High-Octane Blender Drinks - With a Twist
By Deborah McAdams
What do you get when you cross a gas-powered weed whip with an ordinary kitchen appliance?
Why, a nationally televised margarita mixer, of course.
At least that's what Brian Gross and Dan Phillips came up with at Innovative A.R.T.S., their design development company in Loma Rica Industrial Park. In a flurry of inspiration, Gross and Phillips came up with the TailGator®, an ordinary looking blender - except for the gas tank and the rip cord.
"It's the manliest way to make a girlie drink," said Gross, a bespectacled engineer who defected from the automotive industry in southern California.
Gross and Phillips didn't actually come up with the concept for the TailGator® - that honor would belong to Paul Anderson of Grass Valley, who thought of mounting a blender on a weed-whip motor. Gross and Phillips, who solicit product ideas through Totally Gross, Inc., their marketing division based in Reno,
took Anderson's idea and created the first, clean-working gas-powered blender, which will make its national debut on Tim Allen's "Home Improvement" on Nov. 25.
The script for Allen's irreverent sitcom could have come straight out of Innovative A.R.T.S., where Gross and Phillips drop one-liners like metal shavings from one of their grinders.
"We don't remember all of the R&D because we had to do a little testing," Gross cracks.
"It's guaranteed to be standing when you're not," Phillips later chimes in.
"It's not your dad's blender," Gross remarks.
Yet Gross and Phillips are serious about the TailGator®, which they developed with the help of a third but absent partner, Richard Lopez of Orlando, Fla. Gross calls Lopez the "artistic genius behind this."
The Totally Gross team believes the TailGator® will lift them from obscurity, or at least near-poverty. Gross and Phillips have paid the rent redesigning remote-control devices for car alarms and garage-door openers, as well as automotive components. They believe the TailGator®, to retail for about $295, is their ticket.
Gross intends to expand Innovative from the current 1,800 square feet into an additional 1,500 square feet of space next door, where an assembly operation would be set up. Gross said keeping the operation in Grass Valley depends on whether the company can get the $50,000 necessary to buy production equipment and complete the expansion. He estimated six people would be hired for production. Right now, the production team consists of Justin Halliday, a machinist at the shop, plus wives, girlfriends, sisters and kids.
At the Big Boy Toy Show at Cal-Expo, the high-pitched whine of the two-stroke motor drew guys like couch cushions draw loose change. Debbie Gross, Brian's extremely understanding wife, said the curious men were often escorted by mortified woman wondering what testosterone hath wrought for their kitchens.
America's kitchens are probably safe, however, because part of the point of having a TailGator® is drawing the crowd. No namby-pamby cigarette-lighter blender can compare, the lab-coated pair said. Phillips talked about taking a TailGator® to Laguna Beach where he and a friend became "blender gods," a phenomenon he and Gross hope to share with manly men everywhere.
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