which toy of all the ones you've made is your favorite?

And I have to say, it's this one, the Snoopycopter.

My name is Khipra Nichols, and this is my take on toys.

I'm an industrial designer, and I'm also a professor at Rhode Island School of Design.

I designed toys at Hasbro for 20 years and two months exactly.

I think the most recognizable toy that I worked on for sure is my Little Pony.

♪ My little pony, my little pony ♪ ♪ Tie a ribbon to show how much I care ♪ - One of the fun things about doing a play set for My Little Pony is that you get to design all of the little accessories within the play set.

I came up with the idea of having a baby dragon.

- Wow, purple spiky things.

- And so Spike became the baby dragon friend of Majesty, who is the pony that comes in the My Little Pony Dream Castle.

So one of the fun aspects of the feature for Spike is that he gets to ride up and down in this little basket.

And I have to admit, the inspiration for this feature came from watching the movie "Rear Window".

(upbeat music) Another really fun toy to work on was Mr. And Mrs.

Potato Head.

So before this character that we worked on, Mr. and Mrs.

Potato Head were very kind of plain, they were plastic like this, but they had very little personality.

And so we had the job of bringing freshness and more life and animation into the characters.

♪ Mr.

Potato Head, I made you ♪ - It was my idea to have this little hatch.

And it was inspired by the Dr. Denton onesies that toddlers wear that have a little flap in the back when they're learning how to potty train.

And so this just opens up, and it's plenty of room to put the parts in.

And we made sure the parts were flexible enough and soft enough that they could bend and flex and this can change.

♪ Put them all together, then take them all apart ♪ ♪ Put them all together, then take them all apart ♪ - One day, one of the GI Joe group guys came over and asked me if I would like to be a GI Joe character.

And I thought, "are you serious?"

Before you know it, I had my character.

This was Doc actually from the first series of the small GI Joe characters.

Probably in 1982 was when this came out.

Toys are important because this is how children start to understand the world that they're in.

So imagine a toddler sitting in a wading pool and you give them a block, a wooden block, and they kind of splash it in the water and it floats to the top.

And they get very excited about that.

And then when you hand them something that doesn't float, they put it in the water right away and they do the same thing and it doesn't come up to the top.

And so what looks like play, and it is play, is also discovery.

So one day I had a prototype for a toy and I had the opportunity to sit next to an eight month old who was going to teach me about the human factors of the toy.

Did I get the shapes right?

Did I get the size correct?

Is it gonna be fun for the child?

So I sat down next to the child and I took the toy out of the box and the child got very excited about the box.

Actually, the box was more interesting than the toy because the box was something that the child could put on their head and then they could put it down on the floor and then they could put something in the box, then they could dump something out of the box.

So yeah, sometimes the box is even more engaging than what's in the box.

I'm Khipra Nichols, and this has been my take on toys.

- That's our podcast this evening.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Pamela Watts.