Rest In Play - 2020 - 2029

Joe Ruby was born on March 30, 1933 and passed away on August 26, 2020 at the age of 87. Joe was best known for co-creating the animated Scooby-Doo franchise with Ken Spears. Together, they founded th...e television animation production company Ruby-Spears Productions. Joe attended Fairfax High School, and immediately afterward joined the Navy. He worked as a sonar operator on a destroyer during the Korean War. After his service, Joe studied art and began his career in animation at Walt Disney Animation Studios. A few years later, he met Ken Spears, who was also a Navy verteran, and they teamed up to become writers for several animated and live-action television programs. They worked for a number of companies, including Hanna-Barbera, Sid and Marty Krofft, and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises. For Hanna-Barbera, the duo created the Scooby-Doo franchise and its main characters, which debuted in September 1969. In 1977, ABC set Joe and Ken up with their own studio, Ruby-Spears Productions, where they animated different series for Saturday mornings, including Fangface, The Plastic Man Comedy-Adventure Hour, Thundarr the Barbarian, Saturday Supercade, Mister T, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and Superman, among others.Show more

Loretta Whitney was born on February 17, 1941, and passed away on December 27, 2020 at the age of 79. Loretta was a dollmaker, famous for creating Baby Whitney, a doll with realistic Black features. ... Loretta attended Howard University, and came into doll making when she was looking to gift her niece a doll and was having trouble finding a Black doll with realistic features. The Cabbage Patch Kids craze was in full swing, and while they did have a few Black dolls, they were made the same as white dolls, just using brown fabric. Her boyfriend, soon-to-be husband, Melvin Whitfield, had noticed the same thing—that even though there may have been Black dolls on the shelves, they were modeled after European faces and bodies. So, after getting married in 1984, the pair decided to design an alternative. They spent 3 years creating Baby Whitney, one of first realistic mass-produced Black dolls.Show more

Paul Coker Jr. was born on March 5, 1929 and passed away on July 23, 2022 at the age of 93. He was an American illustrator, best known for his work on Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town..., and The Year Without A Santa Claus. Paul studied art at the University of Kansas before taking a job as a greeting card designer for Hallmark in the 1950s. Paul's first professional work was in 1946, when he designed Chest Lion, the mascot for Lawrence High School in Lawrence, Kansas, where he grew up. He went on to illustrate over 375 articles in the magazine Mad. In 1967, he became a production designer on more than a dozen Rankin/Bass specials and shorts, like the ones mentioned above.Show more

Dean O'Donnell a Massachusetts professor and game writer, passed away unexpectedly on March 7, 2022. Dean received his BS in Physics at WPI, and his MFA in Dramatic Writing at Brandeis University. ...He contributed to a number of early independent games from the early role-playing-game era, including Titan Quest and Titan Quest: Immortal Throne. Dean has been a teacher at WPI for the last 29 years and helped create the university's Interactive Media and Games Development program. Dean enjoyed alternate reality games, table-top roleplaying games, and "overly complicated board games." He will be dearly missed by his wife, his sister, two nieces, his great-niece, and many other family members, friends, colleagues, and students alike.Show more

Marty Kroft, co-producer of children's TV shows "H.R. Pufnstuf" and "Land of the Lost," was born on April 9, 1937 and passed away on November 25, 2023. Marty died of kidney failure at the age of 86. ... Marty, along with his brother, Sid, were often known as the Krofft Brothers, and through their production company, Sid & Marty Krofft, they made a number of successful children's television shows in the 1970s. Namely, H.R. Pufnstuf, Land of the Lost, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Lidsville, and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, to name a few.Show more

Bryan Ansell was born on October 11, 1955 and passed away on December 30, 2023. He was a British role-playing and wargame designer, known for his time as managing director of Games Workshop. Bryan ...got his start in the toy industry as a miniature sculptor for Conquest Miniatures. In 1976, he and two friends founded Asgard Miniatures, but two years later, Bryan left Asgard and partnered with Games Workshop to found the company Citadel Miniatures, which would go on to produce and manufacture 25mm historical and fantasy minatures for games published by Games Workshop. Bryan himself designed Warhammer and Fantasy Battle. In 1985, after Citadel Minatures became the most profitable line of the company, Bryan became managing director of Games Workshop. Bryan passed away at the age of 68, leaving behind his wife, Dianne, and will be dearly missed by friends, family, and colleagues alike.Show more

Oscar Koveleski, founder of the Auto World and Kidracer brands, passed away on December 28, 2020 at the age of 88. Oscar was a race car driver and scale model enthusiast, and founded Auto World in... 1958. Through ads in magazines, it grew in popularity, and soon it became a catalog business that pioneered the hobby and specialty retail space through its extensive offerings of slot-racing cars and track sets, plastic model kits, R/C cars, building supplies, and other items. After finding much success, Oscar opened a brick and mortar location of the mail-order business. 30 years later in 1988, Oscar launched the Kidracer line of miniature Formula 1 race cars for kids. These battery-powered cars continued to evolve over the years. Oscar had a successful career as a race car driver as well. His first win came in a 1951 SCCA Regional race at Bone Stadium in Pittston, Pennsylvania. He spent the 50s and 50s in SCCA Regional and National Races, and in 1970, he won the ASR National Championship at Road Atlanta. He also was on the board of directors of the Motor Racing Safety Society.Show more

Jimmy Hunter, founder of Hunter Toys, passed away in November 2020 after a long illness. Jimmy has been involved with the toy industry since the 1970s, even founding his own company, Hunter Toys, w...hich was a successful supplier of dolls and dolls' clothing. Jimmy was the BTHA Chairman from 2000-2002, and was very involved with Toy Fair and the BTHA's Value of Play initiatives. He was the champion for Total Fun and the brainchild behind the Golden Teddy awards. Jimmy was also involved in the Toy Trust, with many of his friends recalling fond memories of him at the most recent Toy Trust fundraiser. His daughter, Sally, followed in his footsteps, enjoying a similar career in the toy trade.Show more

Malcolm Rose passed away in late 2021. Malcolm's first role in the toy industry was in the mid 60s at Angel Toys. He spent several years there, holding many senior roles, and also lent his expertise t...o Illco, Tyco-Matchbox, and Mookie Toys. His last full-time role was as sales director at Mookie Toys, where he played an instrumental part in the growth of the business and its establishment as a pre-eminent force in the outdoor toy market, both in the UK and internationally. Though he retired in 2005, he continued to work as a consultant for many years, namely for Top Banana Toys and Kyria. Malcolm leaves behind a wonderful family, his wife, Sandra, children Simon and Jo, and grandchildren Sophie and Sam.Show more

Playwright and Ubisoft veteran Russell Lees passed away in January of 2022 after a heart attack at the age of 64. Russell started out in the gaming industry in the mid 1990s and wrote and directed ...the 1995 PC horror adventure The Dark Eye, a digital adaptation of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. He joined Ubisoft in 2009 and spent 13 years there, where he wrote narratives, scripts, and sub-stories for titles including Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Watch Dogs. He also wrote the comedy Nixon's Nixon, about the imaginary meeting between Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger on the eve of Nixon's resignation, which debuted off-Broadway in 1995 and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award. He also wrote Monticel', another political play about Thomas Jefferson. Russell co-founded the TheatreWorks/West production company in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he wrote and directed for the stage and served as director of French-language plays at the University of Utah.Show more