Man Behind the“ I Spy” Series, Photographer Walter Wick, Reveals the Secrets to His Whimsical Scenes (Exclusive)

More than 30 years after the first of the beloved children's book series was released in 1992, Wick reveals the inspiration behind some of his standout scenes

Created by children's writer Jean Marzollo and photographer Walter Wick, the I Spy puzzle book series has become a beloved staple on the shelves of many households since the first edition was released by Scholastic Press in 1992. Since then, more than 75 million copies of the collection — which now includes installments like Christmas, Fantasy, School Days and the upcoming Love — have been printed much to the delight of young readers (and their parents).

Each of the books, which feature playful riddles by Marzollo, are filled with stunning photography by Wick, who snaps all the scenes filled with anywhere from 100 to 300 objects that have become iconic I Spy visuals over the past 32 years. Among them are the antique dolls of "Window Shopping" (Christmas), the whimsical "Clouds" (Fantasy) and the popular balloon popping contraption in "Levers, Ramps, and Pulleys" (School Days).

Made out of block toys, dominoes, sandbox toys, train tracks and other various kid-friendly gadgets, the contraption was an idea that Marzollo came up with and something that Wick, 71, ultimately designed in his studio. Looking back on his creation, the photographer tells PEOPLE his collaborator wasn't initially concerned about its functionality.

"Jean said, 'Well, you don't have to really make it work,' " Wick recalls, saying that the late writer — who died at age 75 in 2018 — would have been happy with a cool-looking machine. "She just thought I was gonna do some levers, ramps and pulleys in a scene, which would've been perfectly sufficient. But I decided to make this machine and I said, 'Well, it's gotta do something. What's it gonna do?' I said, 'I think it's gonna pop a balloon.' "

Related: The Baby-Sitters Club Author Ann M. Martin Reveals Surprising Original Plan for Iconic Series in Rare Interview (Exclusive)

Once he decided on that idea, he spent three weeks building a contraption, which starts with a marble being pushed down a track before setting off a chain of events that eventually leads to a sharpened pencil falling into a balloon held in place by wooden sticks. And he was determined that it would function, recalling that he "wanted to make a machine that pops the balloon that really works."

"The first thing I did was figure out how to pop a balloon with a machine. I knew it had to be gravity-powered," Wick recalls. "So I came up with this Tinkertoy stand that held the balloon and held the thing that popped it at the same time. And then I had a pulley and a string and a key with a key on it. And the key is important. That's a hidden thing."

While looking for the right key to include, the photographer and his assistant at the time went through boxes of props. "I said, 'See what you can find in there.' And he came out stroking the xylophone. So the xylophone became a ramp," he says.

Eventually it all came together. But, of course, not without some trial and error — and a bit of a scare, with Wick revealing that he nearly injured himself with his popping device. "If the pencil wasn't sharp enough, it would just bounce off the balloon," he says. "So I sharpened it and then I accidentally triggered it and almost killed myself with it."

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

Once the scene was published in the school-themed edition of I Spy in 1995 and as the popularity of the books continued to grow, Wick and Mazollo started making appearances at schools across the country. And during those visits with young students, the photographer made it a point to ask them what the contraption did, and how it worked. "And they would run through the whole thing and that kid would be the hero of the assembly," Wick shares.

Many of the props — particularly the wooden blocks — in "Levers, Ramps, and Pulleys" also appeared in "City Blocks," which was part of Fantasy, released a year prior in 1994. In fact, it's the moody cityscape made out of ABC blocks, tracks, toy cars and other hidden objects that is Wick's favorite.

"I love this sort of mood," he says of the golden hour-themed scene, which he credits to what he calls "magical lighting." He adds, "It's kinda world building, you know? This is world building that you yourself can build."

And when building this particular scene, Wick says he wanted to "subvert the scale" and create "this kind of, almost, unresolvable scale difference between the blocks themselves and the toys." And to do so, one of the everyday items he used was a stool — something that a kid might grab to help expand the city they're building, while the photographer knew it would add a special dimension to the final image. "It's just magical to me," he says.

Related: Lauren Sánchez Shares Personal Story That Helped Inspire New Children’s Book: ‘The Journey Wasn’t Easy’ (Exclusive)

Looking back on some other standout I Spy scenes from over the years, he's fond of "Clouds," which was first inspired by a white-on-white window display of ceramic figures he passed by in the SoHo neighborhood when he lived in Manhattan. (The clouds, by the way, were made of cotton.)

Another one that Wick has strong memories of making is "Into the Woods" (Fantasy), which came out of walks in the woods he would take with his dog after moving to Connecticut. "I brought in all these mosses and stuff into the studio. All this stuff came from the local woods," he says, referring to forest scape, which is made of mosses, pine cones, logs and other natural materials.

The scene, the title of which is a nod to Stephen Sondheim's popular musical, is populated by antique bronze animals — something his wife, Linda, was able to curate for him after he struggled to find the right items to place in the setting. He says "she knew of this collection," which featured frogs climbing ladders and frogs going fishing, which became "the people living in this magical little forest."

"So, I love that because my wife came to the rescue," Wick says.

Related: Kristen Bell to Narrate Josh Gad’s New Picture Book: ‘The Only Person for the Job’ (Exclusive)

And it's the romanticism, the whimsy, the nuance and sophistication that made I Spy a success within what Wick calls a "children's book market saturated with search-and-find books at that time," with a number of them being "these knockoffs" of Where's Waldo, which was first published in 1987.

In addition to his work on I Spy, Wick has also created and authored the ongoing series, Can You See What I See?, which is also published by Scholastic. While somewhat similar to I Spy, the installments are filled with charming search-and-find puzzles designed by the photographer. However, the added element is what he calls the "Russian doll" effect, with each series of photos zooming in or out on the same scene to reveal other hidden details.

The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!

"I started to develop narratives in a much more sophisticated way. So instead of in the balloon popper [scene], where you're seeing within one shot the cause and effect of the objects and the motion of things, the entire book is a sequence of images that contains a hidden puzzle to solve," he says of adding "layers upon layers of things to discover."

Fans of Wick's work on both children's puzzle books can see select scenes from those series as well as models that inspired those photos and his other still-life photography at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa. The exhibit, Walter Wick: Hidden Wonders!, runs through Nov. 17, 2024.

The exhibit "does encompass my entire career, from my earliest landscape work to I Spy to Games Magazine to all that different stuff," Wick says. 

The I Spy series from Scholastic Press is currently available wherever books are sold. The newest editions, I Spy Christmas Treats was released on Sept. 3, while I Spy Love will be available starting Nov. 12.

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.