The period 1870/1880 to1914 saw a more widespread change with the increase in literacy and the growth of newspaper production and circulation and the realisation by newspaper publishers and by governments that through the Press you could manipulate and even create public opinion to your advantage, either by what you allowed to be published or what you prevented being published, while from the 1920s the growth of the radio added another dimension for creating, altering and controlling public opinion.
The big difference nowadays with the internet is that the influencing and creation of public opinion is less open to control, whether by governments or organisations seeking to maintain standards or by the companies or organisations providing the means to disseminate information. Plus, the old idea that if you read it in the newspapers it must be true has been overtaken that if it's on the internet it must be true.
Points taken, but by the same token your suggestion that the current period resembles the 30s also doesn't hold water. In the 30s, Europe was 1) suffering a major economic depression, 2) experiencing the aftermath of the collapse of much of the political system of central and eastern Europe (German and Austrohungarian empires, Russian revolution), and 3) burdened with conflicts unresolved or exacerbated by the peace of Versailles - just to name three major differences. The populations of Germany and Italy, among others, were prepared to try radical new approaches, and those countries soon began to agitate for territorial expansion by military means.
None of this is true today. The European-wide political order is mostly stable (Brexit notwithstanding), the economy, while not the most robust is definitely not in depression, and there are few territorial disputes among European states, and no drive for expansion - not to mention the fact that few European states have militaries that could even seriously contest such disputes. On the contrary, the one issue that is motivating the populist right parties today is immigration and declining native demographics - conditions that did not obtain to any degree in the 30s and that are producing very different responses than those times did.
There's a saying about "fighting the last war", and I think the tendency to see current times as the 30s might be an example of that, because everyone knows what SHOULD have been done in the 30s, whereas nobody really knows what the solutions are now.
To bring it back to PM somewhat, I was thinking about Hadoque's comments about the loss of more historically accurate medieval sets and continued rise of the X-TREEM style, with "power gems" now seemingly
de rigueur in every new theme. I thought not only of the loss of the medieval theme as an modern expression of a specific culture (central European middle ages), but of all Playmobil from 1974 up until the Changes began as itself an expression of contemporary European culture. The early sets especially are excellent examples of the stylised, modular, futuristic sort of design that was very popular at the time they were introduced. As they became more detailed they still kept this very clean look, and the themes were generally kept to ones that had resonance for Europeans - Western sets for example are a sort of cartoony, Tin Tin style view of the American West, with accoutrements from different tribes all jumbled together. As has been pointed out, early PM was a
system, and sets even from different themes still formed together a larger aesthetic whole.
With these new X-TREEM sets, and things like Ghostbusters and HTTYD and the Asian ninja theme (RIP), PM seems to me to be moving away from what made them distinct, both in design - items are becoming more elaborately detailed, the basic klicky face and form are being altered - and in theme, as the new themes often have no connection to European culture and indeed are sometimes Hollywood media properties. There's more of a sense of things clashing. So Hadoque's comments expanded for me into a larger sense of loss, of the passing of an era.
This even as actual historical and cultural klickies like Luther and the Greek gods are snapped up ravenously by adult collectors.
All that being said, I am looking forward to better pictures of the Roman sets from the movie line!
