Author Topic: Fixed wrist klickies 1974 to 1982- how many were there?  (Read 6018 times)

Offline GrahamB

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The basic design of the klicky changed little for the first 8 years of Playmobil’s history, but although there were 402 sets issued in that time, there are only

111 different klickies in those 402 sets;
1109 instances, an average of 2.76 klickies per set.

87 adult male klickies in 375 sets,
24 adult female klickies in 135 sets.

Male 921 instances (2.46 per set), female 188 instances (1.39 per set).
(By ‘instance’ I mean if you opened one copy of every set, this is how many klickies you would have).

Here they are!
(the caption below each picture gives the year of first appearance and a ‘k number’, mostly from PlaymoDB- those k numbers in square brackets are ones I have invented to suggest for inclusion in PlaymoDB (they aren’t in there at the moment))








And here is the data on which sets they can be found in: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s1rflbwvxqvbm6i/Early%20Klickies%2025.06.2017.xlsx?dl=0

Here is the basic range of variation for each feature of early adult klickies
  • Wrists: 2 types (fixed or free)
  • Hair style: 3 types (male standard, male curly, female standard)
  • Hair colour: 3 colours (black, brown and yellow; curly hair only appeared in black)
  • Torso shape: 2 types (male or female)
  • Torso colour: 11 different ones (Male: pale blue, pale green, pale yellow, chrome (silver), red, yellow, blue, green, black, white, orange. Female: red, yellow, blue, green, black, white)
  • Arm colour: 10 different ones (Male: same list as for torsos, minus chrome, Female: red, white, yellow, blue)
  • Leg colour: 12 different ones (Male: same list as for torsos, minus chrome, plus light grey and grey. Female: white, yellow, blue)
Extra features (all these only found on male klickies, apart from brown face/ hands)
  • wooden leg on right,
  • hook hand on left,
  • clown face,
  • brown face [and hands on free-wrist klickies],
  • beard (black, brown or yellow),
  • arms different colours from one another
There are other features which vary from klicky to klicky (such as printed or molded heads, coloured or white internal skeletons, details of underside of feet, heads shaped to accept beards or plain), but these are beyond the scope of the current descriptions.

Taking just hair style and colour (4 for male, 3 for female) with colour of torso (11 for male, 6 for female), arms (10 for male, 4 for female) and legs (12 for male, 3 for female), there are 5280 (4x11x10x12) possible combinations for male klickies (87 found, 1.6% of possibles) and 216 (3x6x4x3) for females (24 found, 11% of possibles).

A brief history of fixed-wrist klickies

1974
Geobra issued Playmobil sets with fixed-wrist klickies. Each arm and hand was molded as one piece, so the scope for a klicky to hold accessories was quite limited. In fact, some accessories were issued with extra handles on them to allow klickies to hold them in a more natural position:


 


1976 
Female klickies were released; they differed from the males only in the shape of their torso (known as ‘flip-hem’ by some) and the hair.

1978 
The appearance of male and female klickies with brown-skintone heads. The males with brown heads also had black ‘curly’ hair. Peg-leg klickies also appeared in 1978, as did clown faces.

1980 
The first beards (on male klickies only!) in brown, black or yellow to match the hair colour. The first hook-hand also appeared in 1980, the left arm was a single piece with a hook instead of a hand.

1981 
The first child klickies were issued, both boys (with standard torsos and short hair) and girls (with flip-hem torsos and a ‘girl’ hairstyle). All children had ‘free’ wrists; the arm and hand were not joined, the hand rotated freely through 360 degrees and was a different colour (pink skintone) from the rest of the arm.
 
1982 
Adult klickies with free wrists appeared in sets from 1982 onwards. It seems that in some sets, klickies with free wrists appeared in production runs after 1982, even though the box art still showed fixed wrists. Some accessories were modified for free-wrist klickies which are much more versatile when holding objects. The advent of free wrists also allowed for hands with brown skintone, which also appeared in 1982 for the first time.

1983
The last set to be issued with fixed wrists was Version 3 of set 3265x, in 1983.

Well, not quite the last….

2014   
40th anniversary knights set


2015     
PCC birthday special 2015 rainbow klicky

(those last 2 klickies are NOT included in the 111 total, by the way!)


How I arrived at the figure of 111  different types of klicky

By listing all the early Playmobil sets from 1974 to 1983 (using Collector as my basic source), I created a list of the klickies in every set (over 1100, including Version 2 sets which had different klickies from those in Version 1, as far as I could tell) and then listed the features of each klicky (gender, fixed or free wrists, torso colour, leg colour, arm colour, hair colour and extra features such as child, beard, peg-leg, hook-hand, hair style, skin tone, clown face). I used pictures of set contents whenever I could find them (Datenbank-Setinhalt at www.klickywelt.de of course, as well as Produkt-Arkiv at www.playmobil.de  and other pictures online). From this, I came up with the statistics and pictures above.

I did all this a few years ago and sent the findings to Heather for inclusion in PlaymoDB. When I recently revisited the data, I found quite a few errors (some of which have found their way into PlaymoDB), so I need to send an update (sorry Heather).
 
Two problems I found:
1.   The contents of sets were not necessarily consistent throughout the timespan of production. Sometimes Collector gives different Version numbers for a set, but information on how set contents differ between versions can be hard to come by. Because these sets are now OLD, in many cases there are few examples shown online, so it’s hard to know if one example of a set is actually representative of all.

2.   The contents are known to have differed from the box and promotional pictures in some sets. In particular, hair colour shown on the box may have been completely different on the klickies inside (and if the set has been played with at some point, who can say that some of the hairs haven’t been swapped around?). In fact, some of the klickies are very consistent in the hair colour with which they appeared (47 klickies only had one hair colour) but it is in sets with, for example 5 all-blue klickies (such as some of the Fire sets) that the set contents might in fact include a random selection of black, brown and blond klickies, whatever the box picture shows. It also seems likely that box pictures are sometimes reversed e.g. 3657, 3513, 3390.

 
I made some guesses about klickies where the pictures were not very clear. For the following 25 klickies in these sets, I could not be certain of all the colours because available pictures did not show enough detail. All but the first three klickies in this list have uncertainties about hair colour only. (5/7 means the fifth out of seven in the set, usually the 5th one from the left on the box picture).

Set  Year Klicky Gender Torso Arms Legs Hair 
3221 1977 4/5    m   blue?whitewhiteblack
3182x1978 5/5    m   bluebluelight grey?brown
3137x1980 1/3    m   yellowyellowyellow?black
3226x1976 3/5    m   bluebluewhiteblack?
34091977 5/7    m   blackredred  ? 
34091977 6/7    m   blackredred  ? 
34091977 7/7    m   blackwhitewhite  ? 
34411977 2/2    f   bluewhitewhiteblack?
34441977 3/3    m   blackredredbrown?
34451977 3/3    m   blackredredblack?
34451977 2/3    m   blackredredblond?
34501977 3/4    m   blackredredblack?
34501977 2/4    m   blackredredbrown?
3158x1978 2/2    m   bluebluelight grey?
3176x1978 4/5    m   blackredred?
36411978 3/3    m   whitewhitewhite?
37071978 2/4    f   whitewhitewhite?
3194x1979 5/5    m   greengreenblack?
3133x1980 2/4    m   blackredred?
35351980 3/3    m   whitewhitewhite?
35361980 4/5    m   blueblueblue?
35361980 5/5    m   blueblueblue?
35891980 1/2    m   blueblueblue?
35891980 2/2    m   blueblueblue?
35901980 2/2    m   yellowyellowyellow?

8 klickies had different hair colour in sealed sets at Klickywelt from the box picture colours
39 had different hair colour from unsealed sets at Kw
7 had different hair colour in other sources
At that moment the ship suddenly stopped rocking and swaying, the engine pitch settled down to a gentle hum. 'Hey Ford.' said Zaphod, 'that sounds good. Have you worked out the controls on this boat?' 'No,' said Ford, 'I just stopped fiddling with them.' (With thanks to Douglas Adams)

Offline cheng

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Re: Fixed wrist klickies 1974 to 1982- how many were there?
« Reply #1 on: June 26, 2017, 01:27:32 »
WOW....interesting!!
work of dedication and love....like a playmo-museum curator  :love:

Offline Macruran

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Re: Fixed wrist klickies 1974 to 1982- how many were there?
« Reply #2 on: July 09, 2017, 03:14:37 »
GRAHAMB, PROFESSOR OF PLAYMOBOLOGY

Brilliant work as always.

One question:

2.76 klickies per set

Does anyone have pictures of one of these .76 klickies?
"We like things in little." - G. Stein  
 :roman:

Offline tahra

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Re: Fixed wrist klickies 1974 to 1982- how many were there?
« Reply #3 on: July 09, 2017, 14:20:48 »
Thank you Graham - someday I will need to see which ones I am missing... ;)

Offline Salamander

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Re: Fixed wrist klickies 1974 to 1982- how many were there?
« Reply #4 on: July 09, 2017, 18:36:25 »
I love how thorough GrahamB is! Great info, thanks!

Offline tahra

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Re: Fixed wrist klickies 1974 to 1982- how many were there?
« Reply #5 on: July 11, 2017, 12:29:37 »
8 klickies had different hair colour in sealed sets at Klickywelt from the box picture colours
39 had different hair colour from unsealed sets at Kw
7 had different hair colour in other sources

Please keep in mind that it was NOT uncommon for the klickys to have different hair color... Examples.. Our blonde indian chief (the large 7 klicky set - 3406 according to playmodb), the blonde cav (7 klicky set 3408 - playmodb) AND the commander+soldier+horse set (3582 - playmodb) - all blonde.

Cowboys (3484 - this ref I remember!), besides having no bull, only the yellow klicky had black hair - all the others are blonde (including the mexican!)

That was very very common. I remember we bought a set SPECIFICALLY for the blonde hair, and the guy had black hair. Either the individual policeman or postman...

Offline GrahamB

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Re: Fixed wrist klickies 1974 to 1982- how many were there?
« Reply #6 on: July 11, 2017, 15:04:01 »
Thanks, Tahra. I guessed this must be the case, but I have never seen any discussion about it (I guess there will be mention on Klicywelt, but my German is not that good...). The fact that you cannot rely on the box picture to tell you what is inside (especially for hair colour, especially on early sets) is probably taken for granted by many Collectors, so it isn't discussed. And therefore your first-hand knowledge from having these sets as a child (with quite a few disappointments, it seems) is VERY useful. Thanks  :wave:

Would you like me to send you a couple of blond hairs?  :lol:

But perhaps my list of 111 is not complete if there are possibly other hair colours for some of them. Your examples include two all-red klickies with blond hair (Indian chief in 3406 and Cowboy in 3484) which I hadn't included in the 111. I personally think there is a case to be made for disregarding hair colour when cataloging these early klickies, which would mean there are only 74 (the number of photos in my first post).

Could your policeman or postman have had free wrists? I could only find  3338, 3564 and 3309 single figure sets showing blonde hair on the box picture and all three have free wrists.

« Last Edit: July 11, 2017, 15:40:40 by GrahamB »
At that moment the ship suddenly stopped rocking and swaying, the engine pitch settled down to a gentle hum. 'Hey Ford.' said Zaphod, 'that sounds good. Have you worked out the controls on this boat?' 'No,' said Ford, 'I just stopped fiddling with them.' (With thanks to Douglas Adams)

Offline GrahamB

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Re: Fixed wrist klickies 1974 to 1982- how many were there?
« Reply #7 on: July 11, 2017, 15:12:06 »
PS and a bull?
At that moment the ship suddenly stopped rocking and swaying, the engine pitch settled down to a gentle hum. 'Hey Ford.' said Zaphod, 'that sounds good. Have you worked out the controls on this boat?' 'No,' said Ford, 'I just stopped fiddling with them.' (With thanks to Douglas Adams)

Offline tahra

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Re: Fixed wrist klickies 1974 to 1982- how many were there?
« Reply #8 on: July 11, 2017, 15:29:38 »
The old boxes even have written that "colors may vary". And they did.

At the time we didn't have ONE extra hair.

And we never traded the existing klickys hair.. though.. thinking.. when we got the indians (xmas 83, btw), we had.. THREE klickys. And a horse. The mexican with horse and the nurse (both with brown hair) and the indian woman with caldron - black hair. So... even if we WANTED to.. there would be no black hair for Adama (those are all named from Galactica). Later.. well... we wouldn't know him if he had black hair  :P

PS and a bull?

Our set had three cows, and the little one - no bull.


Offline GrahamB

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Re: Fixed wrist klickies 1974 to 1982- how many were there?
« Reply #9 on: July 11, 2017, 16:01:06 »
Thanks again, Tahra. I modified my post (third paragraph and added fourth) while you were responding.


'Colours may vary' seems to have applied mainly to hair colours. But I cannot even make a statement like that with any certainty as one would need to look at many MIB examples of the same set to be certain... Frustrating!

...when we got the indians (xmas 83, btw), we had.. THREE klickys...
Three klickies! How many have you got now?

At that moment the ship suddenly stopped rocking and swaying, the engine pitch settled down to a gentle hum. 'Hey Ford.' said Zaphod, 'that sounds good. Have you worked out the controls on this boat?' 'No,' said Ford, 'I just stopped fiddling with them.' (With thanks to Douglas Adams)