General > Brainstorming For Playmobil

You are put in charge of Playmobil, what do you do?

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Ismene:
That's a dangerous question to ask.  :lol:

I would:

- Do a full back-end analysis: production costs of each set, what sells, what doesn't sell, what has been causing supply chain problems . . .

- Institute a company-wide standard of ethics. It's hard to have a branding of childhood happiness when your employees are working under a reign of terror.

- Give molded faces to all klickies. I don't care if they are over-painted, but I don't want children to have the nightmare of seeing their beloved klickies losing their eyes slowly over time. I want to see klickies on the Antiques Roadshow in fifty years.

- Pick four or five core themes and expand them into worlds or eras with sub-themes - similar to what exists with the modern sets, but being more blatant that these sets are compatible. So, for example, if you are doing medieval, you'd have the tournament knights, the war knights, the tradesmen, the marketplace, the pretty princesses, the dragons, etc. The child can decide which direction to develop their collection in. There'd be shorter term novelty themes in addition, but these would be the signature Playmobil worlds that would be slowly developed in perpetuity, so you can return to the website and pick up something for your collection even a decade later.

- Find the "greatest hits" from previous F?gures series, produce them as non-blind Specials, and sell them on the website for double what a normal one-klicky set goes for. Let's claw back some of that Ebay cash.

- More famous historical people. They're a great way to reach people who wouldn't normally collect Playmobil. "Oh, congratulations on graduating in chemistry! Here's Marie Curie." Everyone has a field, interest, a historical figure they admire. Let's get a klicky on every desk.

- Ditch the blister packaging. It's bad for the environment, and fingernails. Find a more eco-friendly option for the inner bags. Downsize the boxes o' air. I know that box size can increase the initial perceived value, but that's followed by a sense of loss when the child opens the box to find it half empty. Loss aversion is powerful, and opening a new Playmo set shouldn't elicit disappointment.

- Keep on developing $4-$5 animal sets. Get them into bookstores, toy stores, Target, zoo gift shops, natural history museum gift shops, etc. Kids buy impulse toy animals all the time. They aren't buying Playmobil because it's not on the shelves.

- Make all buildings feasibly deconstructable or collapsible in some way, so that parents (and collectors) can practice toy rotation without renting a storage unit. It's hard to invest in a $200 set when you know you'll probably need to donate it in the end because there's no way to store it. Modularity is ideal. People would buy bulk Steck castle pieces if they were available. But at the very least, let's avoid the sinking "where are we going to put that" feeling.

- I suggested earlier a Me, My Weapon, and My Apex Predator series. PM has done a few sets like this, but I'd love to see it as a collect-them-all series like they did with horses. Kids love animals with big teeth. Ocean warrior with shark, arctic warrior with polar bear, etc. The vibe would be fantasy, so they could roll out prehistoric animals (e.g. dire wolf) that are more impressive than their modern counterparts. I'd buy a dire wolf, klicky or not. Best puppy.

- Lastly, make it easier to buy things. Fix the website, keep popular sets in stock, let foreigners buy from the German website if they are willing to cough up the shipping costs.

Rhalius:
Oh, very good suggestion about having other themes than modern split in sub themes. Medieval actually did used to have way more than two pages in old catalogues.

Medieval would for me be the main theme to expand on with houses, civilians, merchants and all that. I think I'd maybe divide it by faction though, loosely.
Like for example, two pages could be for the Red Falcons.
The Red Falcons would now have two military structures. Could be a big and a small castle, a medium castle and a tower, a fortified bridge and a small castle, a wooden and a stone castle, barracks and a city wall, etc. Plenty of options for variation and when using Steck it could easily be combined too.
They would also have a court set, featuring royalty, servants and maybe a personal guard. And an army builder set of like a knight and three soldiers.
In other civilian sets, an occasional red falcon soldier could show up but not always. Or maybe just a shield or other reference to their Kingdom. Like maybe a noble hunting party with falcons, a statue of the monarch at a town square set, etc.
Some factions could still be more or less military and not each faction might be a Kingdom.
Robin Hood style bandits could be a faction too, or evil bandits, or merchants. Could just be a theme of shops.

Western seems to have fallen out of favour some, I do think I'd want to try and expand it a bit, at least bring back a new western train. It certainly has room for plenty of subthemes but it would depend on demand.

Pirates I would certainly expand a bit to also show towns, nobles, taverns, harbours and have bigger forts and ships for the soldiers. There would be civilians, maybe merchant ships too filled with goods and few weapons.

Ismene:
Medieval is definitely a keeper for a signature world. IMO the worlds could allow for travel.

I would bring Western forward a few decades and make it a sub-theme of 1900. You'd have a European city, the American West, and possibly other locations. Collectors already use the Victorian house in western dioramas.

My state was a territory in 1900, and they mashed all the architecture together. I saw this photo of a hogan in front of an adobe building in front of a three-story brick(?) building that wouldn't be out of place in Europe. Spanish colonial and western buildings similar to the PM ones can also be seen in photos of the era. We had a trolley on a track. The first car was brought into the territory in the year 1900. Of course, there was the railroad.

Pirates too could be a sub-theme of a late 1600s to 1700 theme. There could be the pirate ships, a port city to ransack, Louis XIV's court with ladies in big dresses . . .

Klickteryx:
Much of the western theme could be repurposed for a 'pulp action' theme 1920s/30s.

Macruran:
Even more great ideas. These are visions for success imho.


--- Quote from: Ismene on June 06, 2024, 10:23:24 ---- Institute a company-wide standard of ethics. It's hard to have a branding of childhood happiness when your employees are working under a reign of terror.
--- End quote ---

Disagree on this. It's about people. Just get someone in charge who actually gives a tinker's cuss about the toy. Good things would flow from that.


--- Quote ---- Pick four or five core themes and expand them into worlds or eras with sub-themes - similar to what exists with the modern sets, but being more blatant that these sets are compatible.

--- End quote ---

Excellent idea. Interchangeability is utterly core to the PM concept, this balkanization going on is a fatal error. Princesses and knights should be meeting on common ground.


And they really need to be leaning into the Real History angle. I would have thought that would be a no-brainer (Neingehirner in German) after the success of Martin Luther. There are already more than a dozen figures from German history - do that for other countries. Americans would snap up an Abe Lincoln for example. Some risk in that local political sensitivities would have to be navigated but that's not impossible.

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