You had to be quick to catch Fliptomania’s booth last week at Toy Fair, almost as quick as its 50 some flipbook titles, since they’re so small you could easily walk by without noticing.
Then again, founder Mark Weissberg wisely displayed his bigger The Beatles Cover To Cover flipbook prominently, and that 125-page volume, which blends all the Beatles’ albums’ artwork together when flipped, is hard to miss.
Same with the three tiny Beatles flipbooks (The Beatles 1963, The Beatles 1967, The Beatles 1968), not to mention the Elvis Presley flipbooks, one of which showed Elvis standing at the microphone, then waving his arm in a circle while swiveling his hips as the pages flip.
“The Beatles’ people saw an Elvis book and were interested,” says Weissberg, who launched his Berkeley-based company 15 years ago and handles art direction and concepts. His 50-some titles also feature animals, dinosaurs, robots, dragons, greetings, fine art, travel, landmarks, classic movies, and make-your-own kids activity flipbooks.
Fliptomania’s flipbooks utilize elements of hand-drawn and 3D animation, film, photography and cultural icons.
Especially striking at Toy Fair, in addition to the Beatles and Presley flipbooks, were the classic film titles North By Northwest, which featured the classic cropduster air attack on Cary Grant; King Kong (the airplane attack from the original movie) and The Wizard Of Oz (the “off to see the wizard” march of the main characters).
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