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Anthony Grimaud was the Regional European Sales Director at Tiger Electronics
from 1995 - 2002. He was interviewed by Brandon Cobb for “The end of the
game.com” in 2020.
What were your duties with Tiger Electronics?
I was the export manager at the time. So, it's sort of head of international,
and I was purely looking after international sales outside of the US and the
UK, basically, I was the guy.
What was your first impression of the game.com?
I remember it was too early, those days, to succeed. Tiger Electronics was a
company that was spitting out products that were absolutely fantastic, always
ahead of their time. Some of the time, they would work and some of the time
they weren't working.
And the reason would not be necessarily the price, would not be necessarily
the software or the hardware, it would be sometimes that the product's
technology was too advanced for many markets, for many consumers's point of
view. They would not understand the full potential of it. And in the case of
game.com, I remember very well one of the issues was that we were so early
with it at the time where internet was not so developed, especially in Europe,
at least.
And things were pretty pricey internet-wise back in those days.
It was, and you know, you have Game Boy flying and you had Sega. And game.com
didn't have the color digital screen.
What if they had done a second model, with a color screen?
We would not have launched it in Europe, because the first version didn't
succeed.
Ah.
Now, the sound was really good. And the games were okay. And the multitude
of functions that the game would offer was fantastic. It would offer more
than a Game Boy because a Game Boy would only offer me a game.
And unfortunately, the compound of it, the organizing parts of the software,
in those days was just too premature. And kids and young adults would not
necessarily associate gameplay with video games, or digital games, with the
game.com because they didn't grasp the features and the potential outside of
the game. And the games were okay. But the games were far behind Game Boy,
far behind. So, from a gamer point of view it didn't match and from a
communicator and organizer point of view, it was the wrong demographics. So,
but other than that, it was a brilliant piece of kit.
I understand that one of the main problems was that the company always
wanted to place the game.com in the toy section instead of with the video
games, like the Game Boy. So they were marketing to young children. And with
licenses like Resident Evil and Duke Nukem 3D, that's kind of confusing. So I'm
wondering if, in Europe, that was an issue as well?
Yeah, there's definitely an issue there. I mean, first of all Tiger it's first
a toy company. So, whenever you went direct to retail distributors and
wholesalers and so on, you were talking to toy people and you were talking
to placing the product in toy aisles. Now, if you were talking to place the
products in the video games aisles, this was an absolute different world as
you can remember in those days, and video games cost volumes and really
growing fast. That was the way it got big as it is today. And people
associated video games pretty much with big console and big packages to go
with it, and plug on to TV and play.
And game.com was not supposed to do that as such. It was actually a direct
opposition to Game Boy. But due to the nature of the screen that was probably
a bit too small, not colored screen. And due to the fact that this performance
of the game was probably not quite as good as a Game Boy, I think. Again, in
terms of selling and pitching video games, video games buyers, we were less
interesting because of the performance of the games itself. And if we talk to
toy people, and then of course, they would either say to you, “This is
belonging to the toy aisle,” or “This is too expensive to the video games aisle,
sorry,” or “This is too expensive to be a toy.”
Or they would also tell you that the product was far too advanced and very
difficult to communicate. So, if we were not gonna spend absolute millions,
where Game Boy was doing ten times this in terms of spending millions and
millions on marketing, then we were not going to stand our ground. And then
really, that's what happens.
The other thing that happens is a company, in five years, this is my personal
view from a sales manager or sales director point of view, we were carried
away with selling success, and success didn't look like income necessarily.
It looked like Furby, it looked like Giga Pets, it looked like Poo-Chi. It
looked like everything we touched, in the toy aisle, as Tiger Electronics, was
such a success. And it was, dare I say, an easy sale. And to go and push all
our efforts on sales and marketing to promote an easy sell, rather than
bang your head against the walls, and try to sell a super-duper system, the
company, in my view, was half-committing, in terms of the marketing. And I'm
not talking from a European point of view, I'm talking from a global,
Chicago-based headquarter. As much as it was a huge product, I don't think
the marketing care and focus was there to last.
No, I tend to agree because they had a great commercial that was shot out in
Canada. I don't know if you remember that, with the little guy yelling at
everyone...
Absolutely I remember.
That caught our attention as teenagers because of the snarky attitude. But
unfortunately after that, there wasn't much else. You never saw the game.com
in game magazines, for example. I got the impression, it really came down to
they just didn't have the dollars to keep pushing it.
That's right. And also watching the focus, the focus was, we're not necessarily
all the time on such a big project. If Nintendo was launching a handheld game
console, they would spend. This is their focus, this is what they do day in and
out. And in the case of Tiger Electronics, it was a, “By the way, we've
got a huge kit of technology here that's going to blow your socks off,”
we didn't allow to have the budget, the focus, but also potentially the
knowledge and the channel to do it justice, although it was extremely,
extremely, extremely good product.
I mean, for example, we launched game.com in Italy with a company called
GIG, and you might have heard of them. In those days, they were simply the
biggest Italian distributor and importer for toys, but they happen to be the
Nintendo exclusive agent as well for the whole of Italy.
So, we had a bit of a dilemma, and we agreed that they were going to launch
it. And they had the video games channel, and they had the knowledge, they
had the marketing team for both toys and games. And that still didn't take
off. And I think we were short. The game console was okay. We needed a color
screen. And we needed improved games, and we needed more games. And that
didn't come and you can't just succeed with half-planned markets.
And I think when we tried to launch game.com, I believe it was '97 or '98.
And these are the years of Furby. And Furby was, I'm sorry to say, historically
he was the biggest toy in the world, for as far as we can remember. Fifty-five
million pieces of a forty dollar retail, little animatronic. And that
is what took focus at the back of a huge success of Giga Pets, Tamagotchi thing,
at the back of a huge success with other toys too. And then followed very
closely by the Poo-Chi interactive dog. And then followed with the I-Cybie,
which was a sort of a toy imitation of the AIBO from Sony. So, the point is,
I think simply there wasn't a focus.
Fundamentally, the kit would have been a fantastic kit if there had been a
generation two, three, four, and kept improving it and kept changing the
games. I think it would have taken a different turn because the product and
its capabilities, outside of the gaming part, was way superior to Nintendo
Game Boy. So, dare I say, maybe this would have sold both hardware and
software to someone like Sega to compete with Nintendo, but they didn't. So,
as I said, in Europe, we launched it, we did our best, but you know, that
could not happen and product was only half of the reason.
Is there anything else you think could have been done better, to market it?
I remember the packaging; had we done the right thing in terms of packaging
it? If I do remember the packaging, it wasn't “kid” enough. It was
just way too mature, too grown-up-like. And in those days, if you compared
packaging with Nintendo Game Boy or Sega, they were probably a little bit
more, positioned a bit younger. So, I think there was also potentially some
confusion on the target age group, and, more importantly, on the core target
age group.
The product did not really take off. And when Furby came on board, that was
game over because there was just simply no time to push that game.com thing
when you're sitting on the product that's, all of a sudden, makes your company
millions in six months. Game.com fell through the grate I'm afraid.
And so what was the company view of the game.com then, after its failure?
This is a little bit related to toy industry and remember, Tiger Electronics,
no matter how it's called “electronics,” Tiger Electronics was a
toy manufacturer. And whether you're selling electronic toys or you're
selling other things, in the toy business, when something doesn't work, it's
nine times out of ten, you're going to walk away and drop it. There is no
second chance. No second chance because of licenses attached to the game.com.
No second chance because if the retailers are stuck at Christmas and they
don't want to be stuck in January, so they have to clear it. Once been
cleared unless you spend a third of your margin trying to appease the retailer and
have them to promote the stock without clearing it and unless you done that,
it's forgotten, you move on. It's gone. You failed, first Christmas, you move
to something else. It's very rare. I've been in industry for twenty-seven years,
it's very rare that you get a second chance in the toy industry. Very rare. It
happens but very rare. And that so, all the odds are against it.
So then, it wasn't too big of a deal because they had such great products
appear in the wake of that. I guess it was easy to just kind of step over the
game.com, yes?
It was easy. The money was flowing. What I'm telling you here is from the
inside of it, let's say that it's made me sound a little controversial but
that's the hard facts. The hard fact is the money was flowing. And there was,
in those very days, Tiger Electronics, Randy Rissman, the genius that he is
and the great man that he is, was obviously being chased by the likes of
Hasbro to buy the business. And between these, that, and the other, I think
the lack of focus, rather, killed game.com. And if you could make a billion,
nearly a billion dollars within six or eight months with one type of product,
which was low sweats.
You know, why are we going to spend on game.com so much money and to try to
market it, and the huge risk at a time where for the first time you have a
massive, massive payoff and you have a chance to sell your business?
Oh, sure. Makes perfect sense.
And in my humble opinion does it take anything away from the genius of Tiger
Electronics? No. If you asked me, of the six companies I've been with, Tiger
Electronics was the best to work with. The best to perform. The best to develop
products. Randy Rissman and Roger Shiffman, they were absolute genius. They
still are I'm sure. And they were phenomenal, phenomenal guys. And they just
had to, you know, bet their money on something else that's quick turnaround
and quick, quick turnover, you know. So, the risk was limited in terms of what
they knew how to do.
Sure. And other, former Tiger employees have told me it was their favorite
company to work for too, so that seems to be kind of a trend.
I wish I was still there. I wish it still exists. But Hasbro did the usual
Hasbro and both the company and then a few years later, the whole name
disappeared and their whole soul, sold the entire soul of the business that
they bought disappeared. And when you know it was nearly a billion dollar
company when the buy happened, it's a shame but it's typical Hasbro and
Mattel, how they handled things. But also times moves on and, you know, in
those days electronics was the highest thing you look for in toys.
And today, electronics doesn't necessarily cut it, you got to have the media,
you got to have video, you got to have digital, you got to have something to
do with communication, internet, and so on and so forth. So, again, Tiger
Electronics at its good times and because all the owners and the key stakeholder
and all product development such as Jeff Johnson and Patty Jackson and all
the guys, they're absolutely brilliant guys. You know, they devastated Hasbro
and therefore the business's soul went away with all these guys when they left
Hasbro. So, there we go.
Thanks very much for all that. I appreciate you taking the time, and it was
really nice to talk to somebody who was handling marketing in Europe because
it's a pretty unique perspective you shared.
Yes and remember, Europe would also be six months behind the US in those days,
in terms of trends and launching things. But also technology. But also acceptance,
acceptance of a fast technology in the households. So, if anything, Europe,
the UK, or Germany, or France, the key markets, it would have been also even
more difficult.
One more thing: Do you happen to remember the sales numbers you did in Europe?
Oh, I'm going to tell you I think it was not big. In terms of units I couldn't
tell you because we sold software and hardware, but I can tell you that it was
probably less than a couple of million pounds, probably less than three million.
It was quite small.
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