Playtime figured out

Over almost 40 years Playmobil has developed a huge following, but few of its fans know their favourite toy comes from Germany, writes DEREK SCALLY

A small, vocal minority in Ireland believe the Germans are toying with us in the euro crisis. Wrong: they’ve been toying with us for years.

It’s almost four decades since the first Playmobil figures were sent out into the world. Since then the plastic army has ballooned to 2.5 billion smiling figures, called Klickys, from pirates to princesses, engineers to Egyptologists. But few of its millions of fans know that their favourite toy comes from Germany.

Before I go on, full disclosure: I come from a Lego household. The coloured blocks were my childhood toy of choice, the daily squabbles with siblings over how best to build the yellow Lego house a cherished memory.

But, as with Liverpool and Manchester United, or Windows and Mac, every Lego lover knows there are those who will always prefer Playmobil. Lego says its blocks encourage spatial thinking; Playmobil says its themed plastic toys are an oasis of imaginative play in a distracting electronic world. But while Lego wears its Danish design badge with pride, few know that Playmobil is as German as the Audi.

Its hometown is Zirndorf in the Franconia region of northern Bavaria, not far from Nuremberg. For almost 40 years Playmobil has been designed and marketed from here by the Brandstätter group, a family-owned company dating back to 1876.

The company has manufactured toys since the 1920s: children’s play shops complete with miniature accessories made from tin were an early hit. Soon after he joined the company in 1954, Horst Brandstätter, now 79, began exploring the post-war possibilities offered by plastics for the toy industry. He was one of the first to bring the hula hoop craze to Europe; children’s sit-on tractors made from hollow moulded plastic soon followed.

When the 1973 oil crisis caused the price of plastic to rocket, the company’s chief designer, Hans Beck, presented an idea for small, high-value plastic toys: moveable figures that fit into a child’s hand and come equipped with accessories. Brandstätter embraced the idea of a toy range offering maximum play possibilities – and revenue – for minimum plastic use. Playmobil premiered in 1974.

Within a year, the company had a hit on its hands and it has kept growing since, pumping out a seemingly inexhaustible range of figures and scenarios. The plastic farmyards and houses now contribute the lion’s share of the Brandstätter group’s annual turnover of €564 million.

As the company grew it opened facilities in Malta, Spain and the Czech Republic, but the main manufacturing base remains in Franconia. “Mr Brandstätter is very loyal to his home,” says spokeswoman Lisa Stadi of the company’s billionaire owner.

“And being based in Europe rather than outsourcing production to Asia means we have control over quality and can react quickly to sales trends.”

Though the company is now run by a professional management team, Brandstätter is still actively involved in decisions. “I won’t let anyone take my toys from me,” he joked last year.

Near Zirndorf is the town of Dietenhofen and the Playmobil factory: a collection of white, boxy buildings bearing the company name and the familiar face of two dot eyes, a wavy fringe and a smiling mouth. Across the road is another Brandstätter company, Lechuza, which makes stylish, self-watering flower pots.

Today we’re joining a group of young schoolchildren, invited to see where the magic happens. First stop: tall outdoor silos containing the base material of all Playmobil products: a rough granulate. “But my father says Playmobil figures are made out of plastic,” pipes up a blonde boy.

“Yes that’s true,” says Stadi, “but the plastic comes from this granulate.”

The granulate is funnelled into a nearby moulding factory. Once heated into a malleable mass the plastic is pumped into one of over 400 caged machines containing its own removable mould. Each machine glides closed, then opens to reveal an individual plastic piece. A long white robot arm reaches in to pluck the plastic piece out and drop it on to a conveyor belt. The disembodied arms are not quite Oompa Loompas, but the children are fascinated nonetheless as beige meerkat after another drops into a box. Better yet: they’re all allowed to pick one each for keeps – still warm.

“People often wonder why we’re so open, allowing journalists in to look at our production and take photographs,” says Stadi. “We are happy to show the many little steps necessary to produce a high quality toy system like Playmobil. Making a copy of equal quality is hardly possible, as our products are so complex and our inventory of moulds is so huge.”

In 2011 alone 97 new products were introduced requiring 1,000 new moulds. While the first hall, with concrete floors and metal roof beams, is impersonal and largely automated, the neighbouring hall is bustling with people – and filled with a pong of solvents. Here, workers wearing earplugs sit at ultrasonic fusing machines (which look far less futuristic than they sound) and weld together elephant torsos, one at a time. It is this slow, methodical work – in the heart of Germany, not some Far East sweatshop – that gives Playmobil its distinctive detail, and premium price.

Across the hall, the plastic toys needing a lick of colour are subjected to a special “tampon print”. The tampon is not what you think, but a flexible mould like a silicone baking form that presses dye on to the plastic. Then the toys, now in boxes, vanish into a hole in the ground and whizz through an automated underground network to a massive storage hall.

There is space for 77,000 pallets on 14 levels, and all boxes are stored by an automated “chaos” system. The central computer chooses the most efficient slot for each new arrival and only it knows where everything is. If the computer goes down, Christmas is cancelled.

In the final hall, workers sit at conveyor belts packing boxes of princess castles and pirate ships – two big Playmobil sellers. As well as the plastic structures all boxes contain bags filled with small plastic pieces – toy swords, mirrors, toothpaste.

As we exit, oversized Klicky figures smile down at us from wall perches; towers of brown boxes bearing Playmobil faces smile down at us too. Is it the innocent smile of playtime or the smile of a clever company conquering the world, one piece of plastic at a time? Perhaps it’s both.

Though it doesn’t advertise its heritage, it’s hard to ignore on this visit that Playmobil is a supremely German company. Hanging on the factory walls are motivational messages with a Teutonic tone: “Everyone is responsible for quality”; “A clean workplace creates satisfaction”; “Efficiency is the key to success.” Still, the employees seem happy enough and the products show a remarkable attention to detail and quality. Watching the care that goes into the process, it’s little wonder Playmobil has a huge, devoted following.

At the Playmobil headquarters, back in nearby Zirndorf, a development team of 66 spend their time deciding what your children will be playing with next year. Everything is a potential Playmobil product, though there is a rule to avoid violence and horror. Besides the perennial favourites of pirates, knights and western sets, likely top sellers this Christmas will be the pony riding school, the holiday hotel and a new “Top Agents” espionage range. Another innovation: bags of ready-to-assemble Klickys including, to fans’ excitement, the first pregnant Playmobil figure.

Ah yes: the fans. No global brand these days is complete without its obsessives. In their parallel online universe, collectors debate the merits of more than 25,000 listed Playmobil products.

On YouTube, fans engage in flights of fancy with Playmobil tribute films, from Star Wars to Gladiator. There is a lucrative market, too, in Playmobil collectibles – Albrecht Dürer, anyone?

Those who would like to pay pilgrimage to Playmobil will enjoy the FunPark beside the headquarters in Zirndorf. Walk through the oversized Playmobil castle facade and you’re transported into a world of outsized pirate ships, farmhouses, animals and figures – all in the Playmobil aesthetic.

The best time of year to visit is summer, when all the attractions are open, though the smaller indoor adventure playground and shop are open year-round.

Back at the factory, the tour is winding up. The children are tired but happy, each examining their morning’s haul: a bag of free Playmobil goodies, a beige meerkat and a small dog. Even the children’s minder is impressed. “My husband played with Playmobil 30 years ago,” she sighs, adding in nostalgic satisfaction, “the figures have changed and yet stayed the same.”