Playmobil Fab

The first exhibition devoted to the famous German line of toys underscores their fabrication.

Transformed into a factory, the mudac galleries reveal how this 3-inch figurine conquered the world, colonizing several generations of children's rooms. Featuring over 5000 figurines, the show draws a detailed timeline from the initial concept for the toy and its manufacture since its introduction in 1974. In doing so, it showcases the spontaneously submitted children's drawings received by the firm, as well as the various phases launched by the engineering and design departments, up until the final product's actual creation and packaging. The presentation underscores the toys' highly inventive and clever design lines, and the graphic impact of both the object and its wrapping. A greenhouse lined with myriads of Playmobil figurines will afford younger visitors a playroom in which to let loose their imagination.

Introduced in 1974, the first Playmobil figurine revolutionized the toy world. Until then, toy figures—made primarily of lead, paper, painted aluminum and plastic—tended to be frozen into a single stance or motion, their feet molded to the base that kept them upright. Soldiers, cowboys, Native Americans, football and rugby players, or cyclists all embodied a basically warring or sportsdominated world. Children would organize their armies or teams to reenact wars and matches, thus reverting to key moments in history.

The Playmobil factory in Dietenhofen, Germany. Photo © Mattieu Gafsou

By inventing a new figurine, Hans Beck also invented a new way of playing. The background here is the oil crisis of the time, which forced firms such as the German plastic toy and hobby firm geobra Brandstätter, for which Beck designed, to come up with smaller-sized and less expensive objects. Beck 's unprecedented idea was to bring out a small 3-inch figurine fitting into a child's hand, with articulated arms and legs and accompanied by sets of accessories. Their face illuminated by a slight smile and a round-eyed gaze, these figurines took off immediately with all children, enabling them for the first time to make up their own role-playing. Indeed, Beck himself explained that the figures were meant to offer an unending range of possibilities, with deliberately neutral facial expressions so that children could choose and make up the various figurines' character and mood… These come alive in every child's hand; they can be changed around to their heart's desire. Thanks to their fantastic power of imagination and the variety of accessories at their disposal, children can thus create an infinite spectrum of situations.

Playmobil mould, Dietenhofen, Germany Photo © Mattieu Gafsou

The first play sets made available to the children were divided into three main themes: construction workers, Native Americans and knights. These were colored red, yellow, green, blue or white, and assigned recognizable attributes in the form of caps, ladders, shovels, brooms and rakes for the workers; horses, feather headdress, spears and bracelets for the Native Americans; and swords, capes and crowns for the knights. Over the years, they became equipped with a growing number of further attributes.

By inventing a new figurine, Hans Beck also invented a new way of playing.

Poster of the exhbition <i>30 Jahre Playmobil, Entdecke die Welt</i>, 2003. © Playmobil — Poster of the exhbition *30 Jahre Playmobil, Entdecke die Welt*, 2003. © Playmobil

Every Playmobil set receives a great deal of close attention, with much of the research work relying for example on children's drawings sent in on a daily basis. These provide Playmobil with a vision of the world through children's eyes, inspiring numerous new accessories and themes. To date, 3,200 types of different figures have come into being; their production output comes to over 2.4 billion figures, making Playmobil one of today's largest European toy manufacturers.

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