Former Lindfield resident and Oathall school pupil Mark Gasson was celebrating recently as the toy he had invented scooped Toy of the Year Award for Innovation at the 2020 New York Toy Fair.

Mark, who works with UK-based toy manufacturer Wow! Stuff and in partnership with Warner Brothers and J.K. Rowling’s own team of ‘Wizarding World’ experts, has been developing the idea for a Harry Potter Invisibility Cloak for over two years before release.

“It was such an honour to have received this award,” Mark explained. The accolade is presented and organised by The Toy Association and is known as the ‘Oscars’ of the toy industry.

“We really didn’t expect to win against the giants of the toy industry, so the look of surprise on our faces would have been real!”

Mark, who now lives in Los Angeles, studied control engineering at Reading University and graduated with a PhD in Neuroscience and Engineering. He worked in academia researching implantable medical devices before moving on to bring innovation to the toy industry in 2010.

His first success came after he started a company which produced an animated toy monkey called Dave that can sit on a shoulder and talks to people. Mark said: “You may think that robot monkeys and medical brain implants have nothing in common but they are both examples of how people and technology connect and interact with each other. This is an area that I find very interesting.”

The Invisibility Cloak - which works by using a phone camera and app, combining the old photography trick of ‘double exposure’ and TV technique of ‘green screen’ to create the illusion of invisibility – was launched in time for Christmas 2019.

A new version out this year is the Junior Invisibility Cloak and retails at nearly half the price of its predecessor.