History of Nintendo card business reached its saturation point. Japanese households stopped buying playing cards, and the price of Nintendo stock fell from 900 yen to 60 yen. In 1965, Nintendo hired Gunpei Yokoi as a maintenance engineer for the assembly line. However, Yokoi soon became famous for much more than his ability to repair conveyor belts. Nintendo struggled to survive in the Japanese toy industry; it was still small at this point, and dominated by already well-established companies such as Bandai and Tomy. Because of the generally short product life cycle of toys, the company always had to come up with new
U-Line Corporation at the Ben-Hur Freezer Company to begin manufacturing a product of his own invention. He named his company "U-Line," a phonetic representation of his German-origin name. His invention - a residential undercounter ice maker - was the first product of its kind, and its popularity with more affluent home owners helped his company fund further research and development into additional refrigeration products. Today, the U-Line Corporation manufactures several undercounter combinations of ice makers, refrigerators, freezers, and wine storage systems. Many of these include advanced features, such as dual-zone temperature control in the case of wine storage systems. The company has