Children of the Aughts Grew Up With His Learning Tools

They may not know his name, but lots of children who grew up in the aughts honed their reading and phonics skills with his electronic toys. Mike Wood, who created the LeapFrog franchise, died last month at age 72, reports People. Wood had Alzheimer's, and his brother tells the New York Times that he took his own life via physician-assisted suicide in Switzerland, where it's legal. The California resident traveled there before the disease progressed too far. Wood was an attorney who famously devised his first toy to help his young son learn to read in the 1990s. The idea culminated in the 1999 release of the LeapPad, a computer tablet that outsold all other toys in the 2000 holiday season, notes the Times.

Wood stepped down as leader of the company in 2004 after years of explosive growth, going on to start another educational toy company called SmartyAnts. He also worked as a volunteer reading teacher in a school near his home in retirement. A TikTok video of Wood teaching his granddaughter to read with an original prototype of one of his toys went viral in 2023, notes a tribute post from his old law school of UC Law San Francisco. (If you or someone you know is considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, texting "STRENGTH" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741, or heading to 988lifeline.org.)