In the near future, scores of young children might never discover that a scrapped refrigerator box makes a great playhouse, or that a few blankets draped between couches create a perfectly functional fortress.


Those kids will use Kinder Timber, rather than the makeshift methods of old, to build the retreats they imagineif the new product catches on as its Liberty Lake inventor, Bill Jeckle, hopes.


Kinder (pronounced with a soft i, as in kindergarten) Timber is a bright, flexible foam log, or logs, that weigh less than a pound apiece. Through his year-old company, Kinder Concepts Inc., Jeckle makes the play logs and packages them in 85-piece kits for a child-size indoor-outdoor cabin that stands just over 4 feet tall and weighs less than 20 pounds.


Thus far, the reaction is fabulous, he says.


About 40 small, typically high-end specialty-toy retailers scattered across the U.S., from New Jersey to California, currently carry the log-cabin kits. Kinder Concepts sells the kits to retailers at a wholesale price of $220, and they typically resell the kits at prices ranging from $329 to $499. Kinder Concepts also sells the kits itself through its Web site, at www.kindertimber.com, for $369.


Kinder Timber, however, could hit larger retail showrooms soon. Jeckle says Kinder Concepts currently is negotiating a licensing agreement with New York-based Fun Noodle Inc., which makes a swimming-pool toy product called the Pool Noodle out of a foam similar to that used in Kinder Timber. Such an agreement would allow Fun Noodle to manufacture and market Kinder Timber to large national retailers, such as Toys R Us Inc., and pay royalties to Kinder Concepts Inc.


Kinder Concepts and Fun Noodle could complete an agreement later this month, Jeckle says. Kinder Concepts, of which Jeckle is the only employee, still would supply its product to smaller shops. As currently drafted, the proposed licensing agreement also would give Fun Noodle rights to make and market future products after Kinder Concepts has sold them to smaller, specialty shops for a number of months, Jeckle says.


This spring, Kinder Concepts plans to begin selling 50-piece booster kits that would supplement its basic log-cabin kits. The company hasnt come up with any other new products yet, but Jeckle says he envisions making kits for larger cabins or for additions to cabins, such as a play garage. He also hopes to develop and begin selling kits for different styles of structures, such as castles, eventually.


Such larger products would be more costly, however, and Jeckle says, Its already a $400 toy. Theres still pressure to get our retail prices down.


Also, the cabin kits are shipped in three large boxes, and smaller retailers already say they dont have enough storage space to keep very many of the kits in stock.


Still, Jeckle says, smaller stores typically order two to four kits at a time, and so far hes been able to get additional kits to specialty retailers quickly when theyve needed them.


Kinder Concepts gets raw, uncut foam logs from Zebulon, N.C.-based Nomaco Inc., and Jeckle finishes all of the play-cabin parts at a 4,000-square-foot warehouse space behind a new GranTree Furniture outlet, at 304 W. Second, in downtown Spokane. The finishing process basically involves cutting the foam logs to size, carving out the appropriate notches, and branding the ends with a Kinder Timber logo.


That process is set up so that Jeckle can make all of the parts without assistance, but sometimes he brings in temporary workers or relatives to help out. Working alone, Jeckle can make parts for 15 cabins in a week, but that number goes up dramatically when he has help.


Kinder Concepts doesnt have any immediate plans to add permanent employees or to move to larger quarters.


Linking the logs


While adults can chalk up Kinder Timber as another toy that fits in the we-didnt-have-cool-stuff-like-that-when-we-were-kids category, the cabins design should look familiar to them. Though Kinder Timber is much, much larger, its logs stack like traditional Lincoln Logs, with notches near each end that allow the logs to interlock snugly against one another.


A Kinder Timber log cabin takes an adult 10 to 15 minutes to assemble, Jeckle says. It typically would take a child longer to put one together, but kids arent inclined to put the foam buildings together as shown in the instructions, Jeckle says.


Instead, they build tunnels and unenclosed walls and makeshift structures, he says.


Thats exactly what I wanted, Jeckle says. I wanted them to be able to use their imaginations.


When presented with a fully assembled cabin, boys and girls tend to play with it differently, Jeckle says. Little girls, he says, often will crawl inside with their dolls and other toys and play contently. Little boys, however, are more prone to test the structures resilience by jumping on it or kicking it.


Regardless of gender, the toy is recommended for children 3 years old and older and is nontoxic and self-extinguishing if it catches fire, Jeckle says.


Jeckle, 35, is single and doesnt have any children of his own. He got the idea for Kinder Timber two years ago on Christmas Eve while watching his nephews, then 3 years old and 2 years old, play with a passel of new toys. Before long, he says, the new toys ended up against the wall and ignored as the boys played with the boxes the toys came in and the accompanying wrapping paper. He began brainstorming about making a toy that kids could build and came up with the Kinder Timber concept.


Jeckle made his first prototype play cabin out of Styrofoam. It worked, but not as he had envisioned. The cabin was rigid, and the logs stuck together when it got warm. Also, the Styrofoam had to be painted, yet marred easily, which left white flakes all over the logs.


Jeckle invited neighbor kids over to play with the prototype, but when they started whacking (and hurting) each other with the logs, I knew we needed something else.


He experimented with different densities of polyethylene, which is soft, comes in many colors, and is difficult to injure someone with when its used as a club. He settled on a type of polyethylene thats flexible, but still able to hold its structural integrity.


While experimenting, Jeckle secured a patent for the product and trademarks for the names Kinder Timber and Kinder Concepts, and in February, he premiered Kinder Timber at the huge, annual American International Toy Fair, in New York City. He says that while the show generated the first orders for the product, it also taught Jeckle some hard lessons.


The learning curve in the toy industry has been nothing short of vertical, he says.


For example, when interested retailers asked Jeckle what the cabin kit cost, he gave them the suggested retail price rather than the wholesale price to them as shop owners. Suggested retail toy prices, he says, typically are roughly twice the wholesale prices to retailers. When shop owners heard that the price was about $350, they thought they were looking at a toy that they would retail for $700. Kinder Concepts didnt land a sale until a fellow toy maker told Jeckle what he was doing wrong. After changing his price quote so it reflected the wholesale cost, orders began trickling in.


Jeckle has funded the start-up of Kinder Concepts from his own pocket. The company isnt profitable yet, but he projects that it will be in three months.


He has a law degree from Gonzaga Universitys School of Law and has worked as an attorney in Spokane. Immediately prior to starting Kinder Concepts, however, he worked as president and CEO of United Northwest Service Inc., a subsidiary of Seattle-based Regence Blue Shield that managed physician-related operations in Eastern Washington for the health-care insurer. He headed up that company for about six years, until his position was eliminated at the end of 1999 when Regence Blue Shield consolidated United Northwest Service with another Eastern Washington subsidiary, Regence Northwest Health.


About that time, I got this wild hair, Jeckle says. The timing couldnt have been more perfect.