It started with a construction worker, knight and Native American. Today there are around 3.8 billion Playmobil figures. And whole theme worlds to go with it. However, the success story of the little plastic people from the Franconian town of Zirndorf has recently started to crack.
Of course that’s unthinkable today and would be a scandal, as it actually was back then, but somehow no one noticed. Today you look at this old packaging and, yes, you can laugh too. Because back in 1974, at the Toy Fair in Nuremberg, it was the premiere, the packaging was piling up and the toy dealers, almost all of them male, were pushing their way through the aisles.
There was the first Playmobil set with three figures, and to this day one could still puzzle over what worldview the Playmobil inventors actually had with an ensemble of road construction workers, knights and, as it was called back then: Indians. In any case, it wasn’t the “Village People”, a very funny and successful gay singing gang (“YMCA”) with almost identical professional profiles; they only came into being three years later.
The first Playmobil figure had a penchant for alcohol