Origin and early history of tube men is a cautionary IP tale for collaborators
BY REID CREAGER
“Wacky, waving, inflatable, arm-flailing tube man!
“Wacky, waving, inflatable, arm-flailing tube man!
“Wacky, waving, inflatable, arm-flailing tube man!”
The Announcer Guy voice on an old bit from “Family Guy” continues: “Hi, I’m Al Harrington, president and CEO of Al Harrington’s Wacky, Waving, inflatable, Arm-Flailing Tube Man Emporium and Warehouse! Thanks to a shipping error, I am now currently overstocked on wacky, waving, inflatable, arm-flailing tube men—and I am passing the savings on to yooooou!”
So, what is the real purpose of these kitschy, huge, colorful, goofy-looking, inflatable stick figures used outside of car dealerships and retail stores that wave and gyrate?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
The tube man’s constant, wild movement caused by fans and/or wind is designed to attract attention for a number of reasons. The “Family Guy” faux ad provided some legitimate and iffy uses for this spectacle, also sometimes generously referred to as air dancers or sky dancers: “Attract customers to your business! Make a splash at your next presentation! Keep Grandma company! Protect your crops! Confuse your neighbors!”
Most of these are actual uses—and tube men as scarecrows seem like a no-brainer. But they aren’t always looked upon with amusement: The City of Houston has banned them as purported visual clutter since 2010, as have some other U.S. towns and municipalities.
From an inventing and intellectual property standpoint, the origins and early years of these inflation creations are a story of collaboration, conflict and—for better or worse—how to capitalize on someone else’s idea without infringing.
A bad surprise
If you go to Google with the question, “Who invented tube men?,” the response is Doron Gazit. If you ask the exact same question on Bing, the response is Peter Minshall.
Given the growing charges against Google that it has little respect for original concepts, this may not be a surprise.
Simply put: Tube men were created by Minshall, and Gazit built the working prototypes.
Trinidad and Tobago native Minshall, whose work from the 1970s through the 2000s challenged Carnival traditionalism, was commissioned to develop art for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Years later, he told the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian that he was sitting in the bleachers of the Atlanta stadium when he began drawing.
“I sketched two of the inflatable tubes and joined them at the waist, going into one tube which is the torso; divided them again at the top with the arms and a bit of a head. … I saw two legs, two arms. I thought: ‘My God, with a wind source, we could create a huge, incredible, undulating dancing figure’”—and fill a stadium with what he called “tall boys.”
When he needed technical help with his drawings, the Olympic design office contacted Gazit. The Israel native, since moved to Los Angeles, was also an accomplished artist and engineer. Like Minshall, he had a background working with art pieces resembling air dancers.
The finished product was a hit. Minshall returned to Trinidad after the Olympics. According to the Guardian story, about six months later he got a call from another designer who told him Gazit was starting to manufacture the idea for profit.
“He should have called me up the moment he thought about doing that,” Minshall said.
According to tentandtable.net, Gazit openly admitted that Minshall conceptualized the air dancers. Nonetheless, he sought a patent for them through his company, Air Dimensional Design, without telling Minshall. His application was approved in 2001.
Minshall considered legal action but dropped it, not wanting the hassle and expense.
Just desserts?
Marketing the tube men and other inflatable art installations has been massively successful for Gazit’s company. But he had his own IP challenges after the world saw his “fly guys” at the ’96 Olympics, and they began popping up all over the country.
Gazit was challenged to track down infringement cases after getting legal protection for his design. His patent only described a two-legged, inflated balloon in a person’s likeness—so copy-catters were able to get around that by building the one-legged model we commonly see today.
Because of their low cost, fun spirit and ease of attracting attention, tube men seem destined to be with us for a while despite detractors who say their very existence is as obnoxious as the “Family Guy” mock commercial. A young YouTube commenter summed up the latter thusly:
“This has lived rent-free in my head for most of my life.”
Patent Pathway
U.S. Patent No. 6,186,857, which lists Doron Gazit and Arieh Leon Dranger as inventors and Air Dimensional Design Inc. as the assignee, was granted on February 13, 2001. It is titled “Apparatus and method for providing inflated undulating figures.