While you might not have ever heard Reyn Guyer’s name, chances are, your life has been touched by his imagination.
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In 1966, Milton Bradley unveiled one of the products Guyer helped invent: Twister, which went on to be one of the most iconic pop-games of the 20th century. Then, in 1969, he struck gold again, developing the NERF ball with Parker Brothers. Between these two industry-changing products, Guyer’s impact on the childhoods of millions of Americans was—and still is—immense.
But beyond his award-winning work in the toy/game industry, Guyer is a multi-talented individual—for decades, he’s had a side business of writing, performing and recording gentle, educational and uplifting songs for children. Nowadays, he releases those tunes along with endearing, cartoon music videos for a new musical project called My Friend Wren. Last year, he unveiled “Jamazon,” a heart-warming bedtime track he originally wrote for his own children.
“I have five children,” Guyer—now 86 years old—tells American Songwriter. “Because I’ve been writing music for my whole life, so when they were young, I just started singing that refrain when they were going to bed. ‘Gotta get your ‘jamas on, ‘jamas on, jamas on/ gotta get your ‘jamas on, you got to get to bed.’ I would sing that for them and, eventually, it became the family sing-along before bedtime… whether they liked it or not.”
After that last line, Guyer let out an infectious laugh. “They liked it—I suppose sometimes they didn’t, but it always worked,” he continued. “After a while, I realized ‘Wait, I better put some verses in this.’ So, I kinda tried to paint the scene of the neighborhood, what was going on when it was bedtime. That’s all I did… and it seems to be working okay.”
Simple, catchy and to-the-point, “Jamazon” embodies the approach to writing children’s music that Guyer adheres to. “We hope these stories, songs and videos are going to give kids and parents a softer, gentler vibe, rather than the fast-paced materials that a lot of kids are getting online,” he said. “There are a lot of sites that just get kids bouncing and moving fast, jumping around from one point to another. But I’ve always really admired Mr. Rogers, who had a gentle, quiet and reassuring approach—he was educating, but not preaching. He had a very gentle way of putting material across, so I hope my work does that too.”
With a bright, crisp, acoustic arrangement (complete with a flute solo) and a laid-back, easy-going-but-hard-to-forget refrain, “Jamazon” certainly hits the mark of being positive and educational while retaining a gentle composure. To this end, maybe part of Guyer’s secret to writing such effective material for children comes back to the same thing that helped him create Twister and the NERF ball all those years ago: his imagination. Rather than approaching writing kids’ songs as some specialty vocation, he takes a more nuanced, creative approach.
“I don’t want to sound like a teacher, so I try to write stuff that’s just fun—but at the same time, I don’t want to dumb-down the lyrics,” he explained. “I really think kids can enjoy hearing intelligent ideas being told to them—even if they don’t fully understand it now, at some age, they will. So, I don’t really worry about all of that. For better or worse, that’s the method I embrace.”
Coming to him so naturally, Guyer’s ability to create wonder in the lives of children has, over the decades, grown into a historic achievement. Between the millions of lives that have been augmented by his products to the countless hours folks have spent listening to his music, he’s been an enduring force of positivity and comfort. For his part, he supposes that it’s his youthful heart that helps him create for kids so easily.
“A lot of people have told me that I’ve never grown up… that might be true,” he said with a smile. “That’s just where my head goes. Even with the company I started to teach kids how to read, we’re working with kids. When I get to help kids, it’s wonderful. So, yeah, I guess I think like a kid. Who knows? Maybe that’s it.”
Reyn Guyer’s project, My Friend Wren, makes music for children—listen to the single “Jamazon” below:
