Don’t Toy with Me

The Toys That Made Us – We’d started watching this Netflix series some time ago, back when it only had two seasons, but the third one premiered before we’d finished the other two. Each season has four episodes, so there are currently a total of twelve, each one focusing on a specific kind of toy: Star Wars, Barbie, He-Man, G.I. Joe, Star Trek, Transformers, Lego, Hello Kitty, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, My Little Pony, and professional wrestling. As you can see, the focus is more on products with a strong brand identity and media presence than on more generic ones. And while some of these lines have been around for a long time, many of them were at the height of their popularity in the 80s or 90s, so it’s not surprising that the creator, Brian Volk-Weiss, was born in 1976. It’s definitely nostalgic, although I never really had most of the popular sorts of toys growing up. My brother did have several Ninja Turtles figures, and watched a copy of the animated Transformers movie that our mom bought from a yard sale a bunch of times.

Beth started getting into Sanrio in her adult life, although she prefers several other characters to Hello Kitty. It makes sense to me, as I often prefer to focus on the lesser known characters in a franchise over the star.

The show has sort of a snarky take on the documentary format, often playing quotes out of context to make a joke (although, to be fair, this is usually AFTER they’ve been played IN context). It can be entertaining, although I also think the material was interesting enough that it didn’t necessarily need those parts. The narrator is Donald Ian Black, presumably no relation to Michael. The show goes into the inspiration for and history of the sort of toy, including media generated to promote them, featuring interview clips from many of the people involved. It also demonstrates how cutthroat and competitive the toy industry can be, but that’s no surprise. The Star Trek one was a bit of a departure from the usual format, as it was a license that moved between several companies, and the toys were never really the huge success most of these were. Some trivia I already knew, like how Transformers and Power Rangers were both Japanese products that were adapted into a different format for American consumption and how people actually bought empty boxes for Star Wars toys, but it was interesting to learn more details.

I learned that the creator of Hello Kitty bought the Japanese license for Peanuts characters but tired of paying royalties to Charles Schulz. The weird thing about that is that, when Sanrio stores were a thing (they had one in Times Square and one in the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania), they sold some Peanuts merchandise. There was some consternation in that episode about how an early anime gave Hello Kitty a mouth. I guess I just assumed it only showed up when she needed it. I recently read that Charles Schulz never really intended to Charlie Brown to be bald, either. I’d also wondered about My Pretty Pony, which I figured must have been what My Little Pony was called in another country, but was actually the predecessor, bigger in size, more realistic in color, and marketed to toddlers.

I have little familiarity with MLP, but I appreciated that the woman who started the Friendship Is Magic animated series grew up as a fan. The Brony thing seems like kind of a mixed bag, because I think it’s great that grown men being fans of cute things has been normalized at least somewhat, but I’ve also heard that some of them try to bring their toxic masculinity into their takes on a kids’ show. Beth has been wanting to show me the original MLP movie, which she saw at the theater with her mom back in the day, but it’s not on Netflix. That Sea Ponies song is pretty catchy, though.