My mother worked for Kenner toys in the 70's.
She would bring home new toys all the time. We (my brother and I) played with them and she would watch. We never thought a thing of it when we were kids, but she was taking R&D notes.
Some of the toys, I still have, some disappeared, especially if we didn't play with them much.
Anyway, I remember the Girder and Panel set that showed up one day. It was massive!
My brother and I built just about every building they had in the booklet.
Then one day, the set vanished. A few day later, a huge Lego set showed up.
Same deal, we played with that, mom watched.
I asked mom a few years ago about that girder and panel set (along with other toys that vanished). She said that Kenner was toying with the idea of expanding the line (why we had that massive set) or dropping it and going with a product to compete with Lego's.
Turns out it didn't matter, General Mills wanted Kenner to focus on action figures and Star Wars and killed the plans.
Several of the other toys were prototypes. The ideal was for us (and other kids) to play hard with the toys and attempt to break them. Remember SSP cars? My mom had us running those things into a concrete wall every way we could imagine.
I was a teenager (able to drive) when they let my mom go. I think Tonka bought them out and had their own R&D staff.
Looking back, it was cool to have a mom who worked for a toy company. The down side was we were never allowed to take certain toys out of the house. I had a C3P0 and R2D2 toys for months before Star Wars came out, wasn't allowed out of the house for a long time.
I'm happy to see that little girl playing with that set. Some things last the test of time.
