George is a model maker by trade, but has experienced a colorful and diverse life.  As a WWII Air Force veteran, he served the last five months of the War in England as a member of a B17 bomber crew that successfully completed 26 missions.  Upon returning home, he worked for the consulting firm Walter Teague Associates on Madison Avenue and designed a diverse group of items, from bathroom cleanser containers to the interiors of Boeing 707s; from electric coffee makers to structures for the 1964 World's Fair.  He was one of the primary designers and model makers for Topper during its heyday in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and continued to work in his field into the 1990s.  I had the pleasure of interviewing George in person over the course of an afternoon.  In addition, he took me out for a spin in his beautiful bright red enamel 1962 Thunderbird convertible, which he has owned for nine years.  I wish I could have seen the car he had before -- a 1926 Model T Roadster!  George is engaging, witty and thoroughly enjoyable to talk to.  We chatted about a number of things, including his time at Topper.  Following are excerpts from our conversation.

CB's:  I almost forgot to turn the tape recorder on.
George Odenwaller:  I'm going to tell a lot of lies now --

CB's:  Oh no, no! (laughs)
George Odenwaller:  -- now that you've got that on.  I can lie like a rug! (smile)

CB's:  Prior to Topper, you had worked for many years on Madison Avenue.
George Odenwaller:  That was with Walter Tiege Associates.  Mr. Tiege was a real nice man, to all his people, personally.  There are a lot of funny stories of delivering these things that Al Danoto and I went through.  Once we had a project.  It was an engine, electric.  This big, this high and that square (approximately 5x5x5 feet).  All made out of wood.  It's got a big aluminum mandrel at one end, with a plate, with bolts and big nuts, and on the back is another mandrel coming out.  Al and I had to deliver that someplace in New York City.  I grabbed the back and he grabbed the front, and we took it in the elevator, down to the street to get a cab.  Think we could get a cab?  It was on the sidewalk, and we're both standing there, hailing cabs.  A cab would stop, and we pick this up, and the guy says, "I ain't takin' that! No, no! No, no!"  (Pointing to his head) Nothing up here!  How can we lift that [if it was real]?  It was sprayed with a material they used to spray shelves with years ago.  It was sprayed on with a vacuum cleaner or something, but when it dried it looked like it was cast iron.  Light green.  And these guys never thought, "How can these two guys lift this thing up?"  It looked like it weighed two or three thousand pounds.  And it was wood!  Finally we convinced one guy it's wood, and he took us and we delivered it.  So that's one of the funny stories.  Tiege was a nice company to work for.  Long after I left Tiege, and I worked for Topper -- for over a year, maybe a year and a half, almost two years -- I kept getting telephone calls to come back.

CB's:  Why did you leave Walter Tiege for Topper?  Was it the challenge?
George Odenwaller:  Well, no.  Tiege was in New York City.  The bus, when I lived in Saddle Brook, didn't take me to New York City.  I had to use my car.  I went down to the Lincoln Tunnel, where there used to be a Lincoln Parking Lot.  Down at the bottom, when you make that sharp turn to go into the tunnel --

CB's:  There used to be a parking lot right there?
George Odenwaller:  There used to be all this parking.  All black, nothing [else] was there.

CB's:  No kidding.
George Odenwaller:  And that's where you parked.  You walked across the street and any bus that came along would bring you to the terminal.  That was my mode of travel.  But, then you (had) to pay New York City tax.  Plus a New Jersey tax.  This tax, that tax.  And, then I saw in the paper Topper was looking for model makers, and I called.  Told them where I worked, who I worked for, what my salary was.  And they almost doubled it, to come work for them in Jersey.  So I figured, I live in Saddle Brook -- from there down to E-Port was the [New Jersey] Turnpike.  It would be worth the trip.

CB's:  Plus you're not paying the taxes in the City anymore.
George Odenwaller:  I'm paying only Jersey tax.  So that's how I got there, working for Topper.  It was a real good experience, met a lot of people.  We met Al Unser.  Doing that racecar thing.  He came to Topper, with Henry [Orenstein] and a group of people, you know, all of the "Ties" and that (smile).  The only guy who showed up like a slob was Jim Hensen --

CB's:  The Muppet creator?
George Odenwaller:  Roy Markwith did all the Muppets, all the Sesame Street stuff.  And then we started --

CB's:  So all the original Sesame Street stuff was done at Topper?
George Odenwaller:  Yeah.

CB's:  Wow.  I didn't know that.
George Odenwaller:  Yeah.  And Jim Hensen came down with his little boy, on his back like a papoose.  He looked like a slob!  I mean, I knew his face, but I think, we would go someplace, you put nice clothes on! (smile)  He didn't, looked like a hippie!  But he was a nice guy to talk to.  And he asked a lot of questions, on how we did things.  He was quite interesting.  He did all of his original dolls himself.  Not being a mechanic of any kind, he was interested in how we did the stuff.  We did a lot of stuff that was really off the wall, which wasn't used.  But, basically what you see from Jim Henson is what we did.  With the garbage cans --

CB's:  Yeah, Oscar the Grouch --
George Odenwaller:  And many times -- I don't know how many I painted -- I had all these finger puppets too.  I had a whole bunch of those I gave to kids.  I had them for years, but I gave them to the kids, never thinking that somebody might be interested [today], but it's all gone.  Same with the toys, the cars, the Johnny Lightning stuff.  There's probably a bunch buried in the cellar someplace, I don't know!  But all of those I brought home, you just give them to kids.  That's why I brought them home.

CB's:  Well, that's what they were for!
George Odenwaller:  Yeah!  Same with the [Dawn] dolls.  But, my wife didn't give the dolls away I brought home.  She wanted to keep them.  Once a week, I'd go down, bring two dolls home.  `Cause they were all different, all the time.  I didn't know one from the other, but I knew I wouldn't get two of the same.  She's got boxes of these things, all wrapped in tissue.

CB's:  That's amazing.
George Odenwaller:  Oh, let me show you something else --

CB's:  Look at that, a Johnny Lightning jacket! [SEE RIGHT]
George Odenwaller:  You know what my wife asked?  I brought home a jumper, dark blue, with Johnny Lightning on the back, for my son.  You know, with the zipper right down the front?  He wore that all the time -- wore it out!  My wife asked him yesterday, "What did you do with it?"  Come on! (laughs)  He grew up!

CB's:  He can't even get his arm into it now! (laughs)
George Odenwaller:  No!  What did he do with it? (laughs)  Ridiculous!  But anyhow, here's the light one and the dark one.

CB's:  That's something. So see, you still have something ...
George Odenwaller:  Yeah ... So, I really didn't lie about Johnny Lightning! (laughs)

CB's:  No (laughs) ... I know that!
George Odenwaller:  Everything else I lied about!

CB's:  How did Topper arrive at the decision to start making the toy cars for the boys?
George Odenwaller:  I don't know.  It was brought up at a board meeting, that's all I know.  Of course, Hot Wheels had started.  And Hot Wheels was a toy that Henry wanted to compete with.

CB's:  Did the company compete with Mattel before that?
George Odenwaller:  Sure.  But as Reading Corporation, before Henry took hold of the helm.  Another group owned Reading Corporation.  But, Henry came in with a group of bucks and moved it to Jersey, and then started the whole thing, all different.  A lot of the things in the books here, where they had the little dash boards for the kids to drive, with the horns and windshield wipers, that was already established by Reading Corporation.  Henry, and his group of people that he had under him, that he hired and so forth, made the company a jewel making jewels, not junk.  They were trashy [before].  He put the quality into it.  And that's why this company all of a sudden sprung like crazy.  And then came Al Unser stuff and other items.

CB's:  You mentioned Al Unser.  How did all of that come about, as far as sponsoring the car?  And then he won the race, which was great, but how did it start to begin with?
George Odenwaller:  We were making little cars, competing with Hot Wheels.  He thought, "what about big cars?"  The stocks [NASCAR] were not up yet at that time.  Stock cars, as we know it today, were on the bottom of the racing circuit.  Gypsies, hand-to-mouth, barely making it.  Today it's big time.  But at that time, it wasn't.

CB's:  It was the Indy circuit that was popular.
George Odenwaller:  That's right.  So, being that there was the Indy circuit, there was only one kind of car, a racecar.  When Henry was in business, competing against Hot Wheels, the line that he had were all these funny-looking jerky-looking things, not particularly race cars that you would see.  They were made up by some dummy at the [drafting] board, like myself. (smile)  Drawings like this.  Sketches [SEE RIGHT].  Here's another one with the bear barrel in the back.  Just a sketch.  Then you made the car from that.  But he decided, "how about a big car?"  From what I understand, the board had a meeting.  Henry came up with the idea he wanted to get Al Unser.  Everybody thought he was nuts.  Big bucks.  Somehow they got the money together and they sponsored the car.  And then he won.  Then they sponsored it the second year.  You see a number two on the car, for the second year.  He didn't make it, didn't win.  [But] that's why we had the number two.

CB's:  But it didn't matter because the fact that he won the first year is what propelled the sales.
George Odenwaller:  Yes.  But that's how the Johnny Lightning big car came about.

CB's:  What kind of person was Henry Orenstein during those days?
George Odenwaller:  Henry thought big -- even with sculpturing.  Henry was an amateur sculptor.  And he had Roy, who did the puppet stuff -- that's what Roy worked in, the Plasteline, the clay -- down in his office to show Henry how to be a sculptor.  Half the time he was down in the office he should have been up doing Sesame Street stuff.  Henry had this big, oversized head of Benjamin Franklin on a podium behind his desk.  Very plush desk, fancy chairs and the leather -- it looked like a dance floor, his desk was so big.  Well in the corner was the podium where he'd sit there and he'd sculpt.  And he'd call up Roy to come down from the model shop, to see if he's doing it right.  Roy would help him some, then go back upstairs.  One day, the cleaning lady came in, and you know what -- it fell over, the clay, on the floor, so one side of the face was flat.  Henry called Roy and told him what happened.  Roy thought it was a joke, he couldn't believe what he heard.  But he went down and sure enough, the head had fallen.  The lady who did that was about to commit suicide, and Henry convinced her, don't commit suicide, it was an accident.  And that was the end of it.  He was very docile, a gentle man.

CB's:  He treated everybody fairly?
George Odenwaller:  Everybody was treated equally, regardless of your status in the company.  If he paid your salary, you were equal to anybody else he paid.  He didn't want to know about the salary.  He just wanted to know what you could do.

CB's:  And he had an open door policy so you could talk to him at any time?
George Odenwaller:  Oh yeah, you could go to him, if Henry was available, sure.  I didn't do that too often.  If we did make something new for the first time, we brought it down to Henry, made sure a little something was wrong so he could find it and he'd okay it when we'd bring it back the next day or that same afternoon.  He'd okay it, and off we'd go.  You'd see it in the stores a couple of months later.  An easy guy to get along with, very easy.

CB's:  How long did it take from the time a product was conceived on the drawing board until it went out of the door?
George Odenwaller:  Well, that depended upon the item itself.

CB's:  Let's say one of the cars, one of the Johnny Lightning cars.
George Odenwaller:  The little cars?  Let's see ... I would get it, make the block, decide whether it would have a door, the steel would have to be cut, then you had to mount it -- maybe about a month.

CB's:  That's not bad.  That's pretty quick actually.
George Odenwaller:  They didn't have to ship anything anyplace, to come back and forth, so they didn't have problems in some other city.  It was right there.  Wherever Henry was, he could walk out the door and walk to another building, on his own feet.

CB's:  Now all of the plant was in Port Elizabeth location.
George Odenwaller:  Yes, it was right next to Singer Sewing Machine Company.

CB's:  I wonder if Singer is still there.
George Odenwaller:  They're still there.  Part of the building is not Singer anymore, somebody else is in there, but Singer is in the same (building).  (Looking at some of the blueprints and drawings) All proposals.

CB's:  There's a Maverick.
George Odenwaller:  Yeah, that's basically a Maverick [SEE RIGHT].  That's a timestamp right there.  You can tell what year that was drawn because of the car itself, the Maverick, when it came out.

CB's:  Wow.
George Odenwaller:  Now these are the transparencies they put in the catalogs.  There're so many other things ... I left it all in the garbage!  I grabbed some of the things I made, through other things away I didn't.  But, I didn't go through the garbage that much.  I should have.  I should have gone through the garbage.  You wouldn't believe what was thrown out.  Dumpsters, dumpsters and dumpsters full of these things.  Unbelievable.

CB's:  What happened to everything in the plant after everything was shut down?  Did the liquidators get it all or ...?
George Odenwaller:  No.  All the machinery, anything in the building, within the confines of the building, would have a red dot on it, which meant it was for sale.  A blue dot, not for sale.  Somebody had it spoken for, or they were going to send the whole thing as a unit to somebody.  But anything with a red dot, that included desks, chairs, anything.  A lathe, if it had a red dot on it, was for sale.  And you bid on it, and then it was yours.  It was almost for dirt-cheap!  I bought a lot of stuff -- my grinder, a lot of things.  I just ran out of money.  There were so many things I picked up machine-wise and so forth, small items.  But nothing like machinery or a lathe or something.  I don't have room for that.  But, other guys were buying all kinds of stuff.  My boss at that time, Jim Mosca from the model shop, he bought a whole bunch of stuff, thinking ahead.

CB's:  Now, Jim Mosca is whom you worked for after Topper?  He started up a business from scratch after Topper shut down.
George Odenwaller:  He put a shop in his house.  That's how he started.  He bought himself a lathe, drill press, and started that way.  And, when he finally got around to it, he found himself an old place, that needed help, and he called all the guys that used to work for him, like myself, Jack Horner, Carl -- we were all working someplace else -- to come down and help him put a business together, maybe on a Saturday or Sunday.  We all did.  We showed up, we had beer and pizza and so on.  We worked like hell.  It used to be a building that put out the local newspaper, a bottom street-level building with steps in the back that went up to another level.  And after the newspaper left, a sewing machine group got in there, and they put in a wooden floor in.  So there was a lot of work to be done building-wise.  And, sometimes he could pay us, sometimes he couldn't.  But eventually, he paid us all off.  In time, I went to work for him, and Jack Horner went to work for him.  And I stayed with Jim for almost 26 years.  I handled his business for him while he wasn't there, away on vacation, business trips.  One time he was on vacation, he was going to call up, to find out what's happening.  I told him, you do that, I'm going to hang up.  And he called, and I hung up!

CB's:  Yeah, how's the weather?  Everything good?  Okay, see ya, bye!
George Odenwaller:  Fine, good, good-bye!  He never called back.  I expected him to call back but he didn't.  He was a good guy.

CB's:  You obviously enjoy being a model craftsman.  Tell me what you love about the profession.
George Odenwaller:  The beauty of being a model maker per se, regardless of whom you work for -- there are some companies that do the same type of thing all the time, which is boring -- fortunately, everything I did was always something new.  Every job is new, every day, for a model maker.  I don't mean every actual day, but after you finish that job, something else totally different will come in.  Now you've got to start (planning) in your brain -- you lay in the bed at night; you get to bed, lay down, and your eyes are wide open in the dark and you're thinking how the hell am I going to do this tomorrow?  How can I engineer this?  How can I get around this?  What will I need?  Do I have the equipment?  Do I have the materials?  I was one of those who was into it.  Anybody I worked for, I was theirs -- they owned me.  And I felt that, whatever I could give above and beyond just being a model maker was gratifying to me.  A lot of times I got recognition for it, a lot of times I didn't.  It didn't make a difference one way or the other -- I enjoyed what I did.  I couldn't wait to get to work every day.  Can you do that in your business?

CB's:  Yeah, I can actually, but you can't in all businesses though.
George Odenwaller:  See, that's the catch.  I thoroughly enjoyed going to work.  Once, I went to work and I slept at Topper!  I got down there and it was snowing like hell.  The snow was a foot deep when I left the house.  When I got down there, it was two feet deep!  I got there, but I couldn't come home.  So, I had to eat my sandwich a little bit here, save a little bit for later, and sleep on a couch.  When they finally cleared the streets a day and a half later, then I went home.

CB's:  I want to bounce around a little bit.  Touching on the earlier events in your life, have you been back to Europe since the War?
George Odenwaller:  I've had a good life.  Even with the War and everything, being a survivor, [seeing] a lot of ugly things.  A lot of times I was close to things, I start to cry.  I don't know why, but I do.  When I was in England [recently], I went back to the field to visit.  Steve Kenner, the curator of the museum was there.  When I left the place, I shook hands with Steve.  He said, "See you next time George, don't look back." I never thought of looking back until he said that.  So I went out the door with other people, and I sort of lingered behind them before getting into the cars to leave the field.  And, it got the best of me.  I turned around and looked back.  And I cried.  It all came back.  Occasionally, it does happen, but not to the point where it upsets me.  I don't know why, but something in the back of my head -- we're here [today], and that was fifty years ago.  Why should we be concerned with it now?  It just proves that what's in your head is a computer.  Everything is there; you can't get at it right away.  When you experience things, it stays there.  There's always something that will trigger your memory, something you haven't thought of in years.  The trip to England was a great thing [overall], a lot of fun.

CB's:  Bouncing back to the 1960s, what was the angle that Henry was looking for in regard to competing with Hot Wheels?
George Odenwaller:  Well, Hot Wheels established a lot of things first.  It's easy to build on somebody else's (foundation).  Simple, all you do is modify it.  Now you've got your own line.  One of the things that were very important, engineering wise, was the little whisker that was the axle of the wheels.  The axles were special.  The wheels were special.  You look at the Hot Wheels wheels and the Johnny Lightning wheels at that time, they were different.  The wheels were wider on Johnny Lightning, but they had a twenty-thousandth rim around.  That was the surface it road on.  The big wheel looked like it was riding on [the track] but it didn't.  That was something Hot Wheels didn't have.  (EDITOR'S NOTE: The Hot Wheels did have a similar rim on the wheels, but the Johnny Lightning rim was thinner in width and larger in diameter relative to the wheel, providing less friction and being less prone to wear.)  Then came the finish.  The finish on the cars was different from Hot Wheels.  Hot Wheels were painted.  Henry wanted (Johnny Lightnings) painted too, but he wanted them very shiny and glassy.  So he scrounged and found some company that put out these big hot electric units that baked paint.  And it was an involved process, cost more than spraying.  But when it was finished, the paint on there, you couldn't scratch it with a key.  It was so hard, like glass.  And it was an epoxy compound of some sort, various colors, that was put on these cars by a machine.  As they came out of the unit, they went into the heating machinery.  And they came out of the other end and had to be assembled by the girls on the line.  So his process, different from Hot Wheels, was the paint on the cars.

CB's:  Was the metal chrome plated first or was it all part of the process?
George Odenwaller:  The raw metal went in, and all the colors came out.  A hundred of this, or a thousand of these and a thousand of those, it kept running all day.  And we had a night shift too.  The cars were knocked out, and the finish on the cars was gorgeous -- they were really pretty.  And Hot Wheels never did anything about it -- they didn't have to because they had the name already.  They had the core of the market.

CB's:  The Dawn dolls were very popular.  Weren't they more popular than the Barbies?  And if the company had survived they possibly would have been established as the top seller.
George Odenwaller:  I think it would have because it was more diversified.  However, the Dawn doll appealed not only to little kids.  The older more mature kids would understand a Dawn doll, where the youngsters would not.  The diversity of costumes was unlimited.  It was almost that way with Barbie and Ken.  The thing is with Dawn dolls; the joints are articulated, only as far as the shoulders and the hips.  There was no knee articulation or elbow articulation.

CB's:  Weren't there two series of dolls?
George Odenwaller:  The smaller dolls had a wire in them, that you could bend, and they would stay that way.  Eventually, the wire would break through, but it wasn't intended to be a long-time toy.  It was a small toy.  There were mannequins on the market, with full articulation.  There was a lot of trouble with them.  With the shoulder joint and all of the articulation, it had to be a ball joint.  But with a ball joint, the elbow would bend back.  Then there had to be stops put in.  So you'd have to engineer a stop someplace, somehow in there, to keep it from bending back in the wrong direction.  It got very involved.  It worked beautifully, as a model, with hundreds of hours in it.  Production wise, it was shaky because these are production pieces and parts, which eventually, all the glitches would have to be taken out.  But by that time, you couldn't afford to manufacture, no less buy it.

CB's:  What were the plans for the Johnny Lightning cars beyond 1972?  Mattel ran into problems with a drop in sales due to the energy crisis and decided to cut back on production.
George Odenwaller:  I don't think Henry had any plans for cutting back.  It was full steam ahead.

CB's:  Probably, if Topper had survived, it would have changed the whole course of events.  Mattel would have been forced to compete, to offer a higher quality Hot Wheels product than what they actually did in 1973.
George Odenwaller:  Yes.  But they all have to bend, as times change and materials change, so does the industry change. So does the consumer change, on the desire of toys.

CB's:  Thanks again for this time to chat.  You've had a busy and fascinating career.
George Odenwaller:  I've had a very nice life work-wise as a model maker.  I've met a lot of nice people.  I had a pretty nice career all told.

(Interview conducted by `65Skylark)

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