeboxes.
âHe did not know what he wanted to do until he landed at Marvin Glass,â Steve Meyer said in an interview.
It was an ideal job for someone with a lot of creativity, who brought an engineering background from the Navy and who could fix almost anything.
âThere was a little mischievousness in him,â Mr. Walsh said in an interview. âHe was joyful and playful, like a kid, and treated toy design as an art form.â
After leaving Marvin Glass in the mid-1980s â the company closed in 1988 â Mr. Meyer retired for a while, then started his own firm, Meyer/Glass Design. There, successful creations included the Pretty Pretty Princess board game; Catch Phrase, a word-guessing game; and Gooey Louie, which invited children to pick âgooeysâ out of Louieâs nose. (Choosing the wrong one caused his head to open and his brain to fly out.)
One success of Mr. Meyerâs firm Meyer/Glass Design was the Pretty Pretty Princess board game. Another was Gooey Louie, which invited children to pick âgooeysâ out of Louieâs nose.Credit...The Strong National Museum of Play
In addition to inventing toys, Mr. Meyer was an adventurer who flew single-engine planes until he was in his late 80s; rode his bicycle on a 45-day solo trip from San Francisco to Charleston, S.C.; scuba-dived in Fiji and the Solomon Islands; and traveled to the North Pole for a 12-day, 135-mile trek when he was 69.
His son Steve was president of Meyer/Glass until it closed in 2006, but he continues to market some of its concepts. In addition to him, Mr. Meyer is survived by another son, Lee; a daughter, Sheryl Meyer; six grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. His wife, Marcia (Kass) Meyer, died in 2001.
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In addition to inventing toys, Mr. Meyer was an adventurer who in a 45-day solo trip rode his bicycle from San Francisco to Charleston, S.C.Credit...via Meyer family
Some of Mr. Meyerâs inventions have survived â and thrived â into the digital age.
Rock âEm Sock âEm Robots appeared in the animated movie âToy Story 2,â and Mattel produced a special edition with two of the filmâs characters, Buzz Lightyear and his enemy, Emperor Zurg, recast as the combatants. The actor and producer Vin Diesel is planning to turn the game into a live-action film; in an Instagram post this year, he said it would be the âthe testosterone-male answer to âBarbie.ââ
âWe donât know if things will last or fold,â Mr. Meyer told Deadspin. âThereâs very few ways to tell.â
In 2022, Lite-Brite found its way into two episodes of the Netflix series âStranger Things,â set in the 1980s. Some of the young characters used the toy to communicate with friends who are stuck in an alternate universe called the Upside Down. In seeking to add the toy to a âStranger Thingsâ story line, Netflix reached out to Basic Fun!, which licenses Lite-Brite from Hasbro.
âThe âStranger Thingsâ fandom appeals to a broad range of ages,â Maureen Dilger, the vice president of global brand marketing of Lite-Brite and other Hasbro brands, said in an email, adding that sales had been âextremely lowâ for the toy when it began to manufacture it a decade ago, but that theyâve grown since by more than 600 percent.
Lite-Briteâs appearance in âStranger Things,â Ms. Dilger said, âhelped reignite nostalgia and introduced Lite-Brite to an entirely new generation.â
Richard Sandomir, an obituaries reporter, has been writing for The Times for more than three decades.
A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 23, 2025, Section A, Page 32 of the New York edition with the headline: Burt Meyer, 99, Who Invented a Toy Box Full of Fun for a Quarter Century.
Burt Meyer, 99, Dies; Made Lite-Brite and Rock âEm Sock âEm Robots
Starting in the 1960s, he collaborated on the designs of classic toys like Mouse Trap, Toss Across and Mr. Machine.
Burt Meyer in an undated photo. âThere was a little mischievousness in him,â another toymaker said. âHe was joyful and playful, like a kid, and treated toy design as an art form.âCredit...Gile Meyer
By Richard Sandomir
Nov. 21, 2025
In the early 1960s, the toy inventor Burt Meyer went to an arcade in Chicago with his boss, Marvin Glass. One of them put a coin in a game that pitted two humanlike boxing figures trying to nail each other in the chin.
âWe knew we had a great idea for a game kids would love,â Mr. Meyer told The Chicago Tribune in 2011.
He began to sculpt models of two fighters, the first phase in developing what would become Rock âEm Sock âEm Robots, which was first produced in 1964 and is still being made.
But he initially struggled to make the concept work.
âWe were having trouble getting some realistic motion in it, which would allow the figures to fall over,â Mr. Meyer told Tim Walsh, who wrote the 2005 book âTimeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them.â
Then Mr. Glass shelved the project when a boxer, Davey Moore, died from a brain injury after a featherweight title fight against Sugar Ramos in 1963.
Image
Image
The Chicago Bulls mascot Benny the Bull played the game with the teamâs point guard Coby White in 2023.Credit...Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press
Mr. Meyer revived it, however. He changed the combatants from humans to robots â the Red Rocker and Blue Bomber â which made the violence feel less extreme.
âObviously, they donât fall over dead,â he recalled thinking when he was interviewed by the blog Deadspin in 2011. âMaybe their heads can pop up.â
In the final version, players control the robotsâ lefts and rights by pressing buttons on joysticks. And if the jaw of one is hit dead-on, its spring-loaded head indeed pops up.
Mr. Meyer conceived a toy box full of fun during a quarter-century at Marvin Glass & Associates, a top toy designer, where he started in about 1960. He collaborated on other products, including Lite-Brite, which lets children create colorful pictures with plastic pegs that seem to glow; Mouse Trap, which lets players build a Rube Goldberg-like contraption; Toss Across, a play on tic-toe-toe; and Mr. Machine, a walking robot.
Glassâs creations were licensed to manufacturers such as Ideal, Mattel, Hasbro, Parker Brothers and Louis Marx and Company, which made Rock âEm Sock âEm Robots.
Image
A 1960s promotional photo of a family playing the board game Mouse Trap, in which players build a Rube Goldberg-like contraption. Mr. Meyer helped design the game.
Mr. Meyer, whose license plate read TOYKING, died on Oct. 30 in a retirement community in Burr Ridge, Ill., southwest of Chicago, his son Steve said. He was 99.
Lite-Brite, Mr. Meyerâs favorite among his inventions, was a result of his encounter with a vast display of hundreds of lights at a building in Manhattan. Users press small, translucent colored pegs into a plastic grid of holes, which sits on a piece of black construction paper blocking an electric light source. As each peg perforates the paper, it lights up, bringing the patterns of the pegs to shining life.
Mr. Meyer devised the toy working with Mr. Glass and Harry Stan and then showed the prototype to Merrill Hassenfeld, the chief executive of Hasbro. Mr. Hassenfeld quickly agreed to a licensing deal to produce it.
âI dimmed the lights and plugged it in,â Mr. Meyer said in âTimeless Toys.â âAfter he tried it himself, he sat back and said, âThatâs my item!ââ
The Strong National Museum of Play, in Rochester, N.Y., which inducted Lite-Brite into its National Toy Hall of Fame in 2022, described it as âtruly unique upon its introduction,â adding that it recalls â19th-century mosaic toys which provided colored marbles for children to arrange in pleasing patterns and shapes.â
Image
Lite-Brite, Mr. Meyerâs favorite of all his inventions, was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2022.Credit...The Strong National Museum of Play
Mr. Walsh, the author of âTimeless Toys,â estimated that at least 20 million Lite-Brites have been sold since 1967. Time magazine ranked it 55th on its list of the all-time greatest toys in 2011. Rock âEm Sock âEm Robots came in at No. 49.
Burton Carpenter Meyer was born on April 18, 1926, in Hinsdale, Ill. His father, John, was a pharmacist, and his mother, Esther (Carpenter) Meyer, ran the household.
After serving in the Navy from 1944 to 1946 as an aircraft mechanic, Mr. Meyer went to a pre-college prep school to expand his mechanical skills. He attended West Georgia College (now the University of West Georgia) for a year before moving to Chicago, where he graduated from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology with a bachelorâs degree in product design in 1952.
He didnât work for a year, until he was hired as a design director and teacher at the Atlanta Art Institute. He then worked at companies that made store and trade show displays, cabinets and jukeboxes.
âHe did not know what he wanted to do until he landed at Marvin Glass,â Steve Meyer said in an interview.
It was an ideal job for someone with a lot of creativity, who brought an engineering background from the Navy and who could fix almost anything.
âThere was a little mischievousness in him,â Mr. Walsh said in an interview. âHe was joyful and playful, like a kid, and treated toy design as an art form.â
After leaving Marvin Glass in the mid-1980s â the company closed in 1988 â Mr. Meyer retired for a while, then started his own firm, Meyer/Glass Design. There, successful creations included the Pretty Pretty Princess board game; Catch Phrase, a word-guessing game; and Gooey Louie, which invited children to pick âgooeysâ out of Louieâs nose. (Choosing the wrong one caused his head to open and his brain to fly out.)
One success of Mr. Meyerâs firm Meyer/Glass Design was the Pretty Pretty Princess board game. Another was Gooey Louie, which invited children to pick âgooeysâ out of Louieâs nose.Credit...The Strong National Museum of Play
In addition to inventing toys, Mr. Meyer was an adventurer who flew single-engine planes until he was in his late 80s; rode his bicycle on a 45-day solo trip from San Francisco to Charleston, S.C.; scuba-dived in Fiji and the Solomon Islands; and traveled to the North Pole for a 12-day, 135-mile trek when he was 69.
His son Steve was president of Meyer/Glass until it closed in 2006, but he continues to market some of its concepts. In addition to him, Mr. Meyer is survived by another son, Lee; a daughter, Sheryl Meyer; six grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. His wife, Marcia (Kass) Meyer, died in 2001.
Image
In addition to inventing toys, Mr. Meyer was an adventurer who in a 45-day solo trip rode his bicycle from San Francisco to Charleston, S.C.Credit...via Meyer family
Some of Mr. Meyerâs inventions have survived â and thrived â into the digital age.
Rock âEm Sock âEm Robots appeared in the animated movie âToy Story 2,â and Mattel produced a special edition with two of the filmâs characters, Buzz Lightyear and his enemy, Emperor Zurg, recast as the combatants. The actor and producer Vin Diesel is planning to turn the game into a live-action film; in an Instagram post this year, he said it would be the âthe testosterone-male answer to âBarbie.ââ
âWe donât know if things will last or fold,â Mr. Meyer told Deadspin. âThereâs very few ways to tell.â
In 2022, Lite-Brite found its way into two episodes of the Netflix series âStranger Things,â set in the 1980s. Some of the young characters used the toy to communicate with friends who are stuck in an alternate universe called the Upside Down. In seeking to add the toy to a âStranger Thingsâ story line, Netflix reached out to Basic Fun!, which licenses Lite-Brite from Hasbro.
âThe âStranger Thingsâ fandom appeals to a broad range of ages,â Maureen Dilger, the vice president of global brand marketing of Lite-Brite and other Hasbro brands, said in an email, adding that sales had been âextremely lowâ for the toy when it began to manufacture it a decade ago, but that theyâve grown since by more than 600 percent.
Lite-Briteâs appearance in âStranger Things,â Ms. Dilger said, âhelped reignite nostalgia and introduced Lite-Brite to an entirely new generation.â
Richard Sandomir, an obituaries reporter, has been writing for The Times for more than three decades.
A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 23, 2025, Section A, Page 32 of the New York edition with the headline: Burt Meyer, 99, Who Invented a Toy Box Full of Fun for a Quarter Century.
