Hi guys, here is the translation I promised. I just translated the article as it is. There are a couple of mistakes that are the author's.
I did the best I could. Hope you enjoy. Should you have any questions please contact me.
Cheers.
Gaston
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Title: POWERFULL LITTLE ONE.
Stories: Playmobil, a little doll of perpetual smile it’s already a lot more that a toy. It attracts collectors, it’s arrived to a Parisian museum and features works of art.
Green circle top right.: It got far, The little doll created in 1974 is the star a of a retrospective of Les Arts Decoratifs museum in Paris.
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Germany, the beginning of the 70’s. Once upon a time there was a family company dedicated to build plastic toys. They were doing fine. They had already won some fame due to that little piece of engineering, the hula hoop. They were making a lot of money but they saw hard times coming and they thought they needed to change their way. The oil crisis was beginning to push and the managers found themselves with the necessity to create new products that would need less amount of plastic to be build. That’s why the company asked the chief designer, Engineer Hans Beck to create a toy, small and simple that would translate into material savings.
So Beck started working and based on drawings that kids usually make, with eyes and mouth and simple features, he conceived a 2,5 inches tall doll that would fit any kid’s pocket. And even though Beck didn’t imagine it, that prototype would start an important page in the History of toys.
So that’s how the first Playmobil was born. A toy, portable like any other and which later could be adapted to any profession and a thousand themes to the delight of millions of kids around the world.
So after 36 years is very hard to find someone un their thirties who wouldn’t have once played with them, and that’s why the Museum of Decorative Arts of Paris is today presenting a retrospective, in which till May a sort of parallel universe of this dolls will be exhibit. According to it’s curator Dorothee Charles, the show was born of the idea to“unite generations”, in reference to those kids who received their firsts Playmobils from their parents and now it’s them who buy Playmobil for their kids.
The secret of my success.
Playmobil started to be commercialized in Argentina in 1976 by the company Antex, It’s owner Antonio Atamian, remembers that at the beginning the distributors didn’t believe in the product because they thought that kids would never wanted to play with little dolls, most of all boys. It didn’t exist at that time the concept of dolls for boys and there were a lot of doubts about it, “but the owners of shops were the ones who gave us the confidence and in the end, through mouth to mouth propaganda and the amazing displays in shop windows, Playmobil was a complete success” he says.
But if someone can tell that Playmobil was not only good for boys, is Maria Pinto, an artist from Buenos Aires who had taken this dolls as her Muses. “In my childhood I played with Barbies, not with Playmobil, that came later. But in difference with Barbie, Playmobil recreates the whole world, machines, dogs, animals, landscapes, etc and that makes everything more interesting; they are a perverse way of the real world and have the disability of showing any feeling. If Barbie is the negotiation with the real world, that tries to hide its true limitations, Playmobil shows those limitations obscenely” says Pinto.
From the commercial side, with less passionate but certain arguments, Atamian says that the secret of Playmobil is its simplicity: “ it is one of the most versatile toys in existence and has an extraordinary quality; the shiny plastic used in its fabrication is the same used for telephones”. Other of the causes of it success has to do with the matter of the scale. “The fact of their small size makes that keeping the scale, big sceneries like ships and forts can be build and still adapt perfectly to an ideal size for kids”.
Many of the kids who in the 70’s fell in love with the toy, today became fanatic collectors. Some of them just collect sets and accessories, while others prefer to costumize them. There are also those who build huge dioramas to recreate different themes or historical events. “Most of the collectors have a favourite theme, Western, Medieval, pirates or construction – tell us a fan known as Arjona- In general, people with common themes get together to make a huge diorama for exhibitions that are planned many months in advance. In Spain for example The Manger is very popular them for dioramas around Xmas”
For those devotional fans there is a promised land since year 2000: Fun Park in Zirndorf, near Nuremberg (there are also theme parks in Orlando and Paris) but for purists, if the invention is German, you must peregrinate to the Holy Land.
The idea of this Park was Horst Brandstatter’s, a collector who thought that would be worthy to build a theme park for those nostalgic lovers of the toy. And so was created a them park of 9000 square meters, in which you can enter a castle, go into a space ship, board a pirate ship or climb a tree house, plans that share kids and grown ups.
Whatever the scale, the merit, with no questions is the fact that they are never outdated. They are not only sell like toys for kids but also like “emotions” for nostalgic fans. Who would have said in 1974 that this little toy of optimistic spirit and reduced mobility were going to build an Empire?
