Playmobil: keeping faith in imagination. Let's pay tribute to a pioneer who, with charming designs, kept innocence in the art of toymaking...
Playmobil, whose inventor Hans Beck died in February aged 79, is a beautiful, enticing marriage of modern technology with the craft traditions of German toymakers. Moulded in colourful plastic they may be, but the little knights, fairies, pirates and ancient Romans who populate Playmobil's worlds have a quirkiness that suggests the loving, creative artisan making toys in a Bavarian village.
Looking at the array of Playmobil boxes in a toyshop I find myself picturing the toy inventors in their German toy laboratory, and it looks as if they are having a good time. Always on the edge of hilarity and even madness, they dare to bring truly imaginative visions into the contemporary toy market - and have been rewarded with the continued success of this amazing toy.
What other mass market toymaker today offers a lovingly detailed Roman sailing ship on which you can put your little Caesar and Cleopatra? It's amazing, and they lavish the same detail on their fairy tale castle which resembles the Brighton Pavilion, and most recently their circus big top, a toy with the delight and wonder of the Edwardian nursery.
The quirkiness of Playmobil is entrancing and funny. In its belief in childhood innocence it rightly refuses to saddle children with the moral dilemmas of the adult world - so there is no evidence of ecological conscience in its zoo, circus animal acts, lions in the Roman arena, or dinosaur hunters. Quite right too. It's outrageous to give green toys and books to small children, as if our destruction of nature was their fault. This toy is about imaginative play, and it joyfully avoids both the banality of popular culture (in an age when even Lego stoops to cinema tie-ins) and the dreariness of didacticism. It is not correct - it's better than that.
Here's to Hans Beck and the art of the toymaker.
Posted byJonathan Jones guardian.co.uk
