Building a better mousetrap: new device puts mice on ice.

Building a better mousetrap: New device puts mice on ice By Julie Nakashima

They say if you can build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door -- and a tiny (10-employee) company in Santa Ana has gamely taken up the challenge.

Indeed, four-month-old Trap-Ease Inc. boldly bills its new Trap-Ease mousetrap as "the better mousetrap."

The trap is a blue-and-yellow plastic square tube, about as wide as a stick of butter, that's bent in the middle with a hinged door at one end and bait slots at the other. When the unsuspecting mouse enters the tube, his own weight tips one end down and the door slams shut, locking the hapless rodent inside. The relieved customer can then dispose of the entire trap -- without ever having to see or touch its victim.

Trap: Rodent-rooter

What to use for bait? Cheese will please, but for best results peanut butter gets the mouse nod, the company says.

The big question: Is the world beating a path to Trap-Ease's door? "Paths galore," says Glenn Lyons, vice president of marketing. Since the trap went on the market in mid-August, the company has sold nearly 40,000 of them. The L.A. public school system has gotten its fill of mice, and men there say they plan to place a big order.

The traps are sold in supermarkets, drug stores, hardware stores and directly from the company for $3.98 per twin-pack.

A major selling point, according to Lyons, is that the trap reduces the risk of infection from germs or vermin because the rodent is sealed in plastic. Then, too, the new trap strikes a blow for non-violence since the mice are trapped painlessly inside the device without the use of bone-crunching springs or poison. After a while, the creatures suffocate, but by punching out a round indentation on the door, customers can catch their prey alive.

"The pet stores think it's a great idea -- we've sold a couple thousand to them," Lyons says. "If (buyers) have pets like owls or snakes they can use (the mice) as pet food."

The Trap-Ease venture got swinging when Mel Melton, the man who invented the trap, brought it to Custom Applied Packaging in Santa Ana for manufacturing.

Melton, 66, had been a rancher in Idaho before retiring to San Clemente. He was working on a sprinkler system "when I saw a mouse run across the floor," he recalls. He thought, if the mouse went into a pipe, it would be trapped. Later on, when a friend sought his advice on a mouse problem, memories of the mouse episode stirred and Melton went to work building the first trap. The prototype, which Melton built while watching a Dodgers game on television, was made out of balsa wood and tin.

At Custom Applied Packaging, a custom injection molder, vice president/general manager Norman W. Lang had seen enough good products come down the pipe -- only to disappear through lack of promotion -- to know the new mousetrap would need a lot of marketing support. "I'm not so sure that people would beat a path to our door without us beating a path to theirs," Lang says. "You have to get out and sell the product. Marketing is where it's at."

Trap-Ease Inc., the marketing company, was formed last May. Lang, 50-percent owner of Trap-Ease -- Lyons is in the process of buying the other half from Lang's partner -- expects sales of 1.5 million units this year. He thinks sales will scamper up to 6 million to 7 million next year. The investment in R & D and manufacturing costs to date: $250,000.

"The enthusiasm people have when they see this thing is incredible," Lyons says.

Everyone connected with the product, it seems, is enthusiastic about it.

"A day doesn't go by that the guys from the factory don't put a (mouse-filled) trap on my desk," Lyons says. "I've had over 200 come across my desk. They were just showing me, 'hey, it works.'"

Although one might expect exterminators would look askance at this new form of competition, Lyons says pest-control operators have been among Trap-Ease's best customers -- besides hospitals and restaurants -- buying up some 10,000 units.

Trap-Ease isn't going to squeak by on mice alone. The company is close to introducing a non-toxic rodent lure, "the Chanel No. 5 of mousedom," Lyons says. Other products in the works are bigger versions of the mousetrap for rats, squirrels, gophers and other pesky creatures -- all based on the same principle.

Says Lyons, "We intend it to be an entire family of traps."

Photo: Three fine mice executives: Melton, Lyons, Lang (from left)