The Laugh Tycoon

A man is laughing. He is hysterical. He is consumed by laughter, actually afflicted with it. He cannot stop. It is astonishing. It is even more astonishing because there is no man in sight. The subway station is empty--except for one old woman and two small boys.

Eerie? Absurd? Only for 30 seconds, until the record of uninterrupted laughter has run its course inside the bag the boys are swinging. Then, it is clearly only a joke, and already the hottest toy of the new year: Bag Full of Laughs.

It looks like an ordinary beanbag, orange, pink or candy-striped. But when a concealed button is tapped, a battery-operated three-inch plastic disk turns on, and there is no turning off the heehaws for half a minute. "We sell happiness," says Sammy Kay, vice president of the Gund Manufacturing Co. and chief purveyor of the laughing bag, a brand of happiness that costs about $5. Gund has been putting laughing boxes inside stuffed animals since 1954, but it wasn't until this year that the company sent them out to go it alone. "Our first buyers," Kay reports, "were wary. But it's like making soup. You make enough for four people, and when everybody asks for more you look in the pot and there isn't any left." Last week, with over 1,000,000 pieces shipped and another 300,000 in production, Kay's pot was bone dry.

Legal Battles. In the 30 years Kay has been with Gund, the company's biggest hits have been a floppy slumber dog called "Regal Beagle" and a series of Walt Disney stuffed toys. But this --"it's incredible," moans the 54-year-old laugh tycoon. To keep on top of orders, Kay has stopped commuting to his home in The Bronx and has taken a hotel room near his shabby Fifth Avenue showroom. "It's impossible," he adds. "It's just like a tornado hit me."

Competitors are willing to share the storm. The Louis Marx Co. has The Laugh Machine, at twice the size and with a laugh that sounds as if a child were being tickled and tickled. Then there is a "Bag of Laughs," a "Laughing Pouch," and for those who like their titters in hard covers, a "Box O Laffs." Legal battles may be forthcoming. The issue: whether laughter, packaged, is in the public domain.

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