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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
solid journalistic treatment of the evolving toy industry, but not deep, April 8, 2009
This review is from: The Real Toy Story: Inside the Ruthless Battle for America's Youngest Consumers (Hardcover)
This is a pretty good snapshot of the present toy industry. It is a quick read, very well written, and well researched, but it does not probe enough for me.
Clark writes that the toy industry has evolved from a cottage industry (to the 1950s) into the realm of mega-corporations. Once toys and games were supposed to be good play experiences that had time to enter the popular mind, he says, but now they have become fashion conscious, short-lived, and reliant on gimmicks such as tying them to film characters. They are now less about play than acquisition and even status, depend on sexual images and violence, etc. Rather than a calling to please kids, he concludes, it is about cold cash and power. Finally, because they are manufactured in China, they also take advantage of sweat shops and hence are inherently immoral.
To a degree, this picture is true. The toy industry has consolidated into a few giant publicly traded companies (Mattel and Hasbro on top). Because kids have more choice (with video games, PCs, etc.), the market is shrinking and hence has become brutally competitive. While the companies seek innovation, which is risky, they also want proven success, its opposite. Indeed, as Clark writes, the biggest hit toys break rules rather than obey them. The market has come to resemble the fashion industry, in that fads explode into popularity and then disappear quickly, but because of the need to create costly molds and marketing campaigns, are more risky in terms of investment. In addition, the power of retailers has increased pressures: they want cheaper toys (hence the reliance on Chinese manufacturers), but also guarantees they will sell - if they don't, losses can be catastrophic. Finally, the need to market toys as part of a life-style package or within a narrative (e.g. Star Wars figurines) is also costly. These trends work against the smaller producers, those whom the author believes are more innovative.
WHere I differ with the author is in his inferences and ultimately where some of his reasoning leads. Sure, there are plenty of gimmicky toys and stupid ads - any parent knows this. What I wonder about is if this is so bad, particularly in light of the fact that there are other companies that still produce very high quality play experiences - look at LEGO: after recovering from a bad period, it now occupies the top niche in imaginative toys and is in fact doing better than its biggest competitors during the 2009 recession. I also don't see what is so bad about kids getting into certain fashionable toys - it seems to me to be the worry of overly concerned baby-boomer parents. Is it worse than when I was a kid in the 1960s? Seems to me there was plenty of junk back then.
One of the things Clark particularly laments is the development of narratives connected with toys as a marketing tool. Rather than free play, he says, kids follow a story. This is an interesting phenomenon, but again I think he over-generalizes and judges too glibly. I see the stories as a starting point, but my kids don't slavishly follow them - they use the characters, but make up their own stories, missing characters from separate films. Does that damage their imaginations? There have always been mythologies, these are just new characters. Moreover, with the PC connection, they are also developing skills: to hack his Nintendo DS, my son (at 7) searched for and found cheat codes on the internet, and then discovered that the bugs that codes created would block it. It was an interesting lesson. While Clark covers some of this new area, it is more with vague disapproval and not systematic. Finally, Clark badly undercovers the electronics game industry. He mentions it, says it is bad from young kids, and that is about all he says. I wanted more than that and will have to seek it elsewhere.
In an area that I have some experience in as a reporter, Clark also lambasts the globalization of production, in particular in China. TO do so, he trots out all of the old arguments about the inhuman treatment of Chinese laborers. While I do not mean to say that abuses don't exist, I think that the picture requires far more nuance beyond a simple condemnation as you find in the book. Some companies are more conscientious than others in this arena, as I have witnessed in the apparel industry, and they try to respond to consumer criticism - if they fail, activists have every right to beat the snot out of them and damage their brands. All power to them, if you ask me! But Clark only presents only the down side and assumes corporate efforts are window dressing. It shades into an ideological critique of global capitalism that lacks both accuracy and subtlety.
All these critiques notwithstanding, this book is a good intro to some very complex issues. Recommended. It gets you to think, which means the book is a success.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing Toy Story, November 28, 2007
This review is from: The Real Toy Story: Inside the Ruthless Battle for America's Youngest Consumers (Hardcover)
The Real Toy Story: Inside the Ruthless Battle for America's Youngest Consumers by Eric Clark is a well researched investigation of the toy industry.
Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1: If It's February, It Must be Toy Fair
Chapter 2: The Inventors
Chapter 3: What Hasbro Wants
Chapter 4: Barbie Goes to War: Battle of the Dolls
Chapter 5: The (Vicious) Business of Toys
Chapter 6: War of the Aisles: The Retail Battleground
Chapter 7: Grabbing Them Young
Chapter 8: Santa's Sweatshop
Afterword
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Sources
Index
Very well constructed, this book will be an eye-opener for the toy buying public. Each chapter focuses on one primary aspect of the toy industry. But within the chapter are some excellent anecdotes. For example, the first chapter, "If It's February, It Must be Toy Fair," takes you to the New York City International Toy Fair. This is one of two toy fairs, and it is where the buyers and sellers gather. The sellers, showing off their new toys and games, and the buyers, looking for the next Beanie Baby or Trivial Pursuit. but interspersed in the chapter are stories of the consolidation of the market, inventors who have risked everything on their toy or game, and observations from hardened toy executives.
Your perspective of the toy industry is probably that they are special companies, selling things that children will play with, cuddly stuffed animals, Barbie, games that bring families together. Basically, they aren't like any other industry. After all, they sell fun! But you know what, scrape away that "happy" exterior and they are no different from any other company. Driven by the bottom line and Wall Street expectations, they are as ruthless as any other. Maybe more so, as they guard their research and development very, very closely. And what is it that they research? If you guessed the buying and play habits of children from ages 1 to 6, you are correct. As more children grow up sooner, the toy companies have to market to younger and younger children. And what are they marketing? Brand recognition, sex, violence. You may get upset with the beer companies using sex to sell beer, but that is nothing compared to the marketing of dolls. They don't call it sex, per se, but "lifestyle marketing." And how about viral marketing? The companies themselves (Mattel, Hasbro, and Disney) may not have blogs or YouTube videos, but their advertising agencies are continually searching blogs for patterns. They also spin up websites that gather key information on your children, their habits, demographics, etc. It was chilling.
And then we get to the last chapter, Santa's Sweatshop. If you want to know about the manufacturing of your child's toy, an inside look at a Chinese economic zone will give you an excellent perspective of how your toy was made, with a first person account from one of the workers. It made me disgusted with the whole process. But since most, if not all (depending on where you shop), of your consumer goods are manufactured in China, the toy industry isn't very different from any other manufacturer doing business in China. A very sobering chapter.
This is a highly recommended read.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Moo..., August 3, 2007
This review is from: The Real Toy Story: Inside the Ruthless Battle for America's Youngest Consumers (Hardcover)
Few things look as pretty when they are stripped down to the inner workings, and the toy industry is no exception. This book takes readers on a tour of the day-to-day processes behind the manufacture and marketing of the average toy, exposing some of the more gruesome aspects of the business. Although the writing itself is a little dry and the author makes his point over and over again, the subject matter is fascinating and ultimately worth the read. The information, covering everything from sweat shops to marketing products for two-year-olds, is matter of fact on one level, chilling on another. If you have ever felt like just another cash cow, or object to the idea of your children being milked, this is a book worth checking out.
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