Ethnic balance among klickies.

[Macruran]

Continuing from http://www.playmofriends.com/forum/index.php?topic=14755.0

playmobil is a "global" toy.

geobra's attention could/should also be global.

fortunately, in some markets, the percentages are so very much different from what we see in germany.
and, fortunately, skin color is harder to define and has less importance.
i'm thinking about brazil - one of the fastest growing world economies, an enormous potential market.
and spain - one of the most traditional european markets for playmobil.

if geobra needs a reason to "get it right", maybe money would be a good incentive.

And i don't think the way to go is to create more "ethnic" themes to fill them with non-white-non-blond klickies.
all would be well just as long we keep the

variety is just great, that's what i feel.
and actually, the inter-changeable fugure series allow just this (although they are so very clumsy sold in 2 diffrent color packages).

it was not magellan, a portuguese "white", the first human ever to have sailed around the world.
actually he died in the phillippines and so, he missed it by an entire ocean.
and it was not juan sebastián elcano either (one of his surviving captains).
it was an magellan's personal slave, enrique.
despite his name, he was from malacca or sumatra (on malaisia or indonesia).
so, when they crossed those longitudes he was the first human to go around the 360º.
did he had light pink skin and blonde hair?
i really don't think so.

and i think that, if an excess of "ethnic" figures is made from now on in every theme, it would only be a small "mistake" when compared with the 2 700 000 000 klickies geobra has already produced in the past with the "wrong" percentage of skin colors.

would anyone be annoyed by this?
i know i wouldn't.

But you're annoyed by the current "excess" of white klickies. Why? Please explain exactly what is wrong with having a lot of white klickies.

Geobra is not a global company. It's a German company that sells primarily to European markets. If as you say there is real money to be made by altering the color makeup of klickies, then there is no need to apply social or political pressure, is there? It will happen naturally. But as long as the main market is Europe, the profit incentive will not likely be present.

I am happy to let things take their natural course.

[Birdie]

You know, I think they are actually moving in that very direction, with a wide variety of skin tones in the newest themes. Check out the clickies in the waterpark theme, the kindergarten theme and the camping site theme.

And since a lot of their decisions lately are completey marketing based, that decision probably has something to do with making more money too. Makes sense.

By the way, Lego nicely avoided that one 

[Ismene]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France#Ethnic_groups

85%-90% white French. Approximately 3% black. Comparable to the 3 out of 87 ratio mentioned above.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Light_hair_coloration_map.png

Germany has a higher percentage of blondes than most other countries in the world, as do most of Geobra's primary markets, so it's natural that they will create more blonde toys.

I couldn't agree more. It signals a sad move away from historically accurate brilliance like the Egypt and Rome themes. Even the Knights theme is getting wackier.

Statistics on ethnicities are iffy in France because the government can't ask on official forms and there are undocumented residents. The 3.5% is just ''blacks''. It does not include those of North African descent (estimated at 10% over 10 years ago) or the growing population with mixed ethnic origins that isn't represented in the estimates at all! Those intermediary skin tones could be used more.

What bugs me about the blonds is that it is gendered. There's a lot of blond female klickies in the mystery figures. In the new add-on catalog, we have once again child multifigures and the girl is again blonde.

And can we please have Asian people who are not samurais, martial artists, geishas, or ninjas?


They are moving in the right direction, certainly, but there's still a ways to go.

[Bolingbroke]

how could you translate the skin tone of north africans/med people? im maltese and olive skinned, like many spanish and italians. is there a colour for us? not that i care (my self worth as a person goes beyond such triviaities ....) but i was just wondering.

[Ismene]

how could you translate the skin tone of north africans/med people? im maltese and olive skinned, like many spanish and italians. is there a colour for us? not that i care (my self worth as a person goes beyond such triviaities ....) but i was just wondering.

I would use the 2nd lightest skin tone (the newish one) for people who are a bit darker than standard ''white'' skin tone. It's not about self-worth. It's about giving kids klickies they can identify with.

[Bolingbroke]

oh come on, is this what the world has come to? i am maltese and quite swarthy, and yet when i was a kid i identified with charlton heston, and what's wrong with that?

because strecthing it to the absurd limit, you either put asian klickies in the US fort sets so that everyone feels included, or else only american kids should play with them, cause what you're basically saying is that only they would identify with those klickies and that scenario.

anyway ... can someone post a pic of this second lightest skin tone please, to see whether i can identify myself with it?

[Ismene]

I'm not saying that kids can't identify with klickies that don't look like them, but let's give them that choice. I grew up when most doll brands had blonde and white or black-haired and black. That's frustrating for a kid.

The 2nd lightest skin tone is in my avatar.

[Bolingbroke]

that's a good skin tone, yes.

[Rhalius]

As long as it fits the theme I am fine with it.

I'd find black skinned knights and asian romans too politically correct for example, in that case it would break the immersion of the theme.
However they could make an entire pirate crew consist of black clickies.
And they did have a black gladiator in the roman theme. Yes gladiators are slaves, but in this case it was alongside white gladiators which showed accuratly that they enslaved everyone and it was not based on skincolor.
So that did allow for a black gladiator to be the hero. In fact I believe they did just that with the official animated little movie. He was captured, became gladiator, fought and found his freedom.

So what I'm saying is, go for diversity but dont impose it where it is out of place. Instead there can always be looked for plausible solutions instead.
In a medieval theme, black clickies could be traveling merchants dressed in middle eastern fasion, that could go well with a merchant ship.

Adding the occasional asian pirate in the pirate theme seems like a good move. Now we just need asian and black female pirates. Or maybe a female pirate with an eyepatch, hook or wooden leg. They never had that.

[Bolingbroke]

agree 100%

if they want, say, muslims to identify with playmobil, give us a crusades theme finally, no silly bad guy eyebrows and crazy eyes, just smiley klickies and children can decide which faction they want to identify with.

positive discrimination sucks, like with the re launch of the western theme where the indians were the good guys and the cowboys were the bad guys. it could and should have been more balanced than that, but as we can see, this kind of thing goes down well pr-wise nowadays.