Ideas are mysterious things. Sometimes the worst ones smell like solid gold, sometimes the profit-driving powerhouses masquerade as giant turds. Telling the difference, it seems, takes a certain measure of psychotic genius. Where, for example, is the hazy boundary of brilliance that separates the Slinky from, say, Picnic Pants? Maybe I just have no vision, but if you’d asked me to guess which one of the two was going to sell a few million units, I’m telling you right now, I would have guessed wrong.