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Henry Orenstein — a Holocaust survivor, poker champion and the entrepreneur who created the Transformers toy line — has died at his New Jersey home at 98. A cause of death was not released.
Born in Hrubieszów, Poland, in 1923, Orenstein spent the Holocaust hiding with his family before a lack of food and water forced them to turn themselves in to the Nazis. His parents were subsequently murdered, and Orenstein and his brother transferred to a German concentration camp where he managed to survive by pretending to be a scientist, Israeli news outlet Ynet reported.
He came to the US in 1947 and became a wildly successful toymaker, most notably for creating the Transformers toy line. The figurines have since inspired numerous adaptations, from a comic book series to an animated TV show and the blockbuster film franchise.
Orenstein is also credited with creating the popular 1950s doll “Betty the Beautiful Bride.”
“In less than a year, more than a million and a half of these dolls were sold,” he said in a 1989 interview that labeled him “the father of the Transformers,” Ynet reported.
His other inventions include poker table hole-card cameras, which allow TV audiences to see players’ secret strategies and bluffs. Orenstein had over 100 patents to his name at the time of his death.
In addition to his toy world contributions, he was also a renowned poker player, and in 2008 he was elected to the Poker Hall of Fame.
He was a big contributor to Jewish causes, including helping Holocaust survivors and Israel.
“Henry was a genius, an extraordinarily smart man who really built his fortune from nothing,” Yonit Raviv Zilberstein, CEO of the late philanthropist’s eponymous program the Orenstein Project, told Ynet. “He was a Holocaust survivor who was very troubled that there were needy people in Israel and that they didn’t have food … He, himself, established a soup kitchen in New York and was a big contributor to Israel.”
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