“Didn’t know the French were pogo stick illiterate.”
— An e-mail from Wichita producer Bob Walterscheid on a commercial he shot in the ’70s for a Chance Rides pogo stick that a French producer would like to use to help educate viewers on the history of pogo sticks
“(I) never even imagined SEEING 2011.”
– Video producer Bob Walterscheid’s e-mailed response when asked if he ever imagined a video he took almost 40 years ago would be on TV in 2011 (the “Auction Kings” on Tuesday will feature a Chance Rides pogo stick that Walterscheid shot his children playing on for a commercial in 1974)
Bob Walterscheid and his children Alec and Debbie have dissolved the 40-year-old Walterscheid Productions and each declared personal bankruptcy.
Bob Walterscheid has $177,879 in assets and $304,387 in liabilities. Alec Walterscheid has $143,076 in assets and $432,142 in liabilities. Bob Walterscheid says his daughter’s liabilities are in the same range.
“We had a number of projects that looked like they were going to be worthwhile and profitable, but they didn’t turn out to be,” he says.
Walterscheid says he and his children had personally loaned the company money through credit cards, and the business dissolved without any debt.
Walterscheid says he’ll still operate his film, video and advertising business under the same name, but not as a corporation.
The 76-year-old has no plans for retirement.
“When you retire, you die,” he says. “I’ll keep working until that happens or nobody will listen to me anymore.”
Walterscheid says he has no regrets, but he would do one thing differently.
“Part of my problem was most of my clients retired, sold their business or died. If I was to do it over again, I would deal with younger clients,” he says with a laugh.
Walterscheid says he had several clients for as long as 26 years.
“We did a lot of great things,” he says. “We made a lot of people a lot of money in Wichita and around the state through our efforts.”