Godspeed Toymaker Burt Meyer

Burt Meyer, the inventor responsible in part for such toys as Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots and Lite-Brite, died on October 30, 2025, at the age of 99.

Burt Meyer was born in Hinsdale, Illinois. He spent many of his early years in Massachusetts. During World War II, he served in the Navy as an aircraft mechanic. After his service he studied art at West Georgia College on the G.I. Bill and then the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. For a time, he taught at the Atlanta Art Institute, but he decided that teaching was not for him. 

It was in the late Fifties that he went to work for Marvin Glass & Associates, a toy design and engineering firm in Chicago. The firm made toys for such companies as Ideal, Marx, Mattel, and Hasbro. Mr. Machine, conceived by Marvin Glass himself, was one of the first toys on which Burt Meyer worked. He was later part of the team that worked on Mouse Trap, one of the first mass-produced three-dimensional board games. It was in 1963, after the death of boxer Davey Moore in the ring, that Marvin Glass cancelled a boxing toy upon which the firm had been working. Burt Meyer felt that the toy was too good of an opportunity to pass up, and suggested that they make the boxers robots whose heads would pop off rather than humans who fell down. The result was Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

It was Burt Meyer, Dalia Verbickas, and Joseph M. Burck who invented Lite-Brite, a toy introduced in 1967. The toy proved to be a success for Hasbro. Burt Meyer became a partner at Marvin Glass & Associates. He retired when he was 99.

Many of the toys upon which Burt Meyer worked proved to have staying power. Their appeal often cut across several generations, and in some cases the toys outlived the companies who originally manufactured them. Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, Lite Brite, and Mouse Trap are all still being sold. Burt Meyer and his fellow employees at Marvin Glass & Associates certainly had a talent for making toys.