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
