One of our favorite toys as a kid was a motorcycle that turned into a robot when flipped it a certain way; we used it to torture our younger sibling by convincing him that the eyes contained radioactive powers. If lil’ brother wants revenge, he can take it up with Henry Orenstein, who patented the Transformers in the 80’s and went on to make oodles of money with the “robots in disguise” action figures (which spawned comics, cartoons and now a live action movie) and other best-selling toys, including Dolly Surprise, a doll that grows long hair when you move her arm.
Orenstein, a Holocaust and dedicated philanthropist (he has been one of the top contributors to the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty in New York for 30 years), has another claim to fame besides providing children with clever playthings; he’s behind the TV poker craze that has elevated a backroom vice to a respectable spectator sport:
“He, more than any other person, is the sole reason for the explosion of poker in this country,” Jon Miller, senior vice president of NBC Sports, tells JTA. “He created the camera. Everybody who shows poker on television now uses his technology.”
On May 1, 60 years after he bluffed his way out of Nazi confinement, Orenstein will be competing in the National Heads-Up Poker Championship on NBC. Those other guys better know when to walk away and know when to run, ‘cause any man who can make a tractor turn into a gun-wielding badass is bound to have a couple tricks up his sleeve.
Shabbat Shalom!