Dan Klitsner, inventor
In the early 90s, I was working on zany remote controls for kids. I called them Remote Out-of-Controls. One of them looked like a surfboard, another like a slice of pizza. But there was one I called the channel bopper. It was basically a hammer: you could go up and down channels by bopping the hammer, plus there was a volume knob you could twist.
I’d gone for a hammer because I once heard someone in a meeting say: “Watch the kid, not the toy.” I interpreted that as: “What if the remote controlled the kid?” So there would be these physical actions required. I mocked it up in Photoshop and made a model, cutting it out of foam with a knife.
Then I made a recording of myself saying “bop it, twist it, pull it” – all things you could do to the prototype. It was fun to do and funny to watch people do it. I took it to Milton Bradley, before they were bought over by Hasbro, and pitched it to Bill Dohrmann, an industry legend, the guy who discovered Twister and the Nerf ball. “You know what?” he said. “There’s something here.”
Bop It! launched in 1997 and was a reasonable success, but I was told it would probably die out in three years. Then, in the second year, it did even better. The company asked: “What else can we do?” They suggested making it smaller but I wanted to make it bigger, so I showed them ideas for Bop It! Extreme. It launched two years later, cost $5 more and outsold the original by 50%.
When I did the original pitch, I sped up my voice and put in silly sound effects. I used Homer Simpson’s “D’oh!” line for when the player messed up. We obviously couldn’t get clearance for that so in the final product it became a scream like you’d just hammered your finger. Years later I met Simpsons creator Matt Groening and told him about it. “I know Bop It!,” he said. “I have a love/hate relationship with it.” A year or so later, a Simpsons episode did a spoof called Bonk It, which was pretty cool.
Buddy Rubino, voice of Bop It! since 2008
I didn’t know what Bop It! was when I got the audition, so I asked how they wanted me to approach it. And they said: “Just say it really excited.” So that’s what I did. There’s nothing put-on with the Bop It! voice: it’s just me, or maybe me on 10 energy drinks.
Only when I got the job did I realise the magnitude of the project. I prepared well for the recording session, which took about an hour and a half. You have to find different energy levels because the toy is going to be saying these phrases over and over. Each command has about five variations. I particularly enjoy doing the razzes: that’s when you mess up and the toy pokes fun at you. It’s just fun to say: “I remember my first time playing Bop It!” and be a little sarcastic.
I have a niece and nephew who love Bop It! and get a real kick out of the fact that their uncle does the voice. When people find out, they get pretty excited. I get asked to record voicemail messages or make prank calls. Other people will smile at me through gritted teeth and say: “I hate you!” As the voice of Bop It!, I’ve basically been trolling people worldwide.
