Rest In Play - 2020 - 2029

David was born on June 22, 1962 and passed away on May 4, 2025. David, like most children, loved watching TV as a child, and chased that passion into adulthood. He studied Communications at the Univer...sity of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in radio, TV, and film. Two months after graduating, he moved to Los Angeles and briefly worked at Lorimar Productions before joining The Walt Disney Company as a research assistant. David spent 35 years with Disney, moving between Chicago, Atlanta, and Dallas before settling down in Downers Grove, Illinois. In 2021, David retired as Senior Vice President of Broadcast Syndication and spent his final years traveling and spending time with his family. He leaves behind a loving wife, Katy, three children, Zachary, Daniel, and Ansley, and three grandchildren, Harrison, Ian, and Elaine.Show more

George Wendt was born on October 17, 1948 and passed away on May 20, 2025. He is best remembered for his role as Norm Peterson on the NBC sitcom Cheers. George was born in Chicago and went to the ...University of Notre Dame for college, though he was expelled after receiving a 0.0 GPA during his junior year. Later, he attended Rockhurst College in Missouri and graduated with a degree in economics. George started out at Second City, an improv comedy theater in Chicago. It's also where he met his future wife, Bernadette Birkett. In 1980, George had small roles in the movies My Bodyguard and Somewhere In Time, and the tv shows Taxi, Soap, and M*A*S*H. In 1982, he landed his first reoccurring role on Making the Grade, though it was canceled after six episodes. His breakthrough came with the sitcom Cheers. George, as Norm Peterson, appeared in all 275 episodes of Cheers from 1982 - 1993. He earned six Emmy nominations for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. After Cheers, he started in The George Wendt Show, which featured him as a garage mechanic with a radio show, which ran for two months. He had a few appearances in other shows: The Larry Sanders Show, Columbo, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Frasier. He had a few movie roles as well: Becker, The Little Rascals, Man of the house, Spice World, and outside Providence. In his later years, he appeared in various movies, tv shows, talk shows, music videos, and theater productions. In 2023, he competed on The Masked Singer. In 2024, he reunited with most of the cast of Cheers at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards, presenting the awards for best directing and best writing of a comedy series. George married his wife, Bernadette, in 1978. They had three children together. Bernadette later voiced his off-screen wife, Vera, in Cheers. When George passed, the real life Cheers Beacon Hill bar honored him by setting up a memorial with a full glass of beer in the area of the bar where Norm always sat.Show more

Steve Pepoon was born on May 19, 1956 and passed away on May 3 2025. He was best known for being a writer on The Simpsons, ALF, and Get a Life. Steve was born in Missouri and attended Kansas State ...University. He then moved to Los Angeles in 1979 and managed drive-in movie theaters. He sold his first script, which became an episode of Silver Spoons, in 1985. A little over a year later, he was hired as a staff writer on ALF, and wrote for its final three seasons through 1990. One of the scripts he did for The Simpsons, Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment, won him an Emmy. He was the head writer for The Jackie Thomas Show in 1992 and 1993 and wrote for ABC's Roseanne and CBS's Tom in 1994. He created Nickelodeon's The Wild Thornberrys, which ended up running for five seasons. In 2009, he ran into Mary Stephenson, who he had first met in kindergarten. The two married the same year and Steve never returned to Hollywood.Show more

Judith was born in 1938 and passed away on May 4, 2025 at the age of 87. Age the age of 7, Judith fell ill with rheumatic fever and needed surgery on both of her legs, resulting in being confined t...o her bed for two years. This is where her creativity began to grow. She drew pictures of her surroundings, created small wearable yarn dolls, and paper doll fashions. Her entrepreneurial spirit started here, too: each day she sold her work on the sidewalk for a nickel. In the 1970s, Judith was working as an artist, but when finances were low, she started hand painting designed on denim jeans and kaftans to sell at boutiques. One day, she was at a local bagel store when she remembered her grandfather, who owned and operated a bagel store, used to draw funny faces on stale bagels for her Mom. Inspired by the idea, she asked the baker to make small bagels and drew faces on them, connected them with string, and sent her daughter off the school wearing the necklace. Around the same time, she was gearing up for an interview with UPI about painting on denim. Her husband dared her to sell the bagel necklaces to Bloomingdales, and to everyone's surprise, he ordered one hundred of them! She was deemed "The Bagel Lady" and spent her days filling orders. A Children's Editor from McGraw Hill invited her to lunch and told Judith they wanted her to write a children's book, and so "The Bagel Baker of Mulliner Lane," based off of her grandfather, came to be. Her monopoly in the bagel fashion/book industry turned into a monopoly in the toy industry, too. She had Bagel happy Family of Elephantagel bagels and Pigagel bagels in plush designs, which led her to Knickerbocker Toys. There, she was encouraged to start investing toys. Judith invented Puppet Sheet Theater, Bedkins, Beside Buddies, Treetures, Sweetie Pops, Baby Check-Up doll, and many many more toys for Hasbro, Mattel, and a few other toy companies throughout the span of her career. She's also written, illustrated, and/or developed 15 children's books and designed some children's bedding. In 1986, she received the Hasbro Inventors' Hall of Fame Award.Show more

Jackson "Butch" Guice was born on June 27, 1961 and passed away on May 1, 2025. Butch's first credited comics work was penciling and inking The Crusaders #1 in 1982. Marvel editor Al Milgrom offer...ed him a tryout on the toy-spin-off title Micronauts in the same year, and he continued penciling micronauts until 1984. In 1984, he drew the Marvel Comics adaptation of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and inked Dazzler. In 1986, he penciled X-Factor and The New Mutants. In 1987, he collaborated on a few titles with writer Mike Baron, including issues of Badger, Nexus, and The Chronicles of Corum. He penciled Teen Titans Spotlight #7 and #8, and in 1988 and 1989, he produced a series of covers for the Quality Comics/Fleetway 2000 AD reprint-title 2000AD Showcase while simultaneously penciling Iron Man for Marvel. In 1989, he became the artist on Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme. in 1991, Butch took over penciling Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. before moving back to DC. He drew Action Comics #676 - 711 over the course of three years. In 1995, he moved to Valiant Comics, where he became the regular penciller of Eternal Warrior. In 1996 and 1997, he illustrated the four-issue DC/Marvel: All Access mini-series. In 2000, Butch became the artist on Birds of Prey for issues #15-34. He then left DC Comics and moved to Florida to work for CrossGen. There, he launched Ruse with writer Mark Waid. After CrossGen, he worked with writer Warren Ellis on a six-issue story called New Maps of Hell for DC's JLA: Classified and the One Year Later revamp of Aquaman. In 2007, he worked on The Invincible Iron Man and became inker on Captain America for #32-35.Show more

Geoff Smith was born in May 1947 and passed away in April 2025. He had a long and successful career in the toy industry that spanned over 50 years. Geoff spent most of his career as a director at ...A.B. Gee. He was also a longstanding member of the Fence Club, having joined in 1991. He was the chairman in 2000 and also held he positions of Hon Charity secretary and Hon secretary. Geoff leaves behind his loving wife, Pauline.Show more

Robert Stull was born on February 2, 1967 and passed away on April 17, 2025 after a battle with cancer. Robert graduated from the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston and went on to be a renowned g...raphic artist, designer, and creator. Rob rounded Ink on Paper, a production studio specializing in illustration for comic book, magazine and print media and was a partner in True Elements Publishing LLC. You can see Rob's art in Spider-Man Adventures, Iron Man, X-Force and Wolverine, to name a few. Rob is also featured in Black Comix: African American Independent Comics, Art and Culture as well as The History of American Graffiti. Rob created and curated Sequential Art: The Next Step, a traveling exhibit that spotlights the contributions of African Americans to mainstream comic book art. In 2019, Stull was the first African American artist-in-residence at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, where he collaborated with muralist Rob “Problak” Gibbs on “The Mural Project.”Show more

Jack Katz was born on September 27, 1927 and passed away on April 24, 2025. He's best remembered for his graphic novel, The First Kingdom. Jack attended the School of Industrial Art in NYC and bega...n working for comic book publishers in the 1940s, or what is now known as the Golden Age of Comic Books. Jack wrote under a variety of pen names: Jay Hawk, Vaughn Beering, Alac Justice, Alec Justice, and David Hadley. He began his career in the C.C. Beck and Pete Costanza Studio. He worked as a letterer in Jerry Iger's studio, and from 1946-1951 he worked as an art assistant on various King Features Syndicate comic strips. He worked on Thimble Theater, Terry and the Pirates, and Standard Comics. In 1954, he began working under Stan Lee at Timely comics. In 1955, he left mainstream comics to paint and teach art at the YMCA. He spent 14 years on a sort of hiatus until he was impressed by Jim Steranko's Captain America, and decided to reenter mainstream comics. He joined Stan Lee again at Marvel Comics, and then worked at DC for a short while before leaving to write and illustrate for Jim Warren. Around 1970, Jack started working at Skywalk Publications. He worked on Zangar and The Plastic Plague and finally, in the early 70s, he started writing The First Kingdom. It was Jack's move to California that began his interest in underground comics. It took Jack 12 years to complete The First Kingdom, a 24-issue, 768-page graphic novel. He finished two books per year, ending with a total of 24 in order to mirror the number of books in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. After finishing The First Kingdom, Jack taught art at a community college in California. In 2014, he started working on beyond the Beyond, a 500-page graphic novel, and though he finished it in 2019, it was never published. In 2020, Jack had a solo exhibition titled "The Golden Age and Beyond." In 2021, Sharpy Publishing released The Unseen Jack Katz, which was a collection of unpublished works from the 1970s and 1980s. In March 2025, Katz's collection of his own original comic art and personal items was gifted to Rice University by his former wife, Caroline Gold. In 1982, Jack received an Inkpot Award at San Diego Comic-Con. In 2023, he received the Will Eisner Hall of Fame Award. Jack was married three times and had four children.Show more

David Strang, founder of Wicked Vision, unexpectedly passed away on April 21, 2025. Wicked Vision, an online company that sells products like boomerangs, discs, high bounce balls, and yoyos, was a ...passion project for David. David was a big supporter of active play and made many friends in the industry. Eolo Toys acquired Wicked Vision in 2024, and throughout the past year, David worked closely with the team at Eolo to integrate the creativity he was so known for into the group.Show more

Mike Wood was born on September 1, 1952 and passed away on April 10, 2025. Mike was best known for his role as the founder of LeapFrog. Mike attended Stanford for his undergraduate degree, and late...r attended the Haas School of Business to earn his MBA and US Law San Francisco to earn his JD. From 1978 - 1991, he practices corporate law at Reed Smith, and then from 1991 - 1994, he was a partner at Cooley LLP. After quitting, he founded LeapFrog Enterprises in 1995 and launched the LeapPad, perhaps the company's most notable product in 1999. Mike was the CEO of LeapFrog from March 2022 - February 2004. He was the Vice Chairman from September 1997 - September 1, 2004, when he retired. Mike married Susan Cotter in 1985 and they had one child together, Mat. They later divorced and Mike married Leslie Harlander in 2021. Mike was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and died by assisted suicide in Switzerland surrounded by his family.Show more