[HN Gopher] I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 i...
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I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
Author : wordglyph
Score : 368 points
Date : 2026-02-24 13:03 UTC (9 hours ago)
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| mikkupikku wrote:
| Better than many of my rollercoaster tycoon creations.
| hodder wrote:
| The best part about it is his rollercoaster the Quadrupler would
| have been much more fun than Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
| bze12 wrote:
| It doesn't even go upside down once, let alone 4 times
| socalgal2 wrote:
| But it does have a goat chewing dynamite.
| chaps wrote:
| When I was 10 I pitched a game to Lucas Arts. Sent a letter and
| everything. Their lawyers responded telling me why they cannot
| make my game.
|
| Feel like that opened something in me..
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| HAHAHAHAHA I DID TOO!!!!!
|
| Ahhhh this makes me so happy. My brother and I, like many, were
| so obsessed with all the LucasArts adventures, so naturally I
| mailed them in my idea. I also got a letter back. IIRC it
| wasn't from a lawyer, but it was definitely a soft "no."
| There's a chance I still have that letter somewhere.
|
| Man, I am not a "good old days" kind of person but the 80s
| (well, late 80s early 90s) really were a different time.
| chaps wrote:
| Amazing. Just texted my mom asking if she has the letter. I
| doubt it all these years later but I'll share it if she still
| has it!
|
| Edit: no dice!
| dfxm12 wrote:
| What was the reason? Anything beyond concerns over ownership of
| the ideas, characters, etc. (which I presume is the boilerplate
| legalese)? Did they even admit to _reading_ your letter?
| ashleyn wrote:
| This was a very common thing media companies dealt with and
| still deal with. There are too many legal risks in even
| reading the idea. SOP is to send back the envelope sealed and
| with a canned response explaining that they don't accept
| pitches from the public.
| quesera wrote:
| How do they know what they are not reading if the envelope
| is still sealed?
| fhdkweig wrote:
| I can't remember what the topic was, but I remember hearing
| a story about a company that was soliciting ideas from the
| public for maybe a joke book or maybe tv show plots. They
| got into a lot of legal hot water once they found out that
| the ideas weren't original and people were actually just
| taking them from other sources.
|
| If anyone else knows what I am talking about, I'd like to
| know the name of the company.
| Romario77 wrote:
| they have to open the envelope to see what's inside - they
| get mail that is not ideas and they have to open it.
|
| But I assume the people who get the mail are trained to see
| if the envelope contains ideas to stop reading and return
| the mail with the canned lawyer response.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Probably this, but despite that people keep trying - e.g.
| Reddit's gaming forums are full of "I made a concept for
| xyz!".
|
| I mean it _can_ work; especially for smaller studios,
| community members and modders are often hired to work on the
| game itself (I 'm sure Bethesda has a lot of that, the
| modding community is basically free onboarding / training,
| but also Factorio's Space Age was mainly inspired and
| executed by the developer of the Space Exploration mod).
| chaps wrote:
| Yeah, it was about the ownership of the characters that was
| at-issue IIRC. From memory, they said they couldn't use the
| characters _because_ I made the suggestion.
| nlawalker wrote:
| In elementary school, a couple friends and I sketched out an
| entire game's worth of ideas for Mega Man bosses and mailed
| them to Capcom (this would have been 1990 or so). I remember
| how thick the envelope was.
|
| I recall their response being very human, warm and
| encouraging, but it also included all of our original
| sketches, with a very direct (but kid-understandable)
| statement that they were obligated to return the originals to
| make it very clear that they were not kept and thus could not
| possibly be understood to be "inspiration" for anything that
| might be in a future game.
| a_t48 wrote:
| Funnily enough - they do actually take fan submissions for
| bosses -
| https://megaman.fandom.com/wiki/Boss_character_contest -
| but you'd need to do it during the development time, and
| probably mail into Capcom JP. Bad luck, there.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| When I visited the Warner Bros studios, they had a huge pile
| of paper in a corner, representing all the unsolicited ideas
| they receive.
|
| They told us they took care to not even read the manuscripts.
| I don't remember if they return them unopened or destroy
| them, but otherwise if the ideas from the manuscript end up
| in one of their productions, they open themselves to legal
| trouble. It may happen even if it is a coincidence, so they
| don't want to take any chance.
| dhosek wrote:
| Yeah, movies are kind of weird like that. If I steal your
| idea for a novel (but not your words), you can call me out
| as an asshole but you don't have any legal recourse, but if
| the same thing happens with a movie, apparently it is
| possible to sue and actually win significant damages.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| FYI, in many (most?) legal systems, you can sue anyone,
| for anything. To win the damages, you'll have to convince
| a judge or jury of said damages (or present a strong
| enough case to settle out of court).
| d--b wrote:
| I just love everything about this.
|
| I love that kids could be left alone in their home and would burn
| plastic over a gas stove to create models of roller coasters.
|
| I love that Disney would respond to him and not even forget the
| typo in quadrupuler.
|
| I love that he kept all that and thought of it as a foundational
| part of his personality (I think probably he was already like
| that)
| droidjj wrote:
| It's a nice reminder of how impressionable kids are. A little
| encouragement can go a long, long way.
| bsza wrote:
| They did forget the typo though, the transcript is wrong.
| d--b wrote:
| Ah! Well spotted!
| aethrum wrote:
| makes me sad nowadays kids just want to watch short form video
| instead of create
| llasse wrote:
| I really wonder where some people get this marvelous drive to
| create - as it apparently has resided in the author even before
| Disney replied.
| -Brian- wrote:
| Love it. Reminds me of when me and my friends got tired of
| launching model rockets straight up, so we designed and built a
| shoulder-mounted model rocket launcher. We made similar drawings
| and made some dumb mistakes (a face full of rocket heat is
| scary), but we ultimately succeeded. Kids learn a lot through
| playing and dreaming.
| donkeyboy wrote:
| Cute story. This reminded me how in elementary school and middle
| school I used to draw pencil drawings of rollercoasters on my
| page to pass the time. Rollercoaster tycoon fan :)
| raphinou wrote:
| When I was young I wrote to the Formula 1 team McLaren to ask if
| they could hire me for a student job. I didn't expect to get a
| reply, but I got one. The answer was negative, but I was happy. I
| never reflected about it until now, but maybe it learned me that
| asking doesn't cost anything, and that the worst thing that can
| happen is getting a negative answer? Not sure that was the
| turning point, but this is indeed my approach! :-)
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> The answer was negative, but I was happy._
|
| For sure it was a nice experience, I would have done the same,
| imagine that kid you wrote back gets inspired, goes to study
| engineering then they come work for you instead of the
| competition. But nowadays is getting super rare to get human
| written rejection emails anymore, let alone to kids.
|
| _> but maybe it learned me that asking doesn't cost anything,
| and that the worst thing that can happen is getting a negative
| answer?_
|
| Yeah, but what do you think happens when every kid from the UK
| asks McLaren for a student job? What happens when everyone from
| India asks McLaren for a student job?
|
| A kid every couple of months asking you for a job is cute and
| adorable, 5000 kids asking you for a job per month is a
| nuisance.
|
| The truth is that this attitude of "it doesn't hurt to ask"
| only works in high trust societies where people exercise self
| restraint and all inquiries are done only in good faith, but
| doesn't scale at all when everyone on the planet starts doing
| "spray-and-pray" crap shoots and it just quickly becomes spam
| and overwhelms their capacity to actually read and reply to
| messages of people who might be genuinely qualified, so we get
| the issue I mentioned at the start where all messages from
| applications now first go through ATS and AI bots instead of
| actual humans.
| raphinou wrote:
| You're right of course. I hadn't thought of the negatives
| when this self-restraint is absent.
|
| I only sent one letter to one team because I was a fan. The
| restraining factor was being a fan. Remove that, and it can
| indeed rapidly go out of hands....
| Keyframe wrote:
| _5000 kids asking you for a job per month is a nuisance._
|
| it's a great marketing platform, if anything. Strong brand
| loyalty going forward and costs you not much to do well, not
| to mention you can brighten a day or few for thousands of
| kids in all sorts of life situations.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think this is one of the ways in which the internet is
| dangerous for children.
|
| Gen X kids were starving for any adult not their parents to
| acknowledge their existence. Which made us targets for
| predators. But now we've overcorrected and acknowledgement is
| routine. That dopamine hit is practically free.
| microtonal wrote:
| When I was probably 10 or so, one of the largest computer
| magazines in the country had a job for a 'junior writer'. My
| 10yo brain did not realize that junior meant 'just finished the
| relevant education' and though 'hey, I'm a junior'. So I just
| called them up and the guy on the other side of the line was
| clearly confused what to say to me not to disappoint me too
| much and mumbled something like "the person responsible for
| hiring is not around". In hindsight, it's pretty ballsy for a
| kid to just call, if I had to do it ten/fifteen years later I'd
| have been pretty nervous.
|
| I'm a bit sad that we lose that innocent, carefree attitude
| later in life.
| metabagel wrote:
| Wow, he's my age. I can't imagine doing what he did at the age of
| 10. Impressive.
| nogridbag wrote:
| These letters matter a lot to kids. I sent my video game idea to
| Nintendo as a little kid and I had the same reaction seeing that
| envelope from Nintendo in the mailbox addressed to me. I think it
| was also a bit more special pre-internet as these companies felt
| a bit more magical and mysterious. You can only read about them
| through video game magazines and see their names in the credit
| scenes at the end of the games. Unless you were one of those
| weird kids that called Nintendo Power helpline of course!
|
| I remember also receiving that weird VHS tape from Nintendo in
| the mail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJzIc_c1PvE
|
| I have no idea how I received that, but it was so cool!
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I don't think the magic left with the Internet, but with
| adulthood, some combination of your own and among the C's at
| the company.
| ge96 wrote:
| > weird VHS tape
|
| I don't remember this episode of Firefly
| tetris11 wrote:
| I can see where a lot of youtube content creators
| (WizardsWithGuns comes to mind...) derive their cartoonish
| humour from
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| Back then the working class was simply more powerful. Companies
| had to have good PR, hence feeling 'magical' or 'mysterious.'
| Of course now in the later stage of capitalism, these execs,
| investors, etc can just do full-on mask slips.
|
| I think some of this is definitely childhood nostalgia, but its
| also very different world today. I don't know any kid that sees
| Nintendo as magical as I did. The Legend of Zelda was this
| weird, dark, and mysterious thing. So many games were oddly
| mysterious or weirdly ported from places like Japan, which had
| their own design language and often the translation was odd
| which only added to the mystique. Games came out with little to
| no fanfare and you just had to sort of figure them out. There
| were cheat books and magazines and such, but generally you had
| to approach this art with an open heart and open mind and sort
| of drink it in. If everything is a google or AI search away,
| then there's no real mystery anymore.
|
| Kids today are forced to be savvy and 'realpolitick' at a young
| age. They just complain about the pricing and more 'inside
| baseball' about games and absolutely get a little brain fried
| by youtube gaming culture that often runs on outrage so no game
| is good enough. Suddenly, everyone is a critic and magic and
| love are hard to cultivate in a highly critical environment.
| Its like everyone is stuck in a Philosophy 101 class with an
| overly argumentative professor, forever, and its unrelenting
| and makes us miserable.
|
| Also kids aren't ignorant, in fact they can be very savvy.
| Games constantly begging them to buy DLCs or sell them
| microtransaction items absolutely hurt the 'magic.' How can you
| develop these feelings when you feel like you're locked in the
| room with a shady used car salesman constantly?
|
| I don't know if kids today can even experience that old magic.
| At least not in games. It seems now its only in books and
| getting lost in novels where magic exists now. A book can't beg
| you to buy an extra chapter or make you pay gems for the next
| sentence.
| dfinlay wrote:
| That VHS was one of my favorites. Me and my sisters would watch
| it over and over. Love how camp it was.
| andix wrote:
| A lot of companies and organizations actually reply to
| letters/emails of any kind. Often very appropriately and not
| just with some boilerplate text.
|
| I guess they have to deal with so many annoying complaints, so
| they are really happy if there is something joyful once in a
| while.
| joebates wrote:
| Probably a smart move. Writing and mailing a letter takes a
| lot more time and effort than a phone call or comment online.
| If a person took the time to write a letter, they're probably
| worth taking the time to respond to.
| Romario77 wrote:
| you can get a lifetime fan just by replying to a letter -
| like you see here. That's a very effective marketing.
|
| I got a rejection letter once from a company I submitted my
| resume to (online) and I still remember that and in a
| positive light even though it was a rejection.
|
| Now they just ghost you even if you went through 5 rounds of
| interviews and spend a bunch of your time.
| kraig911 wrote:
| I so much wish we could all get together as engineers and make
| a site where kids can write to and send videos etc on and we
| just praise them and tell them their ideas are good as a
| community.
| iamwil wrote:
| Isn't that what happens when they post their projects on HN?
| hinkley wrote:
| Volunteer to judge the science fair?
| dhosek wrote:
| In sixth grade language arts class we wrote letters and there
| were rumors that some companies, if you sent them letters
| saying you liked their product would send you coupons for free
| candy/chips/soda/etc.
| kotaKat wrote:
| We did _Flat Stanley_ in second grade[1, circa ~2000],
| including mailing him to someone to send him on an adventure.
| I sent my Stanley off to Volkswagen and he came back bearing
| little toy pull-back VW Beetles and smelled like a new car...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Stanley
| WalterGR wrote:
| There were even books that listed the companies, their
| addresses, and the free things they'd send you.
| LtdJorge wrote:
| At first, I was thinking you received a cease and desist :D
| Lightstate wrote:
| Ah yes, I did similar, I pitched a game idea I had called
| "shadowstorm", drew out a sketch of the protagonist and sent it
| to Sony PlayStation address.
|
| They sent me a letter thanking me and said that they don't
| develop games in a nice way.
|
| I immediately filed that letter with the orange Sony letterhead
| and still have it til this day.
|
| Good times.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Man that tape. I wish I still had mine!
| Nition wrote:
| In 1997 I typed up a letter to Maxis in Microsoft Creative
| Writer about how much I liked their games and wanted to move to
| America and work at Maxis when I grew up:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/1eHcead.jpeg
|
| Unfortunately I made the mistake of mentioning that it'd be
| cool if you could print out an image of your city in SimCity
| 2000, as you could in the previous SimCity game. That was
| enough to get me only this letter from legal as a response:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/Y2wGcRt.jpeg
|
| I did grow up to become a professional game developer though!
| RyanOD wrote:
| Love that they took the time to draft a kind letter and let
| you down easy. Maxis cared.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I can't tell if you're joking or not about the form letter
| there.
|
| It's such a terrible response for someone that was not in
| fact suggesting a new feature for the franchise.
|
| And even if it had been, rejecting the entire letter for
| one sentence is still bad.
|
| It's polite. Being polite is pretty much expected here.
| postalcoder wrote:
| Creative Writer is one of the best pieces of software I've
| ever used. What's the state of kids software nowadays?
| Nition wrote:
| Pretty terrible in my experience. The good stuff for kids
| mostly moved to tablets and phones, but no keyboard and
| mouse is a limiting format, and you have to sift through a
| hundred bad apps to find the good one. Not much that runs
| easily on modern PCs comes close to the old magic. Though
| Tux Paint is actually very good, retaining the sense of
| whimsy that most modern software lacks.
|
| It's hard to describe but it almost feels to me like media
| today - this applies to games and films and everything - is
| often created at a meta level, a simulacrum of the real
| thing. Like in the 80s and 90s people were trying to make
| things that were fun and interesting and probably based on
| their life experiences. And now they're trying to make
| things that are the best distillation of whatever was most
| successful before. But that makes it feel dishonest,
| corporate.
|
| Even _Microsoft_ in the 90s could still make stuff that
| felt fun and unique. There was a counterpart to Creative
| Writer called Fine Artist that was equally good.
| nogridbag wrote:
| This is a timely post. Just last night my 8 y/o asked if
| she could create a presentation on my laptop like they do
| at school. I have no idea what software they use at the
| elementary school.
|
| I've let her play around with Google Docs before. But
| what I really wanted was something like Creative Writer
| that is more kid friendly. I used Gemini (sorry) to
| suggest some software and it suggested "Book Creator"
| which is intended for schools/teachers. I signed up as a
| fake teacher and added my kids as students and they did
| create some really creative books, importing images, and
| adding their own drawings. But it's still missing that
| kid-friendly vibe like Creative Writer.
| Nition wrote:
| Check out Canva. It might even be what they're using at
| school already. It doesn't have the simplicity and fun of
| the old stuff, but it's intuitive to use even for kids. A
| lot of features where they're broken convention in ways
| that actually make more sense than the standard, for
| example resizing images keeps the aspect ratio by default
| instead of stretching.
| california-og wrote:
| I made a paint app for toddlers recently, exactly because
| I couldn't find anything fun & useable & educational:
|
| https://glyphdrawingclub.itch.io/mr-baby-paint
| stevage wrote:
| > "it may be a little hard to understand"
|
| Presumably they are implying that if they read creative
| suggestions, they open themselves to the possibility of being
| sued if they ever implemented anything similar to what was
| suggested. Doesn't sound too complicated to explain to a kid.
| Nition wrote:
| I always thought the catch-22 was funny where they say they
| saw that I was suggesting an idea 3/4 of the way through
| the letter, so they chose to return the letter without
| reading it.
| Nition wrote:
| Since there doesn't seem to be any record in the Internet by
| the way, this is what printed cities looked like in SimCity 1
| (these are my own scans of some printouts from 1996):
|
| https://i.imgur.com/E9QgkCp.jpeg
|
| https://i.imgur.com/i3MYCZv.jpeg
| projektfu wrote:
| Six year old me sent an idea to McDonnell Douglas for an
| airplane with turboprops to back up the jets in case of engine
| fire. There was also a fire suppression system. They sent me
| some nice brochures about the DC-8, -9, and -10, but looking
| back on it they could have mentioned that the jets are already
| redundant and will usually stop burning when the fuel is cut.
| notahacker wrote:
| I hope they at least acknowledge that it was quite impressive
| for a six year old to understand the distinction between
| different types of engine and consider engine fires.
|
| Anyway, YC's Heart Aerospace's intended commercial airframe
| design now does use a turboprop as a backup (for range
| extension beyond the capabilities of their battery electric
| engine), so six year old you was clearly onto something :)
| hinkley wrote:
| > usually
| 101008 wrote:
| I remember sending a letter to Google in 2003? 2004? (I was 13
| years old) with my idea. It explained that my mom asks questions
| to Google instead of using keywords (remember how using the right
| keywrods was a skill and could affect the results a lot?), and
| they should fix that.
|
| I event included some PHP code to explain how they could parse
| the input in question format and convert it to keywords, using
| regular expression. Ha, how naive. My dream was to receive a
| letter back saying how a good idea that was and that I was hired.
|
| Unfortunately I never got a response back.
| ashleyn wrote:
| I often think about how Ask Jeeves had the last laugh in the
| age of LLM-powered search.
| nogridbag wrote:
| lmao, I was just thinking about this yesterday. My parents
| would do the same thing and I would try to correct them and
| explain how they can get better results just typing keywords
| and not sentences. And here I am in 2026 typing full sentences
| in Google search so that AI can present me the exact answer
| directly in the search results.
| scottyah wrote:
| I remember getting on the gmail beta as a middle schooler and
| sending feedback. They implemented three of "my ideas" and
| called them the "Most requested features" each time, so I
| figured I was the only one sending in feedback lol.
| Roedou wrote:
| I wrote to Sainsburys (large UK grocery store chain) in 1993,
| suggesting an idea for a "self checkout", where you would scan
| items yourself as you put them into your shipping cart. My anti-
| theft solution was that they'd weigh your cart as you left, to
| make sure you'd scanned everything!
|
| I never expected a reply, but was so stoked when I received a
| letter with a similar generic-but-enthusiastic reply, along the
| lines of "Thanks for such a creative idea!"
|
| Do kids still get the opportunity to experience things like this?
| I can't imagine that sending an email to a company's generic
| contact@ address is ever going to get the save kind of response -
| and certainly not something that they can proudly pin on their
| wall for motivation.
| dizzy3gg wrote:
| So you're to blame!
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Ask a kid (preferably one of your own or a niece or nephew,
| etc.) to write to your local football team and see what
| happens. Some are good about it, some aren't. It helps if you
| send a letter to the correct department instead of sending an
| email to a generic contact address.
| dubcanada wrote:
| You'd have better luck mailing a letter, but to be honest the
| kind of "sending a letter and getting a reply from the CEO or
| some sort of higher up" is long gone unfortunately. There is a
| few exceptions, but all of them are for very old private
| companies. You will never get a reply from Pepsi as a kid with
| a new flavour idea. Or Disney about a new ride for that matter.
| janwillemb wrote:
| As a 10y old, my father taught me about logical ports. I took a
| very large piece of paper and in a few days, I designed a tic tac
| toe "computer". It had LEDs that indicated the next computer
| move, based on the position of the pieces: every single possible
| state of the board led to a specific "next move" led. I do not
| think it actually would have worked, but of course I was very
| proud of my design at the time. Unfortunately, when I showed it
| to my teacher, he did not believe that I was serious. "This is a
| joke, right?" And that was it. Poor kid me... It did not
| discourage me however. I was a software engineer for a long time,
| and now I am a CS teacher. And I (try to) never ever discount the
| efforts of children.
| ileonichwiesz wrote:
| That really hits home. I spent a couple weeks in primary school
| sketching my own blueprints for great inventions. Nothing that
| could've ever worked (I didn't know what a transistor actually
| was, but my machine certainly had a _lot_ of them!), but in
| hindsight a good start for a curious tech-minded child -
| switches that opened /closed circuits, wires to connect the
| various imaginary lasers and electromagnets, and so on. On the
| back of the paper I scrawled documentation to remember what the
| darn thing was actually supposed to do (the biggest one? Save
| people who fall out of airplanes, which to my 9 year old mind
| was a big issue that needed to be solved)
|
| One day my teacher noticed me doodling in the back, so she
| promptly grabbed all the "blueprints" I was so proud of, tore
| them up, and tossed them in the trash. I guess I get
| discouraged easier than you though, since I didn't design a
| thing for many years afterwards.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Oh god, what's the deal with horrendous people becoming
| teachers? Lately, I've been, uh, "reminiscing" about how
| terrible adults were to kids when I was a kid (I'm gen X.)
|
| It's no wonder I turned my interest to the computer - it was
| only ever a jerk if I programmed it like that.
| amenghra wrote:
| Are you familiar with the kids story book Iggy Peck Architect
| by Andrea Beaty? Same story, with a happy ending though.
| nathancahill wrote:
| One of the things that got me in to "coding" when I was 9 years
| old was building tic tac toe in Excel, locking the window size
| to 3x3 cells and then implementing clicks as links to the next
| board state, with the "computer" having already played the next
| move. The whole sheet had every possible board state written
| out by hand.
| TheGRS wrote:
| Around this age I went to a water park and was similarly
| inspired. I had the idea for making an entire water park
| dedicated to making sure people would get wet and jump onto rides
| from beginning to end. I called it "Totally Wet People", drew up
| an elaborate concept art for water slides, sprinklers, pools,
| tubes, etc. My mom thought it was hilarious and brought it to
| work (alas, she worked for the Navy at the time, not Disney). I
| got a lot of second-hand compliments from everyone at her work
| and it made me feel awesome for at least a couple weeks. Wish I
| had the forethought to send it to Six Flags or Disney!
| wordglyph wrote:
| That's amazing!
| riffraff wrote:
| sounds awesome tbh. If you build it, I will come.
| hinkley wrote:
| Little did you know that your ideas were incorporated into Navy
| training. The Navy is wet work and you need practice working in
| such conditions. They unfortunately left out your concessions
| stands and the water slide. Sorry.
|
| (I know that submariners literally have water obstacle courses
| where they have to learn to, for instance, do some repairs
| while a compartment is flooding, but I've no idea what the Navy
| does as a whole).
| tonyvince7 wrote:
| WED's letterhead was immaculate.
| lysace wrote:
| Every detail about that letter is immaculate. Damn.
| Cshelton wrote:
| This is amazing!
|
| I did a similar thing with Roller Coaster Tycoon. I sent
| screenshots and explanations of my designs to Six Flags. I was
| probably around 10 or so. I think I got one generic letter back
| from them unfortunately.
|
| For some time, I wanted to become a Roller Coaster designer.
| psyclobe wrote:
| I once wrote a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein to end her war
| on drugs when I was in college. I recall it discretely.
| zannic wrote:
| At least you tried pitching something I used to write long emails
| to Riot Games back when League first came out cause I kept losing
| games haha
| RobCodeSlayer wrote:
| At age 13 I pitched a candy idea to Mars Bars as part of a school
| project to write business letters. I loved Snickers at the time
| but was tired of unwrapping so many fun-size ones from Halloween.
| I told them something like - "you should just put the fun-size
| candies in a big resealable bag, so people can eat as much as
| they want without dealing with the wrappers. You can call them
| unwrapped minis. All you have to do is create new packaging and
| re-use the fun-size bars!"
|
| I found the CEO's corporate address somewhere online and sent the
| letter to him, never to hear back.
|
| Then, around 8 months later, I saw my first ad for Snickers
| Unwrapped Bites on TV and freaked out. They had immediately
| implemented my idea, which as a kid was amazing, but I'll never
| forgive them for not writing back. Especially because none of my
| friends ever believed me.
| foobarian wrote:
| I pitched a "crit Doritos" idea to Pepsi just recently, but
| sadly they haven't implemented it :-)
| earlyriser wrote:
| 8 months later sounds too short to have taken your idea, I'm
| guessing launching a product at Mars scale takes like 2 years.
| This is probably why the always say they cannot take ideas sent
| by external people... but on the other hand if this came from
| the CEO, probably could be fast tracked. So 80/20. Do you
| remember who was the CEO?
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| It's packaging an existing product differently than a fully
| new product. Would still require either new machines or
| adapting existing machines for it.
| dhosek wrote:
| Only vaguely related, but the Mars family lived in
| neighboring River Forest and the factory was just north of me
| in Galewood (it is shutting down or already shut down and the
| property is planned for redevelopment, but the neighboring
| Metra station is named "Mars" which means that in Chicago you
| can take a commuter train to Mars). Sadly the Mars estate was
| apparently torn down to be replaced with a pair of bland
| McMansions.
| hinkley wrote:
| That's a shame. Annhueser Busch turned one of their estates
| into a tourist trap. But you couldn't pet the horses, which
| is literally the only reason an 11 year old would want to
| go near a brewery.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Silly person, Mars is a city in PA, not a train station in
| Chi-town.
|
| The Moon is located just east of the Pittsburgh Airport.
| EGreg wrote:
| I sent steve jobs (sjobs@apple.com) an email saying that MacOS
| should have an unspoofable dialog for the system password
| authorization, same way they have for DRM videos etc. I also
| suggested the user could choose a secret phrase or image to be
| displayed in the dialog during system setup. Never heard back.
| This was when Steve was alive and in charge. And to this day
| anyone can spoof the system password dialog and steal the
| system password...
| niklasrde wrote:
| You mean what Vista introduced?
| zadikian wrote:
| I emailed him in 7th grade asking if Pages could automate
| bibliographies. In hindsight, EasyBib was good enough.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I always wonder about how easy that would be to spoof,
| because it seems like it'd be trivial.
| nine_k wrote:
| ...but obtaining that phrase may be nontrivial.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| Sorry, I mean the current implementation seems trivial to
| spoof. I agree that doing something like your suggestion
| would make me feel much more comfortable about those
| logins.
| krackers wrote:
| >And to this day anyone can spoof the system password dialog
| and steal the system password
|
| TouchID solves this in a sense.
| airstrike wrote:
| Make it look like the TouchID isn't working and switch to
| password mode, boom. User password obtained
| cm2012 wrote:
| I am sorry to say this, but there is a zero percent chance your
| letter influenced their product roadmap in an 8 month timeline.
| MattGrommes wrote:
| I wonder if they have a policy about not accepting ideas /
| replying to people don't think their idea was stolen. I know TV
| shows have that policy so nobody can accuse them of
| plagiarizing their script idea.
| hinkley wrote:
| And yet we get copycat movies all the time where clearly
| someone stole an elevator pitch or eavesdropped at a coffee
| shop and ran with it.
| fortzi wrote:
| This post and comments are wonderul
| aurea wrote:
| Now, with a tear in my eye, I wanna know about Tom. I hope this
| post gets to him somehow.
| lysace wrote:
| https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Tom_Fitzgerald
|
| He had just joined WED the same year he sent that reply (1979).
| Worked there until 2020 in various leadership roles. Seems to
| have been particularly involved in the making of EPCOT.
|
| A web search shows all kinds of interesting interviews etc.
| wordglyph wrote:
| He sent the letter in April 1979! He was only 3 months into
| the job.
| lysace wrote:
| Classic, have the new guy deal with the fan mail.
| wanderingmoose wrote:
| He still works at WDI.
| lysace wrote:
| Nice!
| andix wrote:
| One thing I noticed right away: They never mentioned they would
| take some inspiration from the submitted design, or acknowledge
| any specific detail. So they can't get sued for IP infringement
| later, if they ever build a ride that shares any design details
| with the "Quadroupler"
| psygn89 wrote:
| I did a similar thing with a car design for Mercedes-Benz when I
| was around the same age. I had all the car drawing books and
| really thought I was going to be a car designer. Much to my
| surprise, they responded with enthusiasm and even sent me a
| Mercedes-Benz keychain :)
| weirdmantis69 wrote:
| When I was 8 I sent a letter to LEGO about a line of toys that
| slid down on stair bannister's. I gave it to my mom to send to
| them but apparently she betrayed me and kept it for herself
| because she thought it was "cute". Thanks to her I don't work for
| LEGO :(
| insensible wrote:
| She should have sent it! The first person to disrespect a child
| is the loser, and shouldn't be the child's parent.
| yakkomajuri wrote:
| I wonder how much of a role parents played here. Surely there
| must have been some help involved with resources, encouragement,
| and at least getting the letters sent?
|
| I applaud parents who encourage kids to do stuff like this when
| they have the innate drive for it.
| TZubiri wrote:
| >"It's called the quadrupler"
|
| Drop the "It's called" it's cleaner that way.
| wordglyph wrote:
| Note to self. Build time machine and fix this.
| zendist wrote:
| At age ~11, I sent a MSPaint design of a phone with two SIM cards
| that you could switch between physically on a phone.
|
| I sent it to Nokia over email :-D. They didn't respond.
|
| Dual SIM phones apparently became a thing that same year:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_SIM#:~:text=The%20first%2...
| Not originally by Nokia, though.
| dhosek wrote:
| Back when SIM cards were relatively new (and credit-card sized)
| ca 1997 or so, the vision was that you would plug your SIM card
| into a landline phone to be able to make/receive calls there. I
| was working for Motorola at the time and I remember coming up
| with a couple ideas that I never shared with anyone because I
| didn't know who/how.
|
| The first was essentially the iPhone but with a palm pilot type
| touch screen, the other was a PCMCIA card (which were also much
| larger back then) that you could put your SIM card into and
| plug into your laptop to be able to make calls or send/receive
| faxes on the computer.
| mattmon-og wrote:
| I once emailed the (former) Logitech CEO asking them to produce a
| popular keyboard in a different layout than thier current product
| offering.
|
| I actually got a personal response thanking me for my input!
|
| Then a few years later that keyboard I wanted actually became a
| product.
|
| Not sure if I really influenced their process or not; but I got
| that keyboard and its fun to think I did :)
| noncovalence wrote:
| There's a story by a guy who did something similar when he was in
| 2nd grade, and successfully pitched an aardvark plush to a toy
| company! It always makes me smile whenever it pops up again.
|
| https://twitter-thread.com/t/1214607304106098689
| WA wrote:
| I once mailed the maker of a little German indie game called
| Clonk about wanting to learn programming. It was my favorite game
| for a while. Never heard back from him, which I found
| disappointing.
|
| Now, I answer every single email my app customers are sending me
| and have been doing this for close to 20 years and I get a lot of
| positive reviews for the great customer support.
| personalcompute wrote:
| Wow, I didn't expect to see Clonk on HN today! Almost 20 years
| ago, as a 13 year old in the US I managed to make friends with
| an older player from Germany, and then we collaborated on
| making Clonk Rage mods together in c4script. It was an amazing
| experience and did help me get more into programming, so I'm so
| sorry to hear about your experience! I do recall members of the
| development team at the time being accessible and active in the
| community, specifically Sven2, but I'm not sure about MatthesB.
|
| Thanks for the nostalgia though. Amazing game.
| WA wrote:
| I think it must've around '98 when I played Clonk 4. I even
| downloaded some custom assets via an Internet cafe to floppy
| disks to play with them back home. The mail was actually a
| physical letter. Maybe the devs became more active later when
| internet communities started to grow.
| prpl wrote:
| I hadn't realized Hyperspace mountain in Disneyland Paris went
| upside down (and launched up) before I took my 6 year old on it -
| I was assuming it was just a replica of the disneyland one which
| I thought
|
| He was a bit intimidated by the enhanced strapping, but he liked
| it still.
| davkan wrote:
| At 8 I pitched a rocket car to the DoD and got a letter from my
| congresswoman and the Secretary of Defense. They were a bit bored
| pre 9/11 i think.
| wazoox wrote:
| In 2000 I was in a startup which used yellow and blue colours for
| all its graphic design (website, app, etc). For a big trade show
| (IBC Amsterdam) someone thought it would be cool to give away
| M&Ms, but only in yellow and blue of course ! So we bought many
| bags of M&Ms, and sorted them out by hand... That wasn't a good
| use of our time, plus we had tons of red, brown and green M&Ms to
| eat while working and we were getting diabetic fast. So Marie
| called Mars to ask if it was possible to buy only yellow and blue
| M&Ms for our trade show. And you know what happened? Mars sent us
| a huge bag of each colour for free !
|
| In the following years, they made it possible to order custom
| M&Ms (for a price...) and how you can even have your logo on
| them.
| ramblin_ray wrote:
| Similar age; similar story to many others' here. I "designed" so
| many things as a kid... including this spaceship:
| https://yesteryearforever.xyz/spaceship_cross-section
|
| I remember the wiring, pipes, everything actually went somewhere
| and was meant for something. Nothing was just for looks and
| everything served a purpose.
|
| Still hasn't been built to this day ;P
| notxorand wrote:
| Great stuff! Reminds me how I used to bother a lot of game
| publishers when I was younger
| quailfarmer wrote:
| I sent this to Apple in 2007. Never heard back :)
| https://i.postimg.cc/52G8rGZJ/File0004.jpg
| regus wrote:
| When I was a kid I sent a letter to Snapple telling them that
| they should make Snapple flavored popsicles. They sent me a nice
| letter telling me it was a good idea. I have not thought about it
| since. But I wonder if my letter directly lead to this disaster:
|
| "Disaster on a stick An attempt to erect the world's largest
| popsicle in a city square ended with a scene straight out of a
| disaster film -- but much stickier."
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna8321110
| Windchaser wrote:
| "That ten-year-old inventor is still alive in me, and still
| doesn't understand rejection."
|
| ahhhh this makes me feel things
| RyanOD wrote:
| "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine"
| neilv wrote:
| Around that age, I wrote a letter to Tandy (Radio Shack),
| proposing that I write a hobby electronics book.
|
| In hindsight, I wasn't knowledgeable enough to write a printed
| book's worth of material (maybe a few modern blog posts, at
| best). But at the time, I knew more about electronics than the
| other 29 kids in my grade school class, and that constituted most
| of my worldview, so why couldn't I write a book.
|
| I loved the Forrest Mims books, and, like any kid, wanted to
| mimic the things that I saw grownups doing.
|
| Someone at Tandy might have realized that I was just an
| enthusiastic kid, but in any case, they wrote me a nice letter
| back. The company didn't wish to develop a book at this time, but
| if I did so on my own, they would be happy to review a copy off
| the press.
|
| (Edit: I mean, there was a mailing address right there, on the
| back cover. In a kid's mind, why couldn't you simply mail a
| letter to that address.
| https://archive.org/details/gettingstartedin00mims/page/n131... )
| morganf wrote:
| I grew up a nerdy kid in the 80s that liked military airplanes,
| and on the island I grew up on, was the HQ and manufacturing
| facility of a local manufacturer of military aircraft, that at
| the time was named Grumman. They were like a local source of jobs
| and pride and prestige of something cool to come from the island
| (second only to Billy Joel, the most famous celebrity of that era
| from The Island hahaha.)
|
| Anyhow, when I was about 10, I wrote the CEO of Grumman a letter
| about how great they were talking nerdy about my favorite planes
| of theirs. The CEO wrote back with a short message thanking me
| personally. I was so excited, my parents framed it and put it on
| the wall of my childhood room, etc etc. Only as an adult, well
| into my 30s, did I remember that and think "OMG, _of course_ his
| secretary or PR firm wrote that ", but I truly couldn't realize
| that when I was a kid.
| foxglacier wrote:
| I suspect his persistent confidence was already there to lead him
| to write to Disney in the first place. As a kid, I had an idea
| like that and my Dad was going to write to the company but he
| never did, I never had the inclination to do it myself, and now
| I'm not an actor.
|
| It also takes some awareness to state your age at the start of
| the letter. That's what makes people respond so well to it. I
| would never have thought age was relevant, or even that it was
| shameful to admit you're just a child. I didn't understand how
| people think. This guy apparently did, so again, he was already
| cut out for acting, I'd say.
| wordglyph wrote:
| Good insight. Yes, I do remember at the time, purposely
| thinking I must lead with my age knowing instinctively that
| somehow that would help me and they would be more likely to pay
| attention.
| stevage wrote:
| > I've invented several patented board games that were shopped
| around but never sold.
|
| I'm curious about this - I thought it was a very expensive
| process to patent something.
| codazoda wrote:
| Yup, me too. In fact, I might consider simple copyright for
| something like a board game. Granted, I've never registered an
| actual copyright either. I suppose I should try it out.
| divbzero wrote:
| So wonderful that someone at WED Enterprises chose to reply
| encouragingly to a 10-year-old kid. "They rejected it straight
| away, they don't accept unsolicited ideas" or ignoring altogether
| seems to be the standard legally-defensive response.
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