Toy inventor Eddy Goldfarb tinkers with words and toys at age 102

At age 102, Hall of Fame toy inventor Eddy Goldfarb gets excited about a different kind of plaything: Words.

The toy man created the wind-up chattering “Yakity-Yak” teeth, the don't-drop-your-marbles KerPlunk game, the Barbie video game, the soap-shooting Bubble Gun and 800 other items. Many of them hurdled the 1-million-items-sold barrier.

He’s still at it in the Thousand Oaks retirement community where he lives independently. He churns out enough game parts and other items on a pair of 3D printers that he’s thinking of buying a third.

But it’s stories that made his eyes light up as he sat on a sofa four days before Christmas. He writes them daily on his computer, has for years now, all whittled to 100 words in a challenge he thinks helps keep his mind sharp.

Rhythmic, touching and funny, many of the stories are about his life, from taking apart a radio to see how it worked at age 5, to walking the plank to board the USS Batfish in the Navy, to a relationship that started when he was a 90-something widow.

His favorite story is of meeting Anita Stern who became his wife.

“Hank and I went to this dance,” he wrote. “I was sitting when they walked by. I noticed her tush and then her face — it was wow! Not just because she was beautiful, but behind those blue eyes, there was so much more. The first things I asked were: was she single and did she have a job? Kidding, those are TV lines.

“We danced and when I held her and she wrinkled her nose, that was it. I didn’t want to rush her or look like a weirdo, so I waited until the next day to ask her to marry me.”

Earlier this year, several months before his September birthday, Goldfarb’s stories were published in his first book, “101 100-Word Stories By a 101-Year-Old.” He thinks of ideas every day, sits at his computer to type out a line or two about corn chowder, pranks and song lyrics, coming back later to flesh them out.

“The stories are clearly No. 1,” said Lyn Goldfarb, the filmmaker daughter who made a short documentary, “Eddy’s World,” that still streams on PBS. She sees the 100-word stories as his memoirs. “It’s like his third act.”

Telling them is fun, too. He sat on the sofa laughing as he remembered that dance with his wife-to-be. When he first proposed, she said, “No” because New Year’s Eve was coming. She had a date and didn’t want to hurt the man’s feelings.

Goldfarb persisted. They were hitched in nine months.

They were together for 65 years, raised three kids and later moved to the University Village retirement community in Thousand Oaks. Anita Goldfarb died in 2013. She was 84.

After his wife passed, Goldfarb and a group of friends gathered every week to watch commentator Bill Maher’s TV show. He remembers arguing with a woman about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of his heroes. It was an inauspicious start but they began dating and became a thing.

Greta Beth Honigsfeld is 93 now and in memory care. Goldfarb visits her every day for dinner. They can no longer talk the same way they once did but they are still a couple.

“She knows me. She expects me,” Goldfarb said, smiling. “I’m keeping her company, and I like that.”

Christmas is a big day for toy inventors. It ratchets up demand for merchandise but is also a time when games, gadgets and chattering teeth help people bond.

“Toys are a noble industry,” Goldfarb said. “It keeps families together.”

He works in partnership with his son, Martin. One of his newer inventions is “Forklift Frenzy,” where players use toy forklifts to stack barrels. As Goldfarb described the invention, a 3D printer whirred away at a part for a different game. That gadget brought a shoulder shrug from Goldfarb.

“I really can’t talk about it,” he said, noting the game has not yet been finished. Similar fears about trade secrets made him tell his children to never talk about a toy still being developed.

He works every day on toys, stories and the translucent three-dimensional images known as lithophanes. His window sills are filled with solar-powered figurines collected over the years.

He contends the schedule helps explain why he’s still going at 102. Lyn Goldfarb said optimism helps, too.

“He just has a good attitude overall. He doesn’t let small things bother him,” she said, pointing also at her father’s relationship with Honigsfeld. “He got a new life. I think that’s really important.”

As a toy inventor, Goldfarb has always been independent. It’s a status important to him in other aspects of life.

“I handle everything myself,” he said of his living arrangements. He has agreed to his children's requests he no longer drive outside of the gated senior community but still sometimes pilots a golf cart or a car inside.

He talks of living to 107. He plans to keep inventing toys for as long as he can.

“I think it’s healthy for me,” he said.

Tom Kisken covers health care and other news for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tom.kisken@vcstar.com or 805-437-0255.

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This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Thousand Oaks inventor Eddy Goldfarb plays with words at age 102