Good to hear it's sorted.
My understanding is that the £135 limit is a bit ambiguous. For goods below the threshold they can avoid import tariffs, but the sup
plier has to collect VAT at UK rate and send it on to HMRC - VAT is technically paid by the consumer with the retailer just acting as the collection agent for the government.
For Playmobil this probably isn't too difficult, because they will already have the paperwork in place, but for smaller companies that don't and don't bother to do it the VAT still has to be paid at the point of delivery.
I'll be interested to see if they stick a warning on the UK site.
I'm having that exact problem with my website. The UK wants us to collect VAT. France, Germany, and several other EU countries want us to pay for importing packaging materials into their country. I get maybe a dozen EU and UK orders per year on the website, and I can't afford hundreds of euros for all these administrative costs.
I also sell on a platform that at least handles UK VAT (well, they ought to considering the fees they get from us), but changing definitions of nexus are killing micro businesses. We're having the same issues within the US, but at least states are using thresholds (although I'm giving the side eye to South Dakota who started this, in the US anyway).