My 2 cents about what's wrong with Playmobil:
I believe that Geobra desperately wants to crack the US market. They are already very successful in Europe where Playmobil seems to be available in a wide variety of stores at (mostly) reasonable prices. They look at the US toy market and see several trends:
- lots of money spent on toys
- among toy buyers for mid-age kids, say 6 to 10 years, less interest (seemingly) in traditional toys and more interest in electronic gadgets
- among toy buyers for younger kids, toys like Fisher Price Imaginext and Lego Duplo are big sellers
I use the term "toy buyers" because I think that a lot of toy purchases are made by people who don't really know/care about the toy itself. Often these are parents and other relatives who are trying to buy what they think the child will want without thinking about long-term play value. Kids ask for what they see on TV ads and they like the idea of toys that are based on the movies and TV shows that they watch. Some of these toys can be great (my daughter had a Sesame Street playset that she loved, my son loved it and now my little 3 year old niece loves it too) but so terribly many of these toys are pure crap that often barely get used because they have so little real play value. But with the combination of relentless advertising and conspicuous consumption here in the US, these are the toys that sell. The small percentage of parents who buy high quality toys with lasting play value are probably already buying Playmobil but Geobra is trying to reach all those other people who buy the crap toys and, IMHO, that is their mistake! In order to appeal to the crappy toy buyers, Geobra is making its own version of its competitors' crappy toys (the take-long castle and take-along houses and the various supersets - some of which admitedly do have actual uses for the serious Playmobil enthusiast, as Little Jo's fabulous lighthouse proves.)
My feeling is that these types of sets do not encourage people to buy more Playmobil. If these sets are the only ones that some people see, they will not be impressed with the high quality and wonderful detail that make the true Playmobil product line so appealing to both children and adults. My advice to Geobra is to stick with the high quality and modularity of the traditional line and stop making these icky self-contained sets for quick sale at Target and Toysrus and find better ways to educate more consumers (and children) about their products with the understanding that their target consumer group is probably rather small but will buy lots and lots of stuff (Lego seems to have already reached this conclusion.) They could do better in the US if they did a better job of supporting the small independent toy stores who take the time to show people how great Playmobil is by setting up displays and play areas. They could also advertise more. And they could use their own online capacity to generate interest in their products with stuff like birthday clubs (which they used to have,) more and better add-on sets, fan clubs, etc.
Basically, if they just copied Lego's new USA playbook, they would probably do very well!
