Play set:The Amazing Dinosaur Plant

Fresh out of college in 1996, Grant Cleveland cofounded an Internet company that grew rapidly--in spite of its name, Gooey Industries--to employ 100 workers. Just as suddenly, however, Cleveland lost his company in the Dot-com crash of 2001. Out of work and in bankruptcy, he found gardening therapeutic, and in it, the basis for another try at business. By 2002, Cleveland started a new company--Dunecraft--which offered all of one product: a kit for growing a cactus plant. From such humble beginnings, Cleveland's company today offers 250 different plant-related and science products and employs about twenty-five employees. He has grown his company by offering plant kits with fun names like the Banana Farm, Healing Garden, Dinosaur Park, and Carnivorous Creations. Other products are sure kid pleasers like Spider Balls and Unreal Upchuck, with which kids dissect owl puke and reconstruct a bird and a mouse skeleton even as their parents happily note that the materials are all sanitary and synthetic. Through licensing agreements, Dunecraft has boosted sales by attaching products to the popular Curious George, Dora the Explorer, Sponge Bab Squarepants, and others.