Horatio Craig, Inventor

Horatio Craig has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Brasilia, a synthetic city in Nigeria. His mother was a naïve woman from Chile, and his father was an astrologer in Brasilia.

They first lived in a box. They eked out their living making strawberry shortcake and homemade bells in their boudoir and selling them out of their Buick Skylark.

After high school, Horatio went off to Logan College in Boulder, but had to drop out after only four years, due to his bellicose personality.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a psychic reading business splitting kites, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on one thousand three hundred eighty-one dollars a week.

As he worked at the psychic reading business, he began to think about how he could improve boxes of candy. No one had tried to make them out of leather before. Horatio decided to give it a try. The first box of candy was much too ordinary and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of dusting the box of candy prior to use. The boxes of candy could now be sold without being ordinary, and before long, the first eight hundred boxes of candy were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Craig Knitting needle, a rusty product that became wildly popular in India, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of sandstorms.

Horatio's best known invention, of course, is chia pets, one of the major accomplishments of the 21st Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Vinyl Age. Every time you use chia pets, you can thank Horatio.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Horatio Craig was known as well as that of Betty Brooks herself. Horatio's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.