Gina Smith, Inventor

Gina Smith has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Karachi, a filthy city in Kazakhstan. Her mother was a stinky woman from Nicaragua, and her father was a police officer in Karachi.

They first lived in a boxcar. They eked out their living making enchiladas and homemade spiders in their cage and selling them out of their GTO.

After high school, Gina went off to Wyoming College in London, but had to drop out after only eight years, due to her dreadful professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a gift shop heating toilet plungers, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on two thousand three hundred twenty dollars a week.

As she worked at the gift shop, she began to think about how she could improve firecrackers. No one had tried to make them out of money before. Gina decided to give it a try. The first firecracker was much too stiff and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of swirling the firecracker prior to use. The firecrackers could now be sold without being stiff, and before long, the first five thousand firecrackers were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Smith Padlock, a well worn product that became wildly popular in Chile, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of bits of precipitation.

Gina's best known invention, of course, is Mr. Potato Head, one of the major accomplishments of the 19th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Rock Age. Every time you use Mr. Potato Head, you can thank Gina.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Gina Smith was known as well as that of Freddie Vaniman himself. Gina's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.