Fuzz Bud, Cheesy Puff, and Why Product Development Was a Family Sport

I cannot believe this story can exist in a photo archive and still look like filler.

Jacob’s Cheesy Puff pick — because obviously the product needed a counterpart with a personality.

Fuzz Bud was a strong product. My recollection is that it launched around an $85 retail price with roughly $12 landed cost. That gave us a ridiculous amount of room to acquire customers and still make the economics work.

But the part I remember most is that the product world was not sterile. Kids were in it. Jacob made choices. We built characters around things. We cared about the weird details because the weird details were where a product stopped being inventory and started becoming part of somebody’s life.

Of course we eventually needed a custom tailgate. Normal branding was apparently not an option.

That family-business instinct is all over the archive: products in the house, kids in the prototypes, packaging everywhere, custom art, silly names, and an unreasonable willingness to make the physical world match the thing we pictured in our heads.