Who Invented the Game?

by Crazy Ivan

This would be a pretty short entry if my question was "who invented Myachi?"  I could rap that up in two words: Steven Ochs.  He sewed up the first Myachi, coined the name, invented all the basic tricks, started the company and has steered it as our CEO ever since.

For all intents and purposes, you could certainly say that Steven Ochs invented the game of "handsack", but as many people know, that game is predated by many decades by a similar game played in colleges all over the world.

The "proto-Myachi" game probably started with disposable lighters but as smoking fell more and more out of social favor the lighter was often replaced with a tube of Chapstick, a ring of keys, a half dollar or whatever somebody happened to have in their pocket.  The only rule was "no palms allowed" and generally the keys, coins or whatever were tossed in a circle.  Drops were penalized and tricks were rewarded.  It was about that simple.

Myachi Masters often meet people who were familiar with what they might know as "the lighter game", "lighter hack" or "backhand".  I've personally met people who were playing "the lighter game" back in 1967.  That's pretty exceptional when you consider that the disposable lighters they were using were only introduced to the market in 1965.

Of course, lighters have a lot of downsides.  They're tough to catch, they hurt on long distance throws and, of course, they actually explode if you drop them hard enough.  Chapstick and keys don't explode (except in James Bond movies), but they aren't much easier to catch.  That was, of course, the inspiration that led to the creation of Myachi.  Steven Ochs (before he became Myachi Man) simply said, "why not make something easier to catch for this game?"

The rest, as they say, is history.  But sometimes, history intrudes on that history.

I can't tell you how many people I've met that "invented" our game.  Sometimes people will just say "That's crazy!  Me and my buddies used to do this with our keys in college!" but sometimes they claim some kind of proprietary ownership.  "Me and my friends invented this game!" they'll say.  Of course, I usually respond with "same here."

Myachi is a pretty simple concept and I imagine a lot of people have "invented" it at one time or another.  Myachi Man was the first to successfully market it, but that doesn't mean that dozens or even hundreds of people had the idea before him.  We understand that in Myachi and we make no claim that we invented the idea of catching something on the back of the hand.

Generally, when we meet people who "invented" the game, they respond in one of three ways.  The most common response is an ironic chuckle.  Second to that are people who seem sublimely disappointed that they hadn't marketed it when they still had the chance.  Lastly and least commonly are the people who are angry that we "stole" their idea.

Which brings me to the whole point of this long, convoluted diatribe.  I got an e-mail the other day from one of the "angry" folks I was talking about at the end there.  The first e-mail he sent me was so riddled with profanity that I can't really quote any of it here, but suffice to say it was somebody who used to play the "lighter game" in college.  He saw the commercial and felt that we had "stolen" his idea so he fired off a very angry e-mail about it.

I e-mailed him back and opened a brief dialogue.  I explained to him essentially what I just explained to you.  I ended the e-mail with two questions: "What did you and your friends call your game?" and "When did you come up with it?"

He responded a few hours later and this time he was a bit more cordial.  Still a little too obscene to quote directly, but he used his expletives much more politely the second time around.  He was sticking to his guns that we had "stolen" his idea (which they called "the Lighter Game").  He and his buddies had invented it at Georgia Southern way back in 2005.

Now, for those of you who didn't get the punchline there, Myachi was first patented in 1998, a full 7 years before this dude "invented" it.  In fact, by 2005 we were selling Myachis in Universal Studios in Orlando.  We'd sold more than half a million Myachis and we'd been on TV, in magazines and in newspapers for years by then.

I pointed that out to him in my reply but I haven't heard back from him yet.  When I do, I'll let you know...