Following on from last week’s sad news and obituary for Golden Bear’s John Hales, TnP’s own founder, Malcolm Naish, shares thoughts and memories of his long time good friend
“I first met John Hales in the late sixties. John was working in sales at Chad Valley and doing very well. His experience gained at Chad Valley enabled John as a very bright and super salesman to create Golden Bear along with fellow Chad Valley employee – Christine Nichols, ace toy designer.“It’s tough creating your own business, but for John and Christine, their business steadily grew. Success is all about taking the occasional gamble and theirs came along with the opportunity to license ‘Teletubbies’. The licensing held by BBC was not an easy sell and if it had not been for John Hales and also Ronnie Yaffe who both had faith in this new licence, history could have been very different.
“Sales exploded with Golden Bear reaping the success of their licensing risk.
“Stories like this are what makes the toy trade such an exciting industry and John was truly the very epitome, being a true toy industry entrepreneur.
“I’m sure that not everyone knows that John and Christine created the BTHA’s ‘Golden Teddy’ award. That super little teddy that sits on the plinth is from Golden Bear.”