Fredonia alumnus Chris Alan Grabar, a Sound Recording Technology and Applied Music (Guitar) major from the Class of 2009, was part of the team which received the 2015 Infant Toy of the Year award from the Toy Industry Association for the Fisher-Price toy, Bright Beats Dance and Move BeatBo.
What exactly is a “BeatBo?” The multi-colored, robot-like interactive creature helps strengthen toddlers’ gross and fine motor skills, while introducing them to colors, letters, counting, music and cause-and-effect concepts. Buttons throughout his body produce songs, light patterns and dance moves that both entertain and educate small children.
“This futuristic friend even allows mommy or baby to record a phrase, and he’ll remix it into his favorite song,” according to the Fisher-Price website.
The award was presented at a Toy Industry Association ceremony in New York City in February. Mr. Grabar received the honor for his musical styling as the project audio engineer. He created a modern sense of music that strays away from the traditional nursery rhyme genre to fit the hip little character that is BeatBo.
Grabar’s main responsibilities at Fisher-Price are to create and engineer music for toys. He has worked there for three years and been a part of other notable projects such as the Bright Beats Play Pods, pop-star Shakira’s First Steps line and the Disney Princess line.
BeatBo can be considered a special project for Grabar because he requested to work on it. Normally at Fisher-Price, employees are assigned to different projects, but Grabar saw the BeatBo sketch and immediately had an idea for the music and where he wanted to take it. Creating the audio content took over two months to perfect and match the character image.
Many toys today focus around the millennial generation because they are the ones having kids.
“Being a millennial myself, it was easy to incorporate the modern edge to the music of the time because this is the kind of music my friends and I rock out to on a daily basis!” said Grabar.
He credits much of his success in the music industry to what he learned during his years at Fredonia.
“I attribute many of my morals and work ethic to professors Bernd Gottinger, Dave Fridmann, and Nathan Fisher. This rock star-staff really prepared me to handle one of the most challenging industries today: music,” explained Grabar.
Another influence was SUNY Distinguished Professor Jim Piorkowski, who saw Grabar’s potential and has followed his early career with great interest.
“I remember Chris as a Mason Hall ‘rat,’” Professor Piorkowski said. “He was always in the music building – either practicing the guitar, working long sessions in the recording studio, or creating original music. It was a lot of intense work, but Chris seemed to enjoy all of it.”
In addition to Fisher-Price, Grabar writes music through his artist moniker, Passion in Constellation.
