“You like to tailgate?”
His Louisiana accent cuts through a dull roar in the Waterbury Armory. He’s got that magnetic Southern charm, and it’s pulling people across the sterile Armory floor and into his exhibit booth.
“You’re gonna love this.”
Wayne Schaub Jr. is an inventor — and a football fan.
Being from the Big Easy, Schaub bleeds purple and gold for his hard-charging Louisiana State University Tigers. Game days are a personal favorite because nobody tailgates like LSU fans.
That parking lot pastime is about to get a whole lot better, Schaub claims, thanks to his patented invention: Tailgate Shootout, the tailgating game to trump all others.
“Believe me, tailgaters want this,” asserted Schaub, who slung Tailgate Shootout over his shoulder — in its handy carrying case — and schlepped it from New Orleans to Waterbury to participate in the Yankee Invention Expo, Oct. 11 through 13 at the Waterbury Armory.
The 13th annual event is an invention meat market, attracting more than 95 inventors from 21 states, China and St. Croix this year. Each came to showcase his million-dollar idea. Each hoped that the right manufacturer, supplier or retailer would bite.
Weather Or Not
In October of 2005, Schaub’s efforts suffered a “little setback” when his home was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. There was little he could pry from the wreckage, but he managed to save his LSU-inspired purple-and-gold Tailgate Shootout prototype.
When Schaub and his family forged a temporary abode out of an area hotel, the inventor turned his National Guard neighbors into hard-core Tailgate Shootout fans. The game was a much-needed distraction at the end of 14-hour days wrenching life and its remains from the submerged city. Now, Schaub’s here to convince any interested parties that if these guys loved it, the rest of the country will, too.
But with rows of other booths pushing everything from eye acupuncture to potty training aids to toilet seats that raise and lower themselves, Schaub was up against some clever competition.
“[Kids] totally grasp it and just go,” said Tyler Loosli of the foam doughnut resting atop his head. The doughnut is Loosli’s patent-pending invention, the Loosli Made Thinking Cap. Its stretchy, flame-retardant, non-toxic foam allows it to be painted and cut, pulled and tucked to create about 50 different styles of hat, from bonnet to Robin Hood, to Peter Pan to princess.
To show just what his thinking cap can do, the Litchfield-based inventor gave his expo attire a little flair with a Three Musketeers style in baby blue.
Loosli‘s invention is already out on the market and is sold in two toy stores and one children’s museum in Connecticut. Relatively speaking, that small coup means entrepreneurial success, which became something of a trend among his fellow Nutmeg inventors at the expo.
A few exhibit booths down from Loosli, Torrington-based inventor John J. Orban pitched his patented Frog’s Feet, meant to add some muscle to the standard suction cup.
Frog’s Feet is a “soft, tacky sealant,” Orban said, but wouldn’t divulge any more for fear of giving away his “trade secrets.”
