THE KING OF SPIN
spinner, compared with 2p if it arrives by sea. The market treats trend-driven toys as perishables, just like sugar-snap peas jetted in from Egypt or roses from Thailand.
Martin needs to get the spinners to market as soon as possible, before the fickle kids discover something else and he is left with a load of unsellable, whirling metal junk.
Or – even worse – his sworn enemies at the Trading Standards Authority discover a problem and kill his “hot line” dead.
Martin has history here, as anyone whose children made friendship bracelets in the summer of 2014 will remember.
“One of our biggest lines was loom bands,” he recalled. At the time, these tiny elastic bands that children patiently fashioned into rings and bracelets appeared unstoppable.
Then carcinogenic phthalates were found in some of the charms that went on the bracelets.
It was a big story and an even bigger disaster for Martin.
He said: “It died overnight. I got left with 28 containers of loom bands.”
Considering each one is the size of a fingernail, that is a mind-bending number.
He added: “It would have cost me £250k a year to store them. So I sold the lot for £1.”
The customer sold them on elsewhere. Martin added: “That’s life. You have to be ready for it, cry, then move on.”
Not every line can be a scorcher and Martin does not always spot the winners. He points to a rubber snake that looks as if it has been kicking about since he believed in Santa. Initially, he wasn’t keen but now it is one of his best sellers. He said: “People love it and the orders keep coming.” When he has a great idea, Martin knows
how to spin it out. In 1999, he was inspired to put a sticky, stretchy alien figure into a plastic egg. (He thinks it was a 3am brainwave.)
Alien eggs are still one of his star performers. More than 17million have been bought, then lost, then found covered in fluff by an enraged parent months later.
Eighteen years on, they are still going strong, available in every imaginable permutation including pink and purple to appeal to the female market.
There’s also a larger size. When placed in water, these ones hatch out of their shells and grow.
The Grossman showroom is full of these creepy creatures, lurking in fish tanks and jars.
And given the popularity of the hatching-growing process, a teddy will be getting the treatment next.
In Martin’s business plan, no good toy format dies. It’s just rebranded for the next generation. Slime, goo and putty – damaging the nation’s paintwork for decades – are sold as frogspawn (bright green with a plastic frog), dinosaur goo mountains and unicorn poo (pink and sparkly).
The company have a licence to make Ghostbusters products and there’s a collectible set of the film’s three ghosts, each with its own bin of toxic slime.
Discreetly acknowledging children’s fascination with bodily functions, Martin sells a toilet-shaped container of putty that makes what he calls “wind noises” when squashed.
There is also a whoopee cushion – a hardy perennial for 40 years – in the shape of the poo emoji.
Unicorns are available in every shape, size and format, although only in lilac, pink and white. They come in hatching eggs, putty, balloon balls, skittles, gliders and flashing bath toys.
Don’t want a unicorn on your light-up water ball? There are also aliens, fish, dinosaurs and trolls. Prefer your troll on a keyring? Martin Grossman can help you with that too.
Having retired once, and lasted nine months, Martin has no plans to try that again.
He would like to spend more time with his grandchildren (aged one and four), but the last time he turned up with a fidget spinner he was told to take it away again.
He said: “I missed the fun of doing it. I test every toy, every toy tested personally for me. I’m a big wean.”