The End of the Toy Industry as We Know It

Seth M. Siegel is co-chairman of The Beanstalk Group, N.Y., a worldwide licensing agency whose clients include Harley-Davidson, Coca-Cola, Stanley Tools and Seventeen. He can be contacted via e-mail at sms@beanstalk.com.

As the end of the century approaches, the toy industry must be prepared to change the way it does business, with a move away from toys based on mass pop culture icons. Even if the box office success of Star Wars results in the sale of huge quantities of toys based on George Lucas' created universe, it will prove to be a mere pause in a fundamental shift in the way toys are conceived, marketed and sold.

The past century has seen an explosive growth in the U.S. toy industry. Today, toy sales (excluding videogames from companies like Nintendo, Sony and Sega) come to approximately $24 billion. In 1899, wholesale sales of toys in the U.S. were a measly $8.3 million. But this was before mass production, mass merchants, mass marketing and massive television advertising.

It was also before a fundamental change in the nature of children's play patterns and the accepted role of toys in society. At the beginning of the century, Gary Cross reports in his recent historio-sociological book from Harvard University Press, Kid's Stuff. Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood, the toy industry eschewed fantasy and hero play in favor of imitating then-current adult roles. Boys got farm or factory machines and tools in age-graded forms. Girls got dolls and household products in toy sizes. ("Gee, thanks, Ma! My own toy washing board!") Probably needless to say, virtually none of the products were derived from pop culture or were marketed with a brand imprimatur.

Although some on the political or religious right today would surely like to see a return to such wholesome, pro-social playthings in place of the current crop of harder-edged, often violent or subliminally sexual, kids' products, the changes which are afoot are likely to result in a wide array of themes and styles ranging from the wholesome to the dark. The choices will be as broad as consumers' tastes.

Perhaps satellite TV and the Internet provide the best mirror of our increasingly atomized society, as each allows consumers to "have it their way." But for mass culture to thrive, we need shared norms and common experiences. For mass marketing of toys to succeed, boys and girls need common aspirations and fantasies. Without these, the toys offered will seem to be remote or even alien. Thus, the practical and existential problem facing the shrinking number of toy companies is that the business model on which their growth and structure is based is quickly becoming outdated. While there may be ever fewer retailers and toy companies due to continuous consolidation in both of those industries, consumers are moving in the opposite direction, opting, in essence, to design their own private worlds.

Despite repeated failures in recent years, the toy companies have continued to try to find the mass pop culture "hook" with which to sell toys, largely using the same approach since the rise of television 50 years ago: tie in toy products with a hugely popular TV show or movie, put them on the shelf-often with massive advertising support-and hope for the best. Notwithstanding clear toy industry success stories like Power Rangers and Jurassic Park, the list of pop-culture-based toy failures is a long and painful one.

Lots of us (me included) are hoping for the massive success of Star Wars characters and environments interpreted as toys (as well as in other product forms and, of course, as a movie) when the film is launched this May. But if-heaven forbid!- Star Wars should fail to pull product, then no movie or TV show can, and the genre of mass pop culture toy tieins will be mortally wounded. But even if Star Wars and its licensed products live up to my hopes and expectations, the toy industry at best will have enjoyed a respite from a trend, not an end to the steady demise of mass marketing of pop-culture tie-ins.

All of which will likely lead to a transitional period of confusion, but, over the long term, to a very happy turn of events: a return to creativity and innovation in the toy and game business, and licenses based on "micro-properties" which are more targeted and less bland as they move away from "one size fits all" marketing. A rebirth of toys based on clever tinkering, not on a character from one of the 12 films offered to 12 different audiences at the local multiplex, will be a fitting start to the second century of the modern toy industry.

COPYRIGHT 1999 BPI Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group