The Toys That Made Us - Netflix documentary series 1 1

[01TheDude]

Thoroughly enjoyed this series--- so far I have seen 4 episodes.

Episode 1 is all about Star Wars toys

2: Barbie

3: He-Man - Masters of the Universe

4: GI-Joe

really well done-- check it out.

imdb link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt7053920/?ref_=nv_sr_1

 

More upcoming-

5: not sure what this one is about

6: Hello Kitty

7:  Transformers

8: Star Trek

 

I never really knew much about He-Man et al so that was very informative and now I understand why so many get excited about them. My GI Joe knowledge was limited to the full sized ones fromt he 1960s but it was very interesting how they adapted to the market after the success of the Star Wars figures. Also interesting is how some of the stuff like TV shows and using comics came about in some cases haphazardly.

Edited December 26, 2017 by 01TheDude

[01TheDude]

LEGO might be the next one (episode 5). Supposed to be 9 episodes in the first season.

This show was just released on Dec 22 on Netflix

[AnthonyTheAbyss]

Everybody always remembers G.I. Joe, Transformers, Masters Of The Universe, Voltron, Thundercats, etc.  But how about...

- Inhumanoids

- Silverhawks

- Stompers

- Shrinky Dinks

- Zoids

 

The 80's is the greatest toy generation.

[followtheleader]

8 minutes ago, AnthonyTheAbyss said:

Everybody always remembers G.I. Joe, Transformers, Masters Of The Universe, Voltron, Thundercats, etc.  But how about...

- Inhumanoids

- Silverhawks

- Stompers

- Shrinky Dinks

- Zoids

 

The 80's is the greatest toy generation.

Thanks for this news.  I'm pretty stoked to watch it!

Patrick

[Chip Cataldo]

 Hello Kitty should not be on that list. How dumb. 

[bane]

This was pretty good, I went straight to The He-Man episode, I was 4 years old when I had the first toy. Even as a kid I was utterly disappointed by the Lundgren movie.

[Anfield Fox]

Didn't watch the Barbie but enjoyed the rest, especially Star Wars and G.I. Joe. Look forward to the Transformers episode.

Need an episode on Marvel and DC toys.

Edited December 26, 2017 by Anfield Fox

[godzilla43]

He-man was pretty good. GI Joe was okay. Star Wars was just bad. Hasbro probably was afraid to say anything bad to make Disney angry. That episode also had most annoying stuff with narrator, commentators etc. Did not watch Barbie. 

Strange if there is no episode of Turtles.

Edited December 26, 2017 by godzilla43

[Ares]

I wonder who at Kenner/Hasbro said.... don't bother with the cheque this year.

[jhutton2]

Thanks for the recommendation!  Part way through the first episode on Star Wars, exceptionally well done with lots of great interviews and research, not the typical fluff that usually fills these shows.

[comix4fun]

1 hour ago, Ares said:

I wonder who at Kenner/Hasbro said.... don't bother with the cheque this year.

My money is on “okay Kenner accounting department , Habro just bought us and they have an accounting department already...you’re all fired..” and the guy in charge of cutting that check walked out the door without giving it a second thought. 

[comix4fun]

10 hours ago, AnthonyTheAbyss said:

Everybody always remembers G.I. Joe, Transformers, Masters Of The Universe, Voltron, Thundercats, etc.  But how about...

- Inhumanoids

- Silverhawks

- Stompers

- Shrinky Dinks

- Zoids

 

The 80's is the greatest toy generation.

Oh stompers. The year those hit big an uncle of mine, who did distribution and logistics for toy retailers gave me a full case of 36 stompers for Christmas. I torture tested every last one of them. 

[comicwiz]

Watched the three epsidoes, sorry but I couldn't sit through the first few minutes of Barbie so that was the only one I didn't watch.

The one thing that I wished they had elaborated on was how FOX ended-up getting a cut of the original deal with Kenner.

It has always been touted that Lucas walked away with licensing/merchandising rights in exchange for giving full movie rights to FOX. It has also been touted as a game changer in Hollywood, as Alan Ladd himself admitted that they saw no potential in merchandising up until that point, so giving Lucas full licensing/merchandising rights, even though Star Wars was deemed a huge risk by everyone except Ladd, was not really seen as giving away anything of value.

At one point, Jim Swearingen explains how they pitched the concept and they were waiting on money. Which to me sounds like FOX somehow got pulled into the deal for fronting the money, and that's why FOX got half of the nickel from every sale?? If anyone knows the specifics, I'd love to hear about it as the show could have done a better job explaining this.

I'm not sure I've ever heard/read this side of the story completely - again, I've always read or known Lucas had full merchandising rights, but according to this Netflix show, they seemed to have been making as much as Lucas from the Kenner deal. I can't think of any other way that Lucas allowed FOX into that deal, except if he couldn't scrape up the money himself to get the wheels in motion for Kenner to begin production.

It also sounds a lot like the sweatheart deal Marvel got, as LFL fronted the money for the first 5 issues, with Marvel taking all profits, but after that, LFL was taking a cut from every issue. Not sure how the Kenner deal worked itself out after Star Wars, but I do know Lucas hated the deal. So much that he allegedly spoke very badly about FOX/Marc Pevers, calling the deal a “stupid decision,” which had lost him “tens of millions.”  Pevers ended-up suing Lucas in a libel case (and won from what I've read) for suggesting it was FOX's fault when LFL had to sign the deal as well.

Hearing Hasbro let the original deal lapse over a $10K yearly commitment to keep the deal alive was madness. But in comparison, nowhere as bad as the GI Joe deal that Stan Weston took when he accepted the one time payment of $100,000 to hand over GI Joe to the Hassenfeld brothers (i.e. Hasbro).

Edited December 26, 2017 by comicwiz

[01TheDude]

I see lots of you guys skipping the Barbie episode. I would say give it a chance.

Initially I was planning on doing the same but it was worth watching (to be honest, I was thinking of skipping He-Man too-- as I never was into that toy). Barbie led to GI-Joe which sort of gave us Star Wars that directly led to He-Man. Also-- there is some cross over information that you might find interesting. Just finding out that the doll they modeled the original from (a tiny European sex doll) was eye opening. And that the guy who invented the doll itself made a ton of money because they made a bad decision about giving him a percentage of the sales on anything he came up with- including Barbie. There was also some shenanigans by the Barbie founder which led to her demise with the company. You don't have to like the doll to enjoy this type of behind the scenes information imo.

Overall-- it is cool to see the people who developed these toys give their honest takes on what was going on and how things happened. A sales meeting with one toy store led to one guy lying about creating comics for the toy. The next meeting, he lies about the two movies to support the toy-- and both turn out to be big hits when NOTHING existed to start with-- not even a real story line.

Edited December 26, 2017 by 01TheDude

[Red84]

11 hours ago, godzilla43 said:

He-man was pretty good. GI Joe was okay. Star Wars was just bad. Hasbro probably was afraid to say anything bad to make Disney angry. That episode also had most annoying stuff with narrator, commentators etc. Did not watch Barbie. 

Strange if there is no episode of Turtles.

Turtles was my generation's toy. 

I remember building my own sewer playset out of a shoebox for them to live in.

[ComicConnoisseur]

I particulary liked the  Masters of the Universe episode. Great planning on them to market that series/figures.

[godzilla43]

My brother did get the TMNT sewer but I got NES   I would liked if these episodes would have gone little more dept about the creation,finance etc. like in he-man episode they tell that 1986 he-man sold 400 million and next year 7 million which is not explained at all.  Only reason that I can think is that they just did not have any he-man toys to sell. 

Edited December 26, 2017 by godzilla43

[comix4fun]

12 minutes ago, godzilla43 said:

My brother did get the TMNT sewer but I got NES   I would liked if these episodes would have gone little more dept about the creation,finance etc. like in he-man episode they tell that 1986 he-man sold 400 million and next year 7 million which is not explained at all.  Only reason that I can think is that they just did not have any he-man toys to sell. 

They did try to explain it a few ways. There was a brilliant little bit about how all the assortments and pegs were filled with the supporting characters but no He-Man or Skeleton and when they contacted inventory control to send more product they would send even more of the supporting characters and it really impaired getting new kids to buy in because they couldn't get the main characters. That led to heavy discounting which led to the perception of a failing brand which would up being true.

They didn't mention it on the show, but if you add to that there were no new episodes of the TV show after 1985...it was sold into syndication and rerun repeatedly....you were losing kids who you started with as they grew older and grew tired of the same episodes over and over again...and you weren't getting new kids because of the supply, inventory problem they mentioned. 

[godzilla43]

Yeah, but those things would add up to much more steady decline in sales. In 86-87 masters of the universe toys were still selling good in Europe so maybe that 7 million is not in 1987. Like 7 million is under 2% of 400 million so like if today something that would be that popular would drop to nothing they must have advertise it like buy this and support ISIS.

[comix4fun]

8 minutes ago, godzilla43 said:

Yeah, but those things would add up to much more steady decline in sales. In 86-87 masters of the universe toys were still selling good in Europe so maybe that 7 million is not in 1987. Like 7 million is under 2% of 400 million so like if today something that would be that popular would drop to nothing they must have advertise it like buy this and support ISIS.

Yeah, that's a pretty crazy drop. It had to be more than just sales. 

If I had to guess, from having friends in the retail toy and video game business it might be a combination of dropping sales and MASSIVE retailer returns for at least part of that. 
There was probably licensing contracts that were tied to new episodes of the TV show as well. Licensing money was probably more than the toy sales figures at one point. 

So perhaps it was a net income figure and when retailers returned all the excess unsold product and they weren't getting the same money from licensing. 

Would be interesting to see everything that went into it.