Steve Herbolich (A’83) invented the game Askew! during a particularly “boring” community board meeting. He recently licensed the production rights to educational toy company Melissa & Doug, whose products are featured everywhere from niche catalogues to Toys“R”Us superstores.

What is Askew!?

It’s a fun and simple sculptural balance game. Players get pieces—metal rods with unique bends—and the object is to take turns hanging the rods on the base’s hook without knocking off other pieces. If you do knock some down, they become yours to hang. The game is over when someone uses all of his or her pieces.

Is this a children’s game?

Kids like it because it looks like a game for adults. What they don’t realize is that they’re introducing themselves to the laws of physics and the principals of gravity and balance. But it’s a game for adults, too. There’s not a lot of rules involved; you can invite friends over and have a conversation while building a unique sculpture every time you play.

You’re a technical illustrator at Volvo; did you ever imagine you would be a toy maker, too?

No, never. It was a weird epiphany. Seven years ago, I was driving past an empty storefront, and, out of nowhere, I thought it would be fun to make toys and games in the back and have a retail operation out front. That never happened, but Askew! did.

Although you majored in industrial design at Carnegie Mellon, you’ve never really had an industrial design job. Did your education play a role in developing this toy?

I first started tinkering with a wire hanger and butter knife, making various indentations and bends in the metal. The more I looked at them, the more my design training kicked in, evolving into the current linear design. Without what I learned at Carnegie Mellon, I could have easily junked it up.

Now that Askew! is going to be mass produced, you no longer have to crank out the pieces in your basement, using the machines you designed. So what’s next?

I have no intention of leaving my day job anytime soon, but it will be nice to simply cash a check and not have to make the game anymore or knock on doors to sell it on my own. I also have at least half a dozen spinoff ideas based on Askew! that I can’t wait to get started on.?
—Elizabeth Shestak (HS’03)