Les Cookson’s two sons were prone to carsickness. After so many times cleaning up and fumigating the car, Les had to find another way. His Carsik Bib, essentially a “barf bag,” hung from a child’s neck to catch the vomit and had a padded bottom to absorb liquid and eliminate odor. To demonstrate, Les had a ghastly child-substitute (think Munch’s The Scream) in a car seat. He poured pea soup into its head, and it spewed out the mouth onto the floor and his shoes. Which grossed everyone out. Then he put the bib around the dummy’s neck, poured the pea soup into the head, and it mostly went into the pouch. But it was just as gross.
Les had only prototypes. He was making the bibs himself, using white shower curtains and sanitary napkins. He had sold 160 of them on a small website. He did not have the money or marketing experience to properly launch the business.
The primary objection to the Carsik Bib was the danger of having a child in the back seat with something around his or her neck. The risk of choking was simply too great. No shark was willing to take that risk.
But Les had other inventions, and he used his 15 minutes of Shark Tank fame to promote them. It’s difficult to imagine that the same person who created the bib was also creating beautiful, intricately fashioned “Ancient Magic Art Tools.” There is a “camera lucida” that projects an image onto a surface like that used by the Old Masters. His “toys” include mesmerizing replicas of devices invented in the long quest to get pictures to move. Les’s creations have been sold all around the world, appeared in major films and at the National Gallery of Art, and are teaching aids at schools and universities.
