It's clear from the letters kids send to Playmobil that a lot of them think of themselves as part owners of the company. They have lots of ideas. The letters (many with drawings) are carefully logged, answered, and filed. Ideas are tallied so that the firm can tell how many letter-writers asked for Playmobil cavemen this year, for instance.
But the company that Beck works for, the Brandstätter Group, is run by grownups. And at times, grownups say no. No, for instance, to a real, working siren on the fire truck: "Sirens would get on parents' nerves," the company wrote back. No to dinosaurs: Human figures are central in the Playmobil universe, and there were no humans when dinosaurs lived.
No to submarines and an airport with jumbo jets: To keep to the Playmobil scale, the subs or jets would have to be too big.
There's a fair bit of demand for ancient Greeks and Romans, especially from fifth-graders beginning to study them in school. But the company says no to them, too: Fifth-graders are getting too old for Playmobil, and the company says it wouldn't make sense to produce a theme for an age group that's about to "graduate."
Oh, how issues change over the years don't they!
