PlaymoFriends
General => Brainstorming For Playmobil => Topic started by: Rasputin on December 24, 2015, 01:27:22
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Over the years geobra has made many family packs. There have been the African 7980, Asians 7982, Caucasian 7983, Hispanic 7981, traditional 6395, And many historic ones.
Then there is the ethnic packs with a variety of Africans.
Have they ever made any sets mixing the races? Why not have a family pack with an Asian dad and a Hispanic mother? Or any combination
I know we can mix them at home but is geobra saying only people in their own race should be families ?
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I think they're calling them families for the sake of ease. What they are is the chance to get one of each type of a given racial or ethnic group.
It also makes it easier to stock sets in such a fashion, otherwise you'd have to have sets representing too many combinations.
Why does the "wife" in the western family set look like a Spanish dancer when the rest of the family are not dressed in such fashion? She should be in standard clothing for the era like the rest but isn't.
Why do you consider it such an issue, are there lots of children you are aware who feel left out somehow that playmobil doesn't cater to them? If such children exist then shouldn't the parents be discussing with them the possibly that their expectations are not realistic for a toy company to cater to every possible outlook or combination of relations on the face of the planet?
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I'm actually with Rasputin on this one.
It's been a couple years since we had the "ethnic" families. They are great for starter sets or just building up klicky numbers, especially child klickies. Obviously it would be difficult to release every possible combination, but they could release 4 or 5 families. It doesn't require any extra work to mix them up a bit.
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I don't like to be overly critical on this issue.. because as Rhalius points out sometimes people are eager to look for racism where there is none. But it does seem we could at some point have a mixed family or two. How hard could that be?
I also would love to see the whole family of a set be something other than white occasionally. I mean like the family that goes with a house or a camper, something like that. Rather than just a single black or oriental or hispanic klicky thrown into classroom sets, police forces, etc.
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I'm actually with Rasputin on this one.
It's been a couple years since we had the "ethnic" families. They are great for starter sets or just building up klicky numbers, especially child klickies. Obviously it would be difficult to release every possible combination, but they could release 4 or 5 families. It doesn't require any extra work to mix them up a bit.
It requires no work, but I thought the suggestion was for mixed sets of infinite variety which would be unworkable.
Perhaps what is needed is a crowd set with 20+ klickies of various kinds.
I'd also like to see children in school uniform. I thought something may have come along given the popularity of Harry Potter (and anime is full of them) but nothing so far. I think it would do well in the asian market having a Japanese school uniform type set.
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Just opened the camping set 5435 and the mom has a definitely darker skin tone than the dad. Might just be a tan, but could also be thnic differences. I wouldn't have noticed it probably except for this thread.
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Just opened the camping set 5435 and the mom has a definitely darker skin tone than the dad. Might just be a tan, but could also be thnic differences. I wouldn't have noticed it probably except for this thread.
Good spot, I will check it out. I think we have that set. Tan or not it's good to see.
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It requires no work, but I thought the suggestion was for mixed sets of infinite variety which would be unworkable.
Perhaps what is needed is a crowd set with 20+ klickies of various kinds.
I'd also like to see children in school uniform. I thought something may have come along given the popularity of Harry Potter (and anime is full of them) but nothing so far. I think it would do well in the asian market having a Japanese school uniform type set.
I'd really like to see a mixed batch of children (maybe alternate sets for different time periods). We never seem to have enough kids that aren't duplicates.
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This thread got me thinking about it in my own collection, so I pulled out my Klickys... even if I was doing just regular family groups (Asian, African American, and Hispanic) I have to mix my Hispanic Females with African American Males in order to create NINE sets of non-Caucasian couples... so then I pulled out the children, and that's where I discovered that I need more African American adults since I have 4 children that don't have families... unless I go to more than 3 children per family.
It was an interesting thing to look at and realize that the diversity really isn't there.
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I have that problem too, with way more dark skinned children than adults.
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Seeing how I mainly collect medieval, most of my clickies are white but in that theme it makes sense. Still, I do gather some middle eastern clickies and such to act as merchants, travelers and to represent the southern part of the world. Most of my non white clickies come from the pirates that I collect to a lesser degree.
I'm pretty sure though that Geobra has released several families where some clickies where tanned and some where not, which could actually be regarded as a mixed race couple.
And with larger sets that feature various kids and adults its easy enough for children to put them together as a family regardless of race.
Like a city set featuring a white mother, white child, and an asian man. Plenty of children might make that asian man the father. It's all open to interpretation. In the end its still a kids toy though, so its not that weird for them to create families of clickies that have the same ethnicity since that is the majority. With pretty much any concept children's toys tend to go with the shape that is most familiar to them. There is no ill intent behind that, no hidden message about Geobra being against less common pairings.
Just have faith in children. They will put clickies together for different reasons and may often not consider skincolor in this unless their parents are eager to point it out.
As kids me and my sister often put Prince Edward the Lion, a white prince with lots of gold, together with the indian looking snake lady from the circus because she was wearing lots of gold too. To us that seemed a common interest, we made them both obsessed with gold jewelry.
We also made the pink shirted curly blonde haired tower herald gay because.. well he looks very feminine. While we never gave him a love interest, I imagine we would have given him that if there where gay couples in our family. But to us he was just a harmless comic relief who was never seen as any less than other clickies. I think he was one of our favorite clickies even because he was a lot of fun.
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Just have faith in children. They will put clickies together for different reasons and may often not consider skincolor in this unless their parents are eager to point it out.
This is true. I notice the little girl I tutor/babysit often puts klickys of different skin colors together as families. It's nice to see that she doesn't think about such things.
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It was an interesting thing to look at and realize that the diversity really isn't there.
And that applies to many communities, even countries, in the real world. A more or less uniform skin colour, hair colour etc., is the norm for many people because that's the way it is.
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Seeing how I mainly collect medieval, most of my clickies are white but in that theme it makes sense. Still, I do gather some middle eastern clickies and such to act as merchants, travelers and to represent the southern part of the world. Most of my non white clickies come from the pirates that I collect to a lesser degree.
I'm pretty sure though that Geobra has released several families where some clickies where tanned and some where not, which could actually be regarded as a mixed race couple.
And with larger sets that feature various kids and adults its easy enough for children to put them together as a family regardless of race.
Like a city set featuring a white mother, white child, and an asian man. Plenty of children might make that asian man the father. It's all open to interpretation. In the end its still a kids toy though, so its not that weird for them to create families of clickies that have the same ethnicity since that is the majority. With pretty much any concept children's toys tend to go with the shape that is most familiar to them. There is no ill intent behind that, no hidden message about Geobra being against less common pairings.
Just have faith in children. They will put clickies together for different reasons and may often not consider skincolor in this unless their parents are eager to point it out.
As kids me and my sister often put Prince Edward the Lion, a white prince with lots of gold, together with the indian looking snake lady from the circus because she was wearing lots of gold too. To us that seemed a common interest, we made them both obsessed with gold jewelry.
We also made the pink shirted curly blonde haired tower herald gay because.. well he looks very feminine. While we never gave him a love interest, I imagine we would have given him that if there where gay couples in our family. But to us he was just a harmless comic relief who was never seen as any less than other clickies. I think he was one of our favorite clickies even because he was a lot of fun.
Rhallus writes a lot of commonsense here. Maybe we should stop looking stop a child's toy with adult eyes.
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The world IS changing. When I was in primary school, there were TWO black kids in the school. One in my class, one in my sister's.. they were also related.. cousins, I think?
I quite remember the one in my class was older than the rest of us, and he could swear! :o We had no idea of the meaning of the words, but... well... a success ;D
(Ah, kids ::) )
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Even if they don't mix them up, I really hope we do get more families (or sets of children). I want the option to increase diversity in our collections without ending up with large pieces I don't want or ending up with a ton of twins. The people I buy PM for have at least three ethnicities, minus one (adopted) kid who has an Asian father and a Hispanic mother and lives both in the US and in Asia. Uniformity is foreign to us. My city and state too - there's no majority racial group (no single group constitutes more than half the population).
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In elementary school there where no black children at all, I don't think there where any in kindergarten either, I would have remembered.
In elementary school there was a chinese girl in our class called Ying Ying, and I believe she had a sister a few grades lower called Ting Ting. Might have been a little brother too, I'm not sure. They moved away at some point so I never saw them again after that. While those names did strike us kids as a bit funny, she was not teased with it. She was just a quiet girl who did not really stand out in any way, but there where more quiet girls like that. As far as I know she was never treated any different by the other kids.
Later in elementary school we had a new girl, from Iran and she did not fit in that much. Was a bit fiesty, I believe she could be a little agressive and scratched another kid once, and occasionly said something in her own language. But she did mellow in time. Not sure if she finished school with us or left earlier due to moving away or such. I can't really remember. Initially she was not liked due to her personality though but that had nothing to do with skincolor. Later she did make friends.
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So many projections
I live in the us. As a kid I grew up in a track house (suburb) a recent build. Every single house was a diffrences ethnicity. A scottish family, an English, Canadian, Persian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, we were Russian, what people would call American, many many in a small neighborhood. We all got along and I personally played at almost everyone, we were just kids playing
Now if the adults could have given us toys to teach us to honor and respect of those diffrences perhaps when we grew up ( today) we wold not all be fighting in the sand box of life
We were given gi- joes, transformers, barbies, I preferred collecting matchbox (tiny metal cars) to build micro worlds or I collected n scale model trains to build dio's.
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Seeing how I mainly collect medieval, most of my clickies are white but in that theme it makes sense. Still, I do gather some middle eastern clickies and such to act as merchants, travelers and to represent the southern part of the world. Most of my non white clickies come from the pirates that I collect to a lesser degree.
I'm pretty sure though that Geobra has released several families where some clickies where tanned and some where not, which could actually be regarded as a mixed race couple.
And with larger sets that feature various kids and adults its easy enough for children to put them together as a family regardless of race.
Like a city set featuring a white mother, white child, and an asian man. Plenty of children might make that asian man the father. It's all open to interpretation. In the end its still a kids toy though, so its not that weird for them to create families of clickies that have the same ethnicity since that is the majority. With pretty much any concept children's toys tend to go with the shape that is most familiar to them. There is no ill intent behind that, no hidden message about Geobra being against less common pairings.
Just have faith in children. They will put clickies together for different reasons and may often not consider skincolor in this unless their parents are eager to point it out.
As kids me and my sister often put Prince Edward the Lion, a white prince with lots of gold, together with the indian looking snake lady from the circus because she was wearing lots of gold too. To us that seemed a common interest, we made them both obsessed with gold jewelry.
We also made the pink shirted curly blonde haired tower herald gay because.. well he looks very feminine. While we never gave him a love interest, I imagine we would have given him that if there where gay couples in our family. But to us he was just a harmless comic relief who was never seen as any less than other clickies. I think he was one of our favorite clickies even because he was a lot of fun.
Just look at the set facts. Try looking at them with out the blue goggles on.
It's similar to installing positive body images on young girls. If all one see in stores, magazines advertisements (propaganda) is skinny bodies .....well ask a woman who was subjected to it and be curious to find out facts, not install projections
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There simply is no ill intent behind this. Geobra is not part of a conspiracy that says people should only marry with those of their own race and should have both a boy and a girl of about the same age, and on rare occasions a toddler that may be either gender if you want to look at it that critically. They don't tend to release families with only sons or only daughters after all.
Seeing how all bald clickies are pirates you might as well twist that into saying that Geobra thinks bald people are criminals. And should all wear colorfull bandanas.
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Seeing how all bald clickies are pirates you might as well twist that into saying that Geobra thinks bald people are criminals. And should all wear colorfull bandanas.
Not totally true... The Monk and a Basketball Player and Professor X
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There simply is no ill intent behind this. Geobra is not part of a conspiracy that says people should only marry with those of their own race and should have both a boy and a girl of about the same age, and on rare occasions a toddler that may be either gender if you want to look at it that critically. They don't tend to release families with only sons or only daughters after all.
Seeing how all bald clickies are pirates you might as well twist that into saying that Geobra thinks bald people are criminals. And should all wear colorfull bandanas.
My thoughts exactly. :)
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And that applies to many communities, even countries, in the real world. A more or less uniform skin colour, hair colour etc., is the norm for many people because that's the way it is.
Exactly. Playmobil sometimes doesn't seem diverse enough to me, but then I live in a city that is more than half African American, with large numbers of people from Mexico, China, India, the Philippines, and Vietnam, as well as smaller populations from many other countries. But then I remind myself that playmobil isn't made here, and though I honestly don't know that much about the exact cultural and racial demographics in Germany, I would venture to guess there are a lot more Caucasians than what I am used to seeing in my daily life.
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There simply is no ill intent behind this. Geobra is not part of a conspiracy that says people should only marry with those of their own race and should have both a boy and a girl of about the same age, and on rare occasions a toddler that may be either gender if you want to look at it that critically. They don't tend to release families with only sons or only daughters after all.
Seeing how all bald clickies are pirates you might as well twist that into saying that Geobra thinks bald people are criminals. And should all wear colorfull bandanas.
No, it's not ill intent, but Geobra can be a bit oblivious. If they want to expand into other markets (or get a stronger hold in markets like the US), they need to think about different populations.
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Considering what a crazy amount of american exclusives they give to the US, it can't really be said they are neglecting that market. They seem to get more exclusives than any other country.
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Considering what a crazy amount of american exclusives they give to the US, it can't really be said they are neglecting that market. They seem to get more exclusives than any other country.
That's not what I meant. They forget that some countries have very diverse populations and might find certain omissions (like the complete lack of non-caucasian brides, angels, or fantasy princesses [the Princess theme]) rather shocking.
For the most part, the US exclusives are just reconfigured versions of other sets. They aren't culturally specific.
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True, but slow and steady there does seem to be improvement in presentation of other races.
I agree that they could do more with it, I'm personally hoping to see black female pirates. I want more black pirates either way though since I have not been able to get any yet.
Black women seem to be a real shortage of, there seem to be many more black men than black women.
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If playmobil brand is a German made toy to present to the world what Germany "is" then fine, go on producing 90% white with token races/ethnicities mixed in from time to time. Teach us all what Germany is all about. You just have to realize the consequences of such a stances. The other day I was watching a cartoon my son asked me to watch (American dad) and in it there is a German fish. The other day I heard a line he said that was a joke about the purity of the German blood line and let me tell you it goes right along the same line geobra promotes. In the us it's a negative joke. So now geobra wonders why so few buy the toy in the us? Well maybe they narrowed down their sights so much that they alienated the other 90% of the us market....it's a big world out there and you may find you blood line being a minority outside the comfort of your home.
I am pretty sure if they kept putting Asian in sets as prisoners Asians would not like the brand. Now if you represented Asians as store owners, business people, expensive car drivers, living in mansions, private jet flying, with white employees......HUMANS then I guess a different outcome of emotional response
There is a saying I am not too sure about but it sounds ??
"Think globally....act locally ".....
.the globe is a divers place
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Just consider what the huge American entertainment market puts out and how appealing it may be to other regions of the world. A lot of it is strongly focused on the American market. Its what the people making it grew up with.
When playing the sims for example, its clearly geared towards typical american neighbourhoods and houses, and the american way of life.
And Geobra being german, the people working there take into consideration what they grew up with. They think back about their own childhood no doubt as a source of inspiration.
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From what I can make out, Playmobil USA seems to operate far more at an arm's length from Geobra than the European companies. In fact, I've often thought that it was pretty well independent. But if diversity is so important an element in the US market, why doesn't Playmobil USA ask Geobra to produce sets of diverse families for sale in the US?
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Just consider what the huge American entertainment market puts out and how appealing it may be to other regions of the world. A lot of it is strongly focused on the American market. Its what the people making it grew up with.
When playing the sims for example, its clearly geared towards typical american neighbourhoods and houses, and the american way of life.
And Geobra being german, the people working there take into consideration what they grew up with. They think back about their own childhood no doubt as a source of inspiration.
Good and interesting point. Diversity, though for some Americans seems to stop at the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. My wife is American and she has an aunt and uncle in the States who thought that we used dollars in the UK. I've also found this when selling to US members of eBay.
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My wife is American and she has an aunt and uncle in the States who thought that we used dollars in the UK. I've also found this when selling to US members of eBay.
:lol: Sounds about right. There are plenty of us who do have some clue that the whole world doesn't completely revolve around the USA though. And then there are people like this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9iR6sLwDKY
Sorry for the off topic.
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My thoughts:
Playmobil doesn't reflect our cities. It doesn't reflect the world. It is a business, and as a business it exists solely to make money. It makes money by producing things which the majority of its target market/countries will buy.
And yes, in the cities of its targeted countries, there is great diversity. But in most smaller towns and villages of those countries, there are only a few examples of diversity. Or even none. At least, none of the easily recognisable ones. And probably those smaller towns and villages. added together, are actually the majority of the country. And a business wants all those people to buy their product.
Now in one's life, in one's street, in one's social group, if one is part of a minority group (and I'm part of a few), then the 'grouping together' (by family, or by common minority concerns) can make it seem as if one is part of a very large amount of people. But countrywide: maybe not so.
So, however we feel about our own community, I guess that businesses don't particularly want to focus on the minority money. They'll just go for what is the majority.
And until the majority spenders really want and demand those 'other' minority groups as play toys for their kids - I don't think it will change.
Does that make me OK with that? No, not at all. But I can't change the world. I can't change the ideas of the majority buyers. I can't grab hold of the 'majority-targeted-type' parent in the street, and say, no no no, don't buy the Playmobil (or any other toy) that looks like you: buy your children the toys that look like (or has something in common with) me.
And so toy manufacturers continue to please them. Not aim their products at me.
But .... I'm not a child. I can try my best to make representations of others that are around me. Sometimes I am puzzled about how to do something (I'm still looking for a turban that shows NO hair, for a Sikh man), but I'll get there in the end. It's a challenge to our creativity.
And ... sometimes ... we fail to spot diversity anyway. I recently posted a zoo story. In that story, anyone who read it probably noticed the wheelchair-using woman. And the various colours of skin.
But did anyone notice the lesbian couple? No, not by stereotype - but I know who they are. (Clue: look to the left at the first shot at the Meerkat enclosure. They are not holding hands, but they are touching hands at that point.) There's a lone (male) parent (he comes from another story, so it is a fixed fact about him and his adventurous - eg in the playpark - daughter); a Modern Orthodox Jewish woman (she's wearing a sheitel - wig - which is why her hair shows); a man with Down's Syndrome (an old painted head - which I attached to a modern body - has a Down's Syndrome appearance to it - he is one of my favourite klickies). There are men with children; diverse ages/generations together; one grey haired (heterosexual) couple on a day out together with no children; several mixed-race families; and women with kids (minus men) enjoying themselves together too.
Businesses will make their money.
But we can do what we want with what we buy.
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Have they ever made any sets mixing the races? Why not have a family pack with an Asian dad and a Hispanic mother? Or any combination
I know we can mix them at home but is geobra saying only people in their own race should be families ?
They are not saying that only people in their own race should be families, but it is easier to go classic and stereotypical b/c kids generally prefer stuff that looks normal. A family pack with that diversity does sound interesting, but look at the Modern Luxury Mansion stuff. Those sets all go to one house, but they have white people, asian people, darker-skinned, and European people. So you could mix them a little.
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If playmobil brand is a German made toy to present to the world what Germany "is" then fine, go on producing 90% white with token races/ethnicities mixed in from time to time. Teach us all what Germany is all about. You just have to realize the consequences of such a stances.
If Geobra wanted a toy that only represented Germany, I would be okay with that, but that means only German buildings, klickies, themes, etc. No western, no pirates, no redcoats (unless they are there for the Germans to fight), no Egyptians... just Germans doing German things in German settings. It's a valid niche product.
But the fact that they have themes representing other countries (even though they sometimes get things wrong) and themes that are geographically-ambiguous suggests that they are aiming for a less German-centered toy. So they need to see that goal out.
Good and interesting point. Diversity, though for some Americans seems to stop at the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. My wife is American and she has an aunt and uncle in the States who thought that we used dollars in the UK. I've also found this when selling to US members of eBay.
Don't forget the southern border. There's diversity along there too. It's the middle part that gets a bit isolated.
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I live in a city of 1.5 million. Apart from my martial art class, my life is based around people from the same background as me. I attended a funeral a couple of years ago for a businessman, a couple of hundred people were there, mostly reps from various companies and it was a very mono-racial grouping, I was actually surprised.
I've gone to birthdays of people from an asian background and the vast majority of people there were from that community. In my experience people tend to stick with what is familiar, particularly people from a non-Western background.
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If Geobra wanted a toy that only represented Germany, I would be okay with that, but that means only German buildings, klickies, themes, etc.
Germans have the right to regard international themes as part of their own culture just like non-Germans celebrate Oktoberfest and non-Irish celebrate St. Patrick's Day.
Westerns are international thanks to Hollywood and the playmobil Western theme owes more to Hollywood than the actual west, same for the Roman and Egyptian themes which are based around a fighting pit and a tomb respectively. The actual historic cultures did not revolve around these things.
Nice point about American diversity playmofire, Hollywood diversity seems to be 'throw more blacks at it'. Chinese and Indian people really don't get a look in despite being heavily involved in real life in many of the roles depicted on screen.
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Germans have the right to regard international themes as part of their own culture just like non-Germans celebrate Oktoberfest and non-Irish celebrate St. Patrick's Day.
Westerns are international thanks to Hollywood and the playmobil Western theme owes more to Hollywood than the actual west, same for the Roman and Egyptian themes which are based around a fighting pit and a tomb respectively. The actual historic cultures did not revolve around these things.
I have no problem with that. But welcoming internationally-inspired themes means welcoming some of that international diversity.
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The thing is that Hollywood is quite notorious for excluding minorities when it comes to major roles. Recently I saw a trailer for a movie about egyptian mythology made in America, and pretty much everyone was white and couldnt pass for egyptian. That's really messed up, as messed up as the old cowboy movies with white indians.
When looking at american toys that are sold world wide, I suppose barbies may be best known and compared to that I'd say playmobil is doing extremely well with representing people. I believe they had barbies of different ethnicities, but did they ever have a ken doll who was not white?
Just saying that American toy companies are not exactly setting the best example for toy companies outside of America to follow when taking the American toy market into account.
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I have no problem with that. But welcoming internationally-inspired themes means welcoming some of that international diversity.
Where though? Sets only have a couple of klickies in them. If you try to represent different groups you end up not representing the main group which is your current target audience.
I was looking at some older sets recently and many of them had more klickies in them. How many sets today have seven or eight klickies in them, any?
The original redcoat soldier set had something like five in it including one black klicky. The "re-released" version had three including the black guy.
They need to produce more sets that have larger numbers of klickies in them, then they can add the diversity some are wanting without removing options for others.
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It is a business, and as a business it exists solely to make money.
I seriously doubt that. I have no idea what their goal is, but it seems to me that isn't it...
I believe they had barbies of different ethnicities, but did they ever have a ken doll who was not white?
I am pretty sure they did.. like in the 70s.
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It's a business with severs control syndrome. It starts contradicting itself for its own good
It's supposed to seek out capital (your funds) but then the syndrome kicks in
To geobra,
If you love it set it free
After having all these kids and providing toys for them these type of subjects became very important to me personally. It's the future generations and the toys adults provide for them set patterns, ideas, concepts, values, ??, that they build on and draw upon in their maturing processes....then put them into practice when it's their time as the adults....repeat
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I believe they had barbies of different ethnicities, but did they ever have a ken doll who was not white?
African American Ken, "Big Jack" from the "Big Jim" action figures, and Action Man's "Tom Stone".I still have 2 original "Tom Stone" action figures. :)
I also have lots of darker skinned Playmobil warriors, race car drivers, astronauts, cowboys...So what's the point?
I have two sons who grew up with Playmobil, and they never questioned any figure's skin colour, a hero can be white, brown, black, yellow or blue. ;)
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I want to see playmobil brand evolve from love
I do not want to see it stay the same
I do not want to see it regress to older times
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Depends on the theme. The medieval and western themes would be greatly improved by going back to earlier days.
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I believe they had barbies of different ethnicities, but did they ever have a ken doll who was not white?
To add to what others posted: yes:
http://kattisdolls.net/KDold/faces/kethnic.htm
There were also Brad, Curtis, Steven, Jamal, and Alan - plus Tre in the Flava doll series.
http://i-luv-dolls.blogspot.com/2011/04/black-male-faces-in-barbie-line_16.html
Oh... and I also used to collect Barbie/Mattel dolls!
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Oh... and I also used to collect Barbie/Mattel dolls!
So did my sister :)
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Where though? Sets only have a couple of klickies in them. If you try to represent different groups you end up not representing the main group which is your current target audience.
I was looking at some older sets recently and many of them had more klickies in them. How many sets today have seven or eight klickies in them, any?
The original redcoat soldier set had something like five in it including one black klicky. The "re-released" version had three including the black guy.
They need to produce more sets that have larger numbers of klickies in them, then they can add the diversity some are wanting without removing options for others.
It doesn't have to be in the same set. There are certain types of klickies that are doing well in diversity (like the modern theme), but angels, wedding couples, and fantasy princesses/princes are always white. Angels are usually blonde; the remaining few have brown hair. And how many blonde pink fantasy princesses are there? We haven't had any shortage of these three categories, but very little diversity in them.
Angels and fairies are always female. Even Tinkerbell movies have boy fairies!
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Well they did make some improvements, I believe they did have a black fairy in that theme so thats a step in the right direction.
Might be nice to see more non white parents with their children or with a partner in sets though. Like having a black mom with her black children in a playground set. Or a black dad with his child at an amusement park. It does happen at times but could be a bit more common since often when we see black clickies in sets with various clickies, its often a single black child or a single black adult.
Same goes for asian and tanned clickies though. But the tanned ones seem more common since they could be used as Latino, Indian, Native American, middle eastern and mediteranean. Or a white clicky with a tan.
Still, it is nice that asian clickies are seen more often in recent years in the modern themes. Now we just need an asian baby.
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I started to wonder if the new eyes that people refer to as animation eyes is an attempt at creating a Japanese distinction ?
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The thing is that Hollywood is quite notorious for excluding minorities when it comes to major roles. Recently I saw a trailer for a movie about egyptian mythology made in America, and pretty much everyone was white and couldnt pass for egyptian. That's really messed up, as messed up as the old cowboy movies with white indians.
When looking at american toys that are sold world wide, I suppose barbies may be best known and compared to that I'd say playmobil is doing extremely well with representing people. I believe they had barbies of different ethnicities, but did they ever have a ken doll who was not white?
Just saying that American toy companies are not exactly setting the best example for toy companies outside of America to follow when taking the American toy market into account.
Hollywood has its problems. There's been some improvement, but yeah... The movie industry in general is brutal. I don't think we want it for a model.
As for American toys, it depends on how much you are willing to pay. American Girl Dolls (a popular fairly expensive doll in the US) has 40 skin/hair/eye combos available in their "Truly Me" collection. You can also add things like braces or hearing aids. You don't see as many variations in cheaper AG knockoff dolls. Same with Barbie. There's more diversity among real Barbies than in the cheaper knockoffs. We had some knockoff Skippers as children; they came in two colors: blonde or African American.
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Fair enough, I am not too aware of american toys I suppose. Just remember some from what was in stores when I was a kid and I give the occasional glance over other stuff than playmobil when in a toystore.
Never really played much with american toys myself when growing up, I had some transformers and GI-Joe figures and some knock off GI-Joe figures. But I gave all that away to charity some years ago.
GI-Joe actually was surprisingly racially diverse in both good guys and villains, though I remember female figures being pretty much non existant. From folders I know there where quite a few, but they just didnt really show up in stores or may not have been part of the silly looking lines they produced in the 90's. I recall an older cousin having much greater GI-Joe figures from the 80's who looked more millitairy.
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From what I understand, GI-Joe was developed as a boy alternative to Barbie, hence the similar scale. So I'm not surprised that female figures didn't show up much in stores, since stores probably assumed that boys didn't want to play with female dolls and that girls would have Barbies instead.
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Wouldn't it be great if you went into a store and purchased a family and they then allowed you to pick two adults and two children from available stock?
It would also be a true indicator of what figures were popular.
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When looking at american toys that are sold world wide, I suppose barbies may be best known and compared to that I'd say playmobil is doing extremely well with representing people. I believe they had barbies of different ethnicities, but did they ever have a ken doll who was not white?
Just saying that American toy companies are not exactly setting the best example for toy companies outside of America to follow when taking the American toy market into account.
Yes, there have been many black Kens, Kellys, Tommys, Skippers, Kevins, and Staceys, all of which I had at least one of except a skipper. And other skin and hair colors besides just white blondes. The vast majority of toy companies are very diverse. In fact any set can usually be bought either/or. Like if you have a FisherPrice dollhouse, you can buy either a white family or a black family for it. You can buy the white ballerina Barbie or the black ballerina Barbie. The white baby doll or the black baby doll. They're identical except for skin color. I just never felt like all my toys had to look just like me. I never pretended they were me or even that they were my babies or whatever. I had friends of all colors so it made sense to have dolls and toys of all colors.
Playmobil really isn't nearly as diverse when compared to the major American toy companies.
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Playmobil really isn't nearly as diverse when compared to the major American toy companies.
And there is a simple explanation for this - home markets. The USA home market is far more diverse than Playmobil's home market, basically Continental Europe and the output of each reflects the diversity of the home market.
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And there is a simple explanation for this - home markets. The USA home market is far more diverse than Playmobil's home market, basically Continental Europe and the output of each reflects the diversity of the home market.
Yes, I totally agree, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Part of diversity is acknowledging that some cultures are naturally less diverse than others. There's nothing wrong with being European and living in a community that is mostly white, any more than there's anything wrong with being African and living in a community that is mostly black. It's attitudes that matter.
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Throw in some respect for good measure
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Well I just dont think there is any malice involved. Considering the population of Germany there actually is quite some diversity in the modern theme with different races. Sure there is room for some improvement but personly I find there are more important things to adress such as gender stereotypes.
Having a black and a chinese princess in a castle so pink that you get diabetes just by looking at it would be no substitute for having say, a colorfull Indian palace in a gender neutral theme with various indian princesses along with elephants, gardens, soldiers, tigers, marketstands and maybe some traders.
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... a colorfull Indian palace in a gender neutral theme with various indian princesses along with elephants, gardens, soldiers, tigers, marketstands and maybe some traders.
THAT I'd buy in a second!!! :)
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THAT I'd buy in a second!!! :)
I would buy three then clean up at a good ol fashion TRU clearance for more
Rhalius you have great ideas and should keep posting then to the pcc. You don't piss them off the way you present them and think out your ideas, thank you for being you
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Thanks. :) I do tend to keep posting ideas there once in a while.
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a colorfull Indian palace in a gender neutral theme with various indian princesses along with elephants, gardens, soldiers, tigers, marketstands and maybe some traders.
Why only princesses? Why not princes and courtiers and musicians?
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Those can be there too of course, I just named some of the first things that came to mind when thinking of India. :)
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...I just named some of the first things that came to mind when thinking of India. :)
What, no Bollywood, soccer or cricket?
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What, no Bollywood, soccer or cricket?
A cricket set would be awesome. The Bollywood too but there is no Hollywood. There is soccer AKA football, so is an Indian version different?
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They would have to make the Indian theme diverse. I.e. some African Indians, Chinese indians, etc. etc. Reflect the real changing world.
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A cricket set would be awesome. The Bollywood too but there is no Hollywood. There is soccer AKA football, so is an Indian version different?
Just like normal soccer but skinnier and everyone dances.
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Everyone, please remember the following rule from the Member Guidelines:
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This went a little bit too far and some posts had to be removed.
Please keep on track with the matter of this thread WITHIN the guidelines.
Mod Team.
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On Instagram today Playmobil posted an image with 9 couples for Valentine's day. Multiple couples mixed race plus a mm couple and a ff couple. No question they are aware of the issue we are discussing here, and that image at least was a great one for showing diversity.
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On Instagram today Playmobil posted an image with 9 couples for Valentine's day. Multiple couples mixed race plus a mm couple and a ff couple. No question they are aware of the issue we are discussing here, and that image at least was a great one for showing diversity.
I saw that photo on Facebook. I was actually quite impressed with it, and it makes me hopeful for more ethnic diversity in the future of Playmobil.
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Wasn't that same pic used last year?
Anyways, it's a great one!
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It was in all social media networks.
I think it is the same one they used last year. Or at least VERY similar. :)