Four years ago at Christmas time, Beth Grist grew irritated as she watched her two teen-age nephews rip open the greeting cards she had given them and stuff the money they contained into their pockets.
"They hardly even looked at the cards," Ms. Grist recalled.
As a frequent giver of cash, Ms. Grist decided there must be a better way to give money to her family and friends, a gadget that would require a little effort before parting with the green -- such as solving a puzzle. She couldn't find it in stores or catalogs, so the 33-year-old single mother from Perry Hall invented it herself. It's called the Bilz Box, and it's catching on.
"We're selling them like crazy," said Mary McCormack, co-owner of Impulse, a Chicago-area gift store that began stocking the Bilz Box in October. "Everyone thinks this is the one thing that no one will put down on Christmas until it's solved."
"They're flying out of here," said Caroline Heiss, a saleswoman at G.Whiz, another Chicago-area store. "I sold one to a lady who was giving it to her nephew who she was going to torture. It's a great way to make them earn the money."
The Bilz Box is a clear plastic box the shape and size of a videocassette. The end of the box contains a drawer into which paper money, tickets, a check or gift certificate can be placed.
To open the drawer and retrieve the money, the recipient must navigate a tiny steel ball through a complex maze. Once the ball reaches its destination, a push on a button pops the drawer open.
"A lot of people pick them up and think they're going to get through it real quick; but it's not that easy," said Terri Redmer, Ms. Grist's sister and mother of Greg and Steven, the teen-agers who inspired the box.
"I had a guy come in the other day and wanted to return it," said Bob Hedler, a buyer for Tuerkes, a chain of 14 specialty gift stores in Maryland, Virginia and Washington. "He thought there was something wrong with it" because he couldn't solve the puzzle.
"It's very professionally done," said Mr. Hedler. "It's well-made. It's a great idea. It's well-packaged. . . .It's unusual for a person to come up with a unique idea like this, get it manufactured and get it into the stores."
Besides Tuerkes, the Bilz Box, which retails for $10, is being sold at the International Gift House in Fallston, the Perry Hall Gift House and a few other card stores.
Beth Grist, neither a math whiz nor an engineer by trade, didn't start out to become an inventor. The 1979 graduate of Perry Hall High School once owned a successful tanning business in Towson, but had no technical background.
"I wanted to find it, and I couldn't believe it didn't exist already," she said.
She began her journey at the small Baltimore County library branch on Belair Road in Perry Hall, where she found books on getting an invention patented and manufactured. In the fall of 1991 she sat down with Leonard Bloom, a Towson patent attorney. She showed him a rough model she had put together -- a clear plastic box filled with clear plastic tubing.
After a preliminary patent search, Ms. Grist learned that no one else had applied for or received a patent on a clear plastic TC money box puzzle.
The next step was to make an accurate design of the invention-to-be. It wasn't easy, she recalled. She agonized over it for months. Finally, while staying with friends in Miami one night, she couldn't sleep and drew the first true Bilz Box on graph paper.
She applied for a patent and paid researchers at the University of Wisconsin to compile a marketing report on her prospects. The books she had read told her that only 5 percent of inventions submitted to the researchers received a grade of 50 percent or better. The Bilz Box got an 80 percent rating.
While encouraged, she was far from finished. She had to find someone who could turn her rough sketches into a real product.
Working with plastics specialists and tool manufacturers, Ms. Grist had professional specifications for her product drawn up and contracted with a plastic fabricator to make the final mold and produce the Bilz Box.
It was a frustrating experience, she said. The product was supposed to be ready by September 1993, but the process dragged on for another 13 months. First, the plastic stuck to the mold, causing a delay. Flaws in the plastic itself caused even more problems.
Eventually Ms. Grist had to abandon hopes of reaching stores by Christmas of 1993 while she sat on more than $7,000 worth of packaging materials she had purchased. In the process, the savings she had accumulated from her tanning business began to erode, and she had to turn to her family for financial help.
"I understand now why people don't do this," she said.
Still, the thought of giving up never crossed her mind. "You reach a point where you've invested too much time and money to turn back," she said.
Finally, in October, she switched manufacturers and within two weeks, her product was a reality. She sent out Bilz Box promotional fliers to more 2,000 gift stores around the country.
By late October, she'd received her first order from the Impulse store near Chicago. More followed. She's now shipping her boxes to stores in eight states, including California, Michigan, Texas, Indiana, New Jersey and North Carolina.
Until she's satisfied that there will be no more production problems, Ms. Grist tests each Bilz Box at her Perry Hall home before wrapping and shipping it. By now she can complete the puzzle in 24 seconds.
"I want to make sure they're perfect," she said. "It helps me sleep at night."