Playmobil may never have been able to step out of Lego’s shadow, but Brandstaetter had a goldmine on his hands.
An Indian, a builder and a prince make their first appearance at the Nuremberg Toy Fair.
The 7.5 cm plastic people are not impressive, but in the coming years, children from all over the world will love them, making their creator a billionaire.
In fact, the history of Playmobil begins much earlier.
In 1876, a company was founded in Bavaria that manufactures elaborate locks and fittings for coffins. As the years pass, the company passes from generation to generation and gradually expands, making metal piggy banks, telephones and cash registers, which it sells across Europe.
Horst Brandstaetter was only 19 years old in 1952 when he joined the family business, which at the time was “run” by his two uncles. A restless spirit, he pushes the aging business to enter new markets.
He became a regular shareholder at the age of 21 and eventually took control of the company, which he ran for the next six decades.
During this time, he always makes sure to adapt to the conditions and requirements of the time. Like many of the German entrepreneurs of this generation, he takes ideas from America and transfers them to his country, where an economic miracle is being built after the war.
Somehow, in the 1950s he made a shift from the metal toys he had been making until then to plastic ones. In 1958, the company brings the hula hoop to Europe.
But in the oil crisis of the 1970s, plastic is expensive and hard to find, so Brandstaetter asks his lead designer, Hans Beck, to make toys that don’t need much of it.
Together, they create Playmobil as we know it to this day. The plastic smiley faces were designed to provide “the maximum play value possible with the minimum amount of plastic.”
Beck made the figures in 1:24 scale so they fit easily in children’s hands. “I put the little figures in their hands without saying the slightest thing about what they were. And they accepted them immediately. They made up little stories about them. They never got bored playing with them,” Beck would say years later, in an interview.
The designer used to observe children’s drawings a lot and draw inspiration from them.
As in children’s drawings, where the faces usually have eyes and mouths but no noses, so too in Playmobil, the noses are missing.
Playmobil may never have been able to step out of Lego’s shadow, but Brandstaetter had a goldmine on his hands.
“Their success at the time saved us from bankruptcy,” the businessman would later admit.
To date, the company has made more than 3 billion Playmobils and is a typical example of the so-called Mittelständler, the small and medium-sized family businesses that, holding up the bar of engineering and design, are considered the backbone of the German economy.
Brandstaetter himself handed over the reins of Playmobil in 2000, but continued to go to the company’s offices every day until his death in June 2015 at the age of 81.
Before his death, the American magazine Forbes estimated his personal fortune at 1.2 billion dollars.
moneyreview.gr
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I am Frederick Tuttle, who works in 247 News Agency as an author and mostly cover entertainment news. I have worked in this industry for 10 years and have gained a lot of experience. I am a very hard worker and always strive to get the best out of my work. I am also very passionate about my work and always try to keep up with the latest news and trends.
