• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, March 9, 2017

Frito-Lay Variety Pack has teamed with “Shark Tank”’s Robert Herjavec to launch an inventions contest for kids seven and up, with a grand prize of $250,000.

Families can enter the “Dreamvention” contest by coming up with a “fun” invention idea, creating a simple drawing and short explanation of it, and uploading them to MyDreamvention.com by April 24. 

Five finalists will be announced in September. U.S. consumers will vote to determine the winning invention, with that decision announced in December. The invention will be brought to life by product development firm Mako Design + Invent. 

Herjavec kicked off the contest by helping kids come up with inventions during a Frito-Lay-hosted “Invent-athon” for Bay Area fifth graders held at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. 

Frito-Lay Variety Pack is also working with Young Minds Inspired (YMI), which provides curriculum tools for more than 2 million educators around the U.S., for an in-school program that aims to inspire kids to invent. 

In April, selected educators will be given a Dreamvention-inspired curriculum to use in their classrooms. The 10 schools that submit the most invention ideas will be awarded $5,000 each to support more in-class science programs.