Anatex Wire Beads Maze

I'm willing to bet that, if you're of the right age, you vividly recall going into the pediatricians waiting room for a checkup and seeing a boatload of toys around to play with until you were called in, but everyone always opted for one thing...the wire bead maze. Seems these are one of those childhood constants that never goes away. In fact, if anything, my Google results tell me that these have only gotten more elaborate and cool over time, so now it's their turn to be inducted into this blog.

Where does the name Anatex come from?

Well, according to Walmart's website - of all places, for god sakes - the name stems from the Anatex company, established in 1982, who were the first company to distribute the wire bead rollercoaster maze toy in the US which earned them a plethora of toy distributor awards. Since then, Anatex has gone on to expand into a wide variety of creative activity centers, which furnish homes, schools and, humorously enough, waiting rooms nationwide. Finding their creations, which litter websites focused primarily on edutainment and childrens development habits, is easy and will likely also net you a similar boost of nostalgia if you've come of age between the mid 80s to early 2000s. However, finding information on Anatex? Damn near impossible from what I can conclude.

They seem to have absolutely no web presence of any kind aside from a Facebook page I managed to scrounge up, which hasn't been utilized since 2016. They include a website address, but clicking on the URL only leads you to yet another dead end. It's an empty website, with all content wiped clean. Anatex, near as I can figure, has vanished from the face of the earth. So let's run down their Facebook and see if we can dig anything else up, shall we?

In their "about" section you can find this brief summary of their history:

Anatex was the first company to manufacture and distribute Rollercoaster wire bead maze frames in the United States and North America. We are proud to have been awarded the Parents' Choice Classic which recognized the Rollercoaster as the Original. The Rollercoaster is also a Dr. Toy Best Classic Toys Winner. Our company was commended by the USC School of Business for it's unique and innovative marketing plan of promoting toys through the American Academy of Pediatrics. For more than a decade the Rollercoaster has been called "The Best Doctor's Office Toy". Anatex has enjoyed an exciting history and we look forward to sharing with our customers a successful and profitable future.

Well not only is this vague and  unhelpful but they obviously don't look forward to sharing a successful or profitable future considering they cannot be found. Oddly enough, however, the toy itself seems to have no lack of imitators. You'd think being someone who created something so widely recognizable that it led to them being the sole distributor of pediatricians waiting room toys would perhaps make them a bit more protective of their merchandise, but you'd be wrong. Maybe the license was up for sale, or maybe it's just one of those toys that's so generic in its idea that anyone can make them without being called a "copycat". Really, it's just some wire stuck into a wood base with colored beads on it. Not that hard to come up with, in all honesty.

 

So alright, Anatex may be gone, but their creation lives on!

 

Designed with children aged 18 months to 5 years old in mind, these are what the site Sensory Edge calls a "three dimensional manipulative experience" (this is the coolest way I've ever heard this described) in the perceptual, motor and language areas of development. Actually, these toys are supposedly excellent for visual tracking, hand eye coordination, color and shape recognition, grouping, spatial relations and memory activities. Now that I think about it, perhaps I was drawn to these myself because of my autism, and they're an extremely stimulating toy to interact with, both physically and mentally.

Doing a Google image search brings up a plethora of varieties of the toy, variants upon variants, and honestly for a toy designed solely with the idea of helping develop children's minds, I see this as a plus. It would help to have a number of different takes on the same concept to play with, because it would only make a child see things in different ways, and that's kind of the entire point.

These are toys the same way a Rubik's Cube is a toy; it's meant to expand your mind, fire up your synapses and get your brain blood pumping. But it's also not really a toy meant with fun in mind, exactly. You have to be imaginative and enjoy these sorts of things, I think, to really appreciate what it is they're giving you to work with here.

Either way, I'm glad the Anatex concept is still alive and kicking, and given by the broad amount of people who seem to be pumping these things out, it isn't going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, despite not having been in a pediatricians waiting room for well over two decades, I'd bet my left foot on the fact that if I were to walk into one today, I'd still see a few of these sitting around next to all the kids books and barbie dolls strewn across the floor. The amount of colors and options given to you through one of these is simply overwhelming, and that's what makes it fun to partake in. You can do a number of things, even with very little at your disposal. It really helps boost your imagination.

 

I wish there was more to say. I wish there were more history to cover, or more to talk about in regards to the toy itself and the publics reaction. I wish that perhaps this toy itself had been inducted into the hall of fame, but alas, there really isn't much here, which only helps lend to the mystique of the Anatex wire bead maze, as though it's existed as long as time itself, and will continue to do so long after we as a species have vanished.

I hope I can somehow find out what happened to Anatex, but if that mystery is never solved, then at least let us thank them for their addition to the wonderful world of toys, because really, childhood would not have the same stench of nostalgia it has without their wire bead mazes, and I don't know about you, but frankly, that wouldn't be a world I would want to live in.