Salem News -
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Published on: 12/13/2006
Last Visited: 12/13/2006
Jay Horowitz of Salem holds two of the newly-minted Sudoku Cube game toys that he invented this year.
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SALEM - "I think Sudoku is the first global craze," said Jay Horowitz, inventor of the Sudoku Cube.
"They say over 400 million people are playing it and it's growing.Looks like we've got a good one here."
Horowitz, a Salem resident for three years, is a traveled and tenured toy manufacturer, inventor and businessman who since his childhood in New York City has had toys in his blood.
His grandfather and father were in the business and the 59-year-old inventor has purchased the molds and intellectual rights to a number of once heavy-hitting toy companies like Marx Toys and Ideal Toys.
He also owns the molds and product rights, but not the name, to the famed Rubik's Cube, a once hot-selling toy that the Sudoku Cube shares common elements with.
The idea started when Horowitz, who is a close friend of Evel Knievel, was invited to Daytona Beach to appear with him last March.
On the return flight to Sebring, where he owns American Classic Toys Inc., Horowitz was sitting next to a woman doing the Sudoku puzzle in a newspaper.
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By the end of the flight, Horowitz was thinking of the Rubik's Cube molds he owned along with the other rights.
"So I had the germ of an idea," he said, adding he related his idea to company personnel and bought some books on Sudoku.
"I read them, figured it out and the got the Rubik's Cubes, but I couldn't figure out how to put the numbers on," Horowitz explained.
He hammered away at it for over a month, letting his muse take over when it called.
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The Sudoku Cube, which is available online at www.sudokucube.net or locally at Leonard's Hardware in Sebring, comes with a booklet that Horowitz wrote.
It has a history of Sudoku, etiology of the word, instructions on how to play, how not to play, levels of play, tutorial puzzles and information about American Classic Toys.
Horowitz started his own company in South America in 1969 where American products already designed and developed became popular after cycling through the American marketplace.
"Last year's hits from the U.S. became next year's hits in South America," he said of his business in Bogota, Colombia.
But after eight or nine years, Horowitz said, "We had problems.Embezzlement, robbery, kidnapping and extortion.
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Along the way, Horowitz has owned the assets of Marx Toys, founded a collector toy company under that name, written a book on Marx Toys.
Horowitz also purchased molds and intellectual property rights to the Ideal Toy Corp. from CBS in 1985.
He later formed American Classic Toy Inc., the company he currently heads, and reissued classic American toys and games made from original molds to the original specifications, updated to meet current technology and safety standards.
It was in 1994 when, he said, the opportunity to invest with Mahoning Valley Plastics Co. in Sebring presented itself along while American Plastic Equipment Inc. and Mahoning Valley Plastics formed a joint-venture in The Marx Toy Corp. with Horowitz remaining the president and chief shareholder of Marx Toy Corp., an Ohio corporation based in Sebring.
In 1995, the assets of American Plastic Equipment were moved to Sebring, with warehouses in Columbiana and Sebring, which have since been consolidated.
With American Classic Toys, Horowitz, who plays the piano and is into classic, Broadway and standard music (he's played in Timberlanes and at the Salem Community Center for an audience), said he's doing what he has done for the past 37 years.
"I issue toys from original molds with new twists and presentation."
Born and raised in New York, Horowitz is single and speaks Spanish, English, Italian, German, Portugese, and is learning Mandarin Chinese.
He studies Chinese while working out early each morning at the Salem Community Center, listening to lessons while he breaks sweat.
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