Our Story
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1962
The back story begins in June 2005. Scrap that, it begins in 1962….. I was always inquisitive and making things, cardboard boxes, whether discarded or still in use, were not safe from me. I made my own toys and games from rolled up newspaper and sticky tape to amuse myself. When I was 7 years of age, I made what today is known as “Hot Wheels” back in 1962. Mattel toys, introduced the Hot Wheels toy cars into the market in 1968 and later produced the racing track for them and had special cars to compete with the Matchbox cars of the time. I actually invented the track, where I used cardboard to make a sort of toboggan track and fired a small pressed-steel car from an old toy, along the track. Soon, I had worked out how to make inclined bends and then loop-the-loop additions to the track, all from cardboard boxes, newspaper and sticky tape. It was ingenious though I say so myself, but whilst my grandmother and my mother saw me as being creative, my father had a different opinion. My dad saw it as me just making a mess that he had to clean up after he came home from work, but after his demolition of several hours of pure genius from yours truly, everything ended up in the dustbin. Still, there was always tomorrow to look forward to! -
1967
I also invented a wooden version of the Workmate DIY tool when I was 12. This was in 1967, 12 months before Ron Hickman exhibited his version at the Ideal Home Exhibition in London. I was 21 years of age in 1976, when I invented a range of toy dolls which were pretty gross, because they were created around people with afflictions. Not my proudest day, I guess, but the whole idea later manifested itself in what one knows as “Cabbage patch kids” these days and came to the market in 1982. I am, however, incredibly proud to state that I actually invented these first. I never did anything with the ideas, I never tried to sell them, I just invented them. So, when these various toys and inventions hit the stores, I realised that I should have done something with the ideas that I came up with. I learned my lesson after this. -
2004
Fast forward to 2004, I’m now 49 years of age. It’s a Saturday evening in, and I’m watching a show on TV called “Breaking the Magicians Code.” My wife is sitting by my side, reading a book and the magician presented the “how do you make an Elephant disappear” illusion. Note the phrase “illusion.”
It was all done with smoke and mirrors. In fact, when one looks at what is going on and discounts what is impossible, whatever is left is the solution. The answer was there staring everyone in the face, but how did they make it work? Well, a lot of misdirection from the pretty assistants, some puffs of smoke, a wave or two of the magician’s hands and hey presto! The Elephant had disappeared. Then the narrator of the show introduces the viewers to the an overhead camera and we saw what happened behind the scenes. The misdirection, smoke and indeed the clever use of mirrors make the illusion into reality. I thought, “now that’s a great name for a game show!”
I excused myself for a while and went to my office upstairs, and there and then “invented” what I called “it’s all done with mirrors!” a unique game show from David Homer, aged 49 years.
I didn’t have the correct equipment to make it, as I needed the Photo-Shop software, but found a solution that allowed me to create a prototype game from paper and yes, sticky tape. Ha, ha, I had not lost my touch after all of these years, mother.
My mother was always my biggest critic and together with my grandmother, always said that I could do better and that if I had sticky tape at my disposal, I could make anything. I still remember those words.
I am a highly trained salesman, even in semi-retirement these days and taught this craft to all my sales teams over the years. It doesn’t matter what the product is that one is selling, just as long as one believes in the product 101%. “Belief in your product and belief in oneself” is paramount in selling. It was time to test what I had been taught over the past 40 years, of the best sales and management training that money could buy, and I was as good as it gets…..so my trainer and boss always told me.
Cutting to the chase, I came downstairs with a pack of photocopied paper. My wife asked where I had been for the past 2 hours, and I showed her. My wife had taken over from my mother in becoming my biggest critic….and thankfully, she still is. I simply muted the TV and showed her what I have created. At first, she was switching her gaze from the presentation to TV and then she focused purely on the presentation.
I had made a game with 20 questions. The first question showed a question asking what the correct spelling is of whatever. So, what, you now ask yourself? Well, there were 5 different spellings of the answer. Okay, so what?..well now is the “illusion” (remember I said remember the word?). The 5 different spellings were each in reverse, in other words, a mirror image of the word. Get the picture, folks?
Add a reducing clock and the contestant must choose the correct spelling of the word to win the points. I made 20 questions, each question increasing in value and difficulty. So, when the question asks what is the correct spelling of the word which means the fear of spiders…you all know the word. But for $1,000,000 do you know the correct spelling and can you get it right in about 6 seconds from 6 very similar spelt versions and only one of them is correct?
My wife actually said that the idea was brilliant and asked what I was going to do with it.
I told her that I was going to copyright the idea and sell it to a TV company as a game show to rival Who wants to be a millionaire? On the Monday, I contacted CBS Paramount in Santa Monica and also Dick Clark productions, in beautiful downtown Burbank. I arranged to see both companies for a 10-minute meeting. I booked the meetings, one day apart, and then booked a flight to L.A. and booked the Portofino Hotel & Marina, Redondo Beach.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I went to see CBS Paramount and met with their Senior VP in charge of production, Steve Friedman. I showed him the Power Point presentation (now made in Photo Shop) and played the game with him. After just 6 questions, Steve said, “hey Dave, I’m going to stop you there…..” I just knew that he was impressed and interjected “ So you don’t like it, Steve?” Steve said “I just want to tell you that in my 35 years in this game, I’ve never seen anything like this, David. It’s brilliant and I want worldwide rights………..”and frankly, I never really took in the rest of what he said to me that day. I apologised for the $1 million question about Arachnophobia, the fear of spiders. He chose the wrong spelling, but said “Hey, Dave, no one said it would be easy to win a million bucks!”
I came out of the biggest boardroom on the planet and stood outside like Sylvester Stallone did, in Rocky and punched the air.
I had sold my creation to the biggest broadcaster in the world. That’s only the beginning of my story and quest. The story is fabulous, but without a happy ending.
I soon realised that to get a show to the TV was never going to be that easy, however, I did sell it to ORF TV in Austria when I launched to format at Cannes, but that was just the beginning of my love of the whole industry and gaming. The underlying idea is that once a show is on TV, then the games manufacturers want to make a boxed version of the game as well as an interactive version if they can re-version accordingly. Also, the games manufacturers such as Hasbro, Mattel etc, will only make a game version out of a TV show, once it has been on TV as this is cheap marketing for them, plus, if they make a boxed game version of a game that has not been on TV as a game show, if it suddenly gets snapped up by the TV, then the TV produces, have the uncanny knack of changing the game version to suit TV audiences all over the world. Not only do some games not transmute well in a great TV game show, but once re-versioned for TV, then the Hasbro’s and Mattel’s of the world can have a stock pile of games that they can’t sell accordingly.
I know this for a fact, as making game shows and then trying to sell to Hasbro, does not work that way around.
I had launched my Cash Cube game show also at Cannes, with BBC Worldwide as my distributors and I happened to meet with the (at the time)senior VP for games acquisition for Hasbro worldwide at Cannes in 2007. I showed him the MP4 taster of the Cash Cube show which he was astounded at. Then I allowed him to play the “original” version of the interactive game that I used to get the game show made. We played the game with him and he paid for the champagne….lots of it. He declared that he wanted this game and what’s more, it was the “find” of the 2007 Cannes show. He was so much enamored with the game, that he cancelled his meetings with the CEO of Fremantle Media (the 2nd biggest production company and distributor in the world) to stay with me and continue to soft-soap me into doing a single sourced agreement with Hasbro for worldwide rights for Cash Cube. He organised a meeting back in the UK with another 10 decision makers of Hasbro in 2 weeks’ time. We had the meeting and played the game via multi-media projection. All but one of them stated that they wanted the game. This chap was the interface with EA (electronic arts) and he stated the obvious thing “ if they make the game (which he stated was fantastic) and then I sold it to the TV and then it was made as a game show……they would change the format to suit them and then Hasbro, would have masses of boxed games and interactive games, that they would not be able to market!” He was totally correct with what he said. The meeting ended in a stalemate. Get it on TV first and then Hasbro wanted it and would basically “mirror” the TV game show format. Job done and then Hasbro could benefit from the notoriety of the TV success.
Yes, folks. The story of my past 16 years.
And so, kind people, I have decided to re-version Cash Cube and have created a new company that I have called “Scarramouche Creations Limited” and have revamped the game now making it far superior to my original game and called it “ Scarramouche’s Fandango” and the reversions have 3 different sized games to choose from and play.
At last, Bohemian Rhapsody has finally been answered…Scarramouche has done the Fandango.
I present the Fandango to you all on my website and link it in to my Kickstarter campaign to raise the finance to both get the dream made into a Kick-ass interactive game and get it out there, direct to the actual market, thus side-stepping any TV game show and hopefully entertaining all of the gamers out there who want to have what will be the industry’s most ingenious and “can’t put the game down” game to date. I have created a new generation of game which I call a “life game”. It will last for eons and no game will be played the same twice. You can play the same numbers in the same order, but, what is in the matrix will present a different solution due to the in-built jeopardy every time. Thus the chances of getting everything correct in order to attain the absolute maximum amount of points is so unlikely, that the game is unbeatable….but you will all have so much fun trying, you will never even notice it. That’s how stupendous a game it is.
Fandango also means a clever and elaborate or complicated process or activity. And there you have how it all began………….but it is still unfolding…….
Kickstarter campaign
Help us bring The fandango to market and offer your gracious pledge for a minimum of £25 today.