Maker

Toy Story

How the creator of the Superplexus turned a childhood idea into a lifelong passion. By Michael McGinnis

While visiting my family in Colorado in 2002,

I came across a captivating object sitting on a shelf in my sister’s house. It was a cantaloupe-sized plastic sphere that housed a labyrinth of purple and turquoise colored ramps, tubes, and drops. It had a small steel ball rolling around in it. I needed no instructions to tell me that this was a puzzle, the object being to roll the ball through the three-dimensional maze from the starting point to the finish without having the ball fall off the track.

I thought it would be easy to solve. A week later, I was still spending a couple of hours a day trying to guide the ball to the end. But instead of feeling discouraged and frustrated, I felt challenged and encouraged to keep trying.

The thing was called the Superplexus and was

made by Tiger Electronics, a division of Hasbro. I didn’t solve it until weeks later, and when I did, I re-challenged myself by seeing how quickly I could complete the maze. After a few months, my sister and her kids wanted it back, so I had to part with it, but I never completely forgot about it, and in 2007 I went online to order one for myself. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the creator of the Superplexus, Michael McGinnis, had a website, and that he lived in Santa Rosa, Calif. (a 15-minute drive from MAKE’s office) where he taught 3D design at a college. I contacted Michael and we started a correspondence. I asked him to write about the origins of the Superplexus for this issue of MAKE. This is his story.

—Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief of MAKE

Photography by Rebecca McGinnis and Michael McGinnis (far right)

40 Make: Volume 20