“In the arbitration we got everything we asked for,” Johnson’s attorney Leigh Baier told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The arbitrator ruled totally in Lonnie’s favor.”
According to the newspaper, the agreement stemmed from a 2001 inventors dispute in which Hasbro had agreed to pay Johnson royalties for the sales of his products. Johnson originally licensed the Super Soaker to Larami Corporation, which was later acquired by Hasbro, and the toy reportedly generated more than $200 million in retail sales in its first two years on the market. As of 2013, total sales of the line are estimated at nearly $1 billion.
Keeping busy
As for the Atlanta-based Johnson, the Super Soaker phenomenon was just a footnote in what has proven to be a very diverse career.
Although it was his plastic toy gun that made him wealthy, Johnson first trained as a nuclear engineer at Tuskegee University and worked for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab on both the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Mars Observer prior to his exploits in the toy business. He currently holds more than 80 patents and, in addition to the Super Soaker, is also credited with inventing technologies related to both rechargeable batteries and thermodynamic energy.