WOW PM is now LOSING money?!? Holy cow... The only silver lining I see is in the example of Lego -- they came right to the brink of bankruptcy before they made the necessary changes to save the company. Whether PM can do the same, only the future knows.
On a side note, for a country as highly regarded as Germany is in the field of manufacturing, they sure have a hard time producing decent management talent. The degradation of the company's image and profits is entirely the fault of top management, period.
Many German businesses are family owned and though it is not exactly so in this there is an old British Victorian in relation to such firms "Clogs to clogs in three generations", meaning the first generation start the business and build sound foundations, the second generation build on these and expand the business successfully while the third generation run the business down. Broadly speaking, this seems to be what has happened with Playmobil, not in terms of family generations but in terms of management generations.