My Dad was an employee but, I don’t see him listed. His name was Joe Findeis, came from Mattel toys division, between the years 1971 to 1973-ish, and I think was a Chief Tool Engineer.

Hey Jack Dull and Bob Klembus… I have just aquired an Optigan… I actually live in New Kensington, Pa! I never knew the Optigan® had any history here. Anyways, my optigan® is in need of some TLC. If either of you email or anything, please drop me a line at geo.strehl@yahoo.com THANKS A MILLION!

I worked there, too. First as Roy Chilton’s secretary, then as Marketing Administrator.

You can add me to the list of employees. I was Roy Chilton’s secretary before becoming the Marketing Administrator. Bob Costello was the Sales Manager.
The trade shows were a lot of fun. I enjoyed transporting the units and “manning” the booths. I agree with you, the Optigan® was too far ahead of its time.
Len Mayem is another Mattel employee who worked with Optigan.

Hi, I also worked at Optigan® in the early days at the West(?) Compton site. I set up the computer system there and worked directly for Bill Wilcock who was the Controller at the time. I also had the Office Manager, Bruce Tahamont, report to me. I still have my business card. I still have my Optigan. The demise was many fold (manifold). The major customer (Sears) was more interested in it being a fine piece of furniture rather than a novel type of organ. We had so many returns for redoing the “furniture” part of the organ.

Plus the sales volume estimate was unrealistic. It was more than the total organ market. They forecast sales of over 100,000 in the 1st full year. It was less than 27,000. Plus someone told Ruth Handler that we had already sold the complete forecast. When she got a report showing what the advertising budget was, she blew up.

Then the manufacturing line was innovative. It was one single line from one corner to the other of the manufacturing building. The problem was that if there were any problems along the way, the whole line stopped. There was an in-line loop to fix problems. The problem with that was that when the loop was full, nothing else could be guided into it, thus stopping the whole line.

I worked at Mattel two years before Optigan®, and went to Circus World after that.

One interesting thing that happened there(There was a lot!) was I was involved in getting a free Optigan® sent to Zsa Zsa Gabor. I flipped out until I found out she was Jack Ryan’s girl friend. They got married, but Jack became the first man to ever divorce her. She probably said something bad about the Optigan® he(we) gave her.

I was called back to do the computer part of a physical inventory before the buyout to Miner by the Mattel Controller.

I just found my worksheet where I projected sales after August sales were reported. We had sold 12,982 organs for Organ sales of 2,353 for $616,372 organs, $725,472.03 total. Making YTD units- 12,982 $3,163,995 organs $3,666,216.39 total

Remember the sales forecast was for 100,000 units for the full year. At this point I projected a low of 27,100 units & a high of 31,806 units. When pressed for one based on some scientific method, I used SWAG and came up with 27,654.75 units (I knew that we couldn’t sell 3/4 of a unit, but that was what my projection showed with sales of $6,964,949 organs & $8,129,626.05 total.

Final year-end results: 27,700 units sales: $6,965,000 organs $8,130,000 My SWAG in August was really close, but not good for the company. But, 100,000 units was more than the total market for all organs in 1970. Unrealistic.