How Lawnch Was launched
Although not quite as exciting as why Kellogg’s cornflakes were invented, the story of how Lawnch was launched may be weighing on your mind.
If you’ve been wondering where it all started, here is the story from the inventor himself…
My love and myself scheduled a camping trip late in June of 2020.
She thought it would be a great idea to get a lawn game for us to play whilst lazing at the site. She wound up buying an inexpensive “cornhole” game from Walmart so we set it up, had some libations, and started playing.
After only a few rounds we kinda felt the game wasn’t very exciting…nor very challenging or fun to play.
Lawnch…the YARD Game!
The next morning at 5:00am, after completing about three crosswords, and kinda bored as she lay sleeping, I thought to myself… hmmm, maybe I’ll invent a more exciting game that required more accuracy and strategy.
Since we are in the midst of a “cornhole craze” I thought I’d keep it in that vein. The accuracy part of it came from darts, and the basic idea of the scoring as well.
So out came the little notepad that my love had stored in the camper and I started jotting down ideas on the size, shape of the scoring area (which started as a circle as in a dart board), how high of an angle to make the incline of the board, how to store and carry it, etc, etc.. then some of the rules to get the idea going.
The next morning, Monday, I had to go to work on the first prototype so I could try the game out at the next weekend’s camping trip.
I got my son involved who had the brilliant idea to make the scoring area a hexagon so it could be a bigger area to toss to.
I loved the idea and he and his friend went to work on the calculations for it. We also decided that instead of big bags to toss, we’d use footbags or “hacky sacks” as the projectile for the game and that turned out to be a great choice!
Next we had to figure out how to keep the sections for scoring separated and how we were going to keep the sacks from staying in that section like a dart would do.
Goofily, but in a hurry to get the board completed, I came up with the zany idea to put nails around the sections… LMAO!!..
It worked but came away with nail holes in your fingers from hitting them on the nails to remove the sacks..
We played the game at the campground and purposely put it near the road and we had so many people ask… “what is that game, I’ve never seen it before”… that was the beginning.
The next challenge was to figure out how to get rid of the nails and countersink the scoring areas.
I had a cabinet maker make me a set of doors for the camper so I thought… hmm, he is the guy to speak to about that issue.
One thing led to another and I found a great guy to assist with that dilemma.
We had two prototypes done from there… once the game started gaining interest, and after asking everyone for their thoughts, ideas and suggestions, we came up with a third version, and I believe we will stick with this one.
LAWNCH…the Yard Game!
In three and one half short months we’ve sold over 40 Lawnch games and it seems to be gaining in interest.
The game is soo fun, exciting and moves fast. You can play it indoors or outdoors and at any age.
But, by far, the greatest comment I’ve heard about Lawnch was, “My 12 year old came out of hiding and played for TWO HOURS”.. that was so satisfying to me and the main reason to continue to try to grow this family-oriented game.
