American Inventor: Peter's and Doug's Groups of Three
Episode 8 Recap by Gayl Killough
May 5, 2006
Two more hours of American Inventor, but no best of whatever was shown. Just the way I prefer. Basically two back to back episodes of the final two judges out of the four judges were shown. The first hour was Peter's group of three. The second hour was Doug's group of three.
I did not realize that before American Inventor appeared on the air, just how important of a role that the judges were to be given. With Simon Cowell being a judge on American Idol, when it came time to produce his very own show, he decided to really highlight the judges. The judges are the focus of American Inventor more so than the actual inventors.
Peter's group of three consists of Robert Amore with the Tonerbelt, Ed Hall with the Word Ace, and Jodi Pliszka with the Headliner. I am still very curious how the judges decided to break up the final 12 into four groups of three. I really expected the judges to pick different finalists based on earlier comments. I was expecting Jodi to be in Mary Lou's group and I had expected Francisco to be in Peter's group. That is not the way it turned out.
I finally feel comfortable with understanding the format of how these final group shows are laid out. The judge serves as a mentor for his or her group of three. Suggests a design company to make a real prototype for each contestant. The contestant has 30 days, in Hollywood area I assume away from families, to develop and work on the real prototype with the $50,000 given to them. They start out with a focus group and end with a testing group. Then they present to all 4 judges again, but only the judge of each group of three selects one contestant to move on to final 4. The audience will vote for the final winner out of the final four.
Robert Amore has already created more controversy for the judges than I am assumed he wanted. I really do not know the real story. Several people have defended him on message boards to say that he has held a patent for this idea since 1984 and has several other inventions already.
This is not the impression that his bio gives him on this show. He does seem to have a better sense of what he is doing in the prototype process compared to the rest of the contestants. I could believe that he is a more seasoned inventor. He says that he just wants to help improve the health of people and his target niche is people who normally would not exercise. He gets negative feedback in his focus group that surprises him. He wants to address those problems with his design company, but does not feel like he is being listened too. He has enough money to hire two design firms, with one serving as a back-up to the other. He winds up selecting the original design company after they step it up a notch, but uses the packaging design from the second firm. $50,000 sounds like a lot of money to have to develop a product, but it really is not.
The way I had pictured spending $50,000, I would have not had enough extra to hire two different design firms, I would have had to fire the first one in order to select a second design firm I think, but I really have no way of knowing.
Ed Hall has to have his prototype taken apart in order to meet the short deadline of less than a month for the design company's timeline. This causes a lot of problems and heartache. Peter also wanted him to produce a Spanish version of the game. It eventually all works out and he has a final product that surpasses his original idea. I am starting to understand how the game works now. I think I might enjoy the game myself. When he presents the idea to the judges, they are worried about the expense of the product. He says it would sell for near $50 and I hate to agree, but that does sound a little high compared to what I would want to spend.
Jodi Pliszka is the third finalist. She convinced the judges that she had a product that not only would be great for people like herself who has suffered hair loss and want a comfortable fit underneath a wig and to deal with the moisture and sweating, but that her product would work for anyone who wore a hat, especially professionals such a firefighters. Talk about not listening to her idea, the design firm has all these crazy ideas that they want to do that has nothing to do with her invention. I have to say that if the design firm wants to do that with a hat, then they need to submit their own inventions, but they did not appear helpful to her. Jodi also finds out that she is losing her job because 30 days is a long time to take off from a job. Jodi decides to go in a different direction with people who specialize in diapers and absorbent materials. They very type of people that she should have been given to work with in the first place. She is happy with her final product. The judges are also worried about the expensive cost of her idea as well for her market.
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