Super Soaker Water Gun – The Best-Selling Toy of All Time – Made Its Inventor a Millionaire.
It took 10 years to turn an idea into a product, and from a nuclear engineer merely engaged in research and invention in laboratories, Lonnie Johnson became the creator of the best-selling toy of all time: The Water Gun.
Lonnie Johnson did not start as a businessman and never considered selling the rights to his inventions, even though he worked for Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the U.S. Air Force, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and holds over 80 patents.
The career of the water gun inventor began while he was still in high school. Young Lonnie Johnson built a robot and won first place at a regional science fair held at the University of Alabama. From that point on, Lonnie Johnson focused solely on research and innovation, never having the opportunity to think about business.
Lonnie Johnson and his product.
In the 1980s, while working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lonnie Johnson first conceived the idea for the Super Soaker water gun. However, funding was the first obstacle that delayed the realization of this idea. Johnson needed $200,000 to produce the first 1,000 water guns, but as a military officer, that amount was beyond his means.
Refusing to give up, he decided to go to New York and pitch his idea at a toy fair to find a manufacturer. There, he met with a representative from Larami, a toy manufacturing company established in 1947. He was invited to Larami’s headquarters in Philadelphia, where it took him two weeks to create the first water gun.
When the chairman of Larami exclaimed “Wow” after the demonstration in the conference room, Lonnie Johnson knew he had succeeded.
In its first year on the market, the water guns were named “Drencher”, but due to copyright complaints, the toy was renamed “Super Soaker”, a title it has retained to this day. At that time, the demand for water guns was so high that production could not keep up.
He shared: “I knew the gun worked well and would be successful, but I never expected it to become the number one selling toy in the world.”
As of now, the Super Soaker water gun has consistently ranked among the top 20 best-selling toys of all time since its market debut. It has generated over $1 billion in revenue and turned Lonnie Johnson into a millionaire.
Thanks to the tremendous success of the Super Soaker, Lonnie Johnson was able to further develop his own business and research career.
In addition to the Super Soaker water gun, Lonnie Johnson also invented a dart gun in collaboration with Hasbro, the third-largest toy company in the world, with annual revenues approaching $5 billion.
Many people think Lonnie Johnson is incredibly lucky, but few know the 10 years of effort he put in to make his idea a household name today. A time frame long enough for anyone to feel discouraged and give up along the way.
