Customer Reviews

The Real Toy Story: Inside the Ruthless Battle for America's Youngest Consumers

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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.

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.

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.

The Real Toy Story is an inside look at the toy industry, and how toys are invented, manufactured, and marketed. The book also describes the difficulties of the toy industry, and what companies do to overcome these obstacles.

The top two sellers in the toy industry are Wal-Mart and Toys "R" Us. Thirty percent of all toys sold in the U.S. are purchased at Wal-Mart, which prices their toys so low that other companies have a very hard time competing. But Wal-Mart is not making a profit on toy sales. Their strategy is to use toys as a loss leader to generate more foot traffic into the store. A loss leader is defined as a product or service sold at a substantial discount in order to generate additional sales. Does the strategy work for Wal-Mart? The company has 22 to 26 visits a year by the average family, compared with 4 to 5 at Toys "R" Us. In 2007, Wal-Mart's toy sales brought in $5 billion in revenue worldwide, and Wal-Mart`s total worldwide sales was $270 billion. It's not uncommon to see a flashing sign at a gas station advertising a low price for milk or other items in order to lure consumers into the store. While the gas station might be losing money on the sale of the milk, it gets people into the store with the hopes that higher profit margin items will be sold, such as coffee and candy. This is an example of a loss leader. Both Sony and Microsoft have sold their video game consoles, the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, at a loss and made up for it through game software and other accessories sold at a profit. Wal-Mart is wisely leveraging the appeal of low-priced toys as a way to generate more foot traffic, and in turn generate more sales of higher margin items.

Seth Goden, in his book All Marketers Are Liars, points out that great marketers focus on the attributes of a product, as much as focusing on telling a story about the product to a select group of people with a worldview that fits with that story. In turn, a successful story will appeal to that group, who will buy the product, and tell friends and others about it. In the 1980's, toy advertising was under tight guidelines established by the National Association of Broadcasters. One rule was that the use of animation in advertising was strictly prohibited. This was to protect child viewers from confusing what was real, and what was fantasy sell. Hasbro had purchased a toy idea from a Japanese inventor, which were cars and airplanes that transformed into robots. Hasbro decided to license the toy, but needed a way to market it successfully without being able to use animation in advertising. Hasbro decided the toys were going to be characters in a story. Good guys versus bad guys. Good versus evil, with each character having its own look and identity. Because comic books did not advertise on television, there were no guidelines for commercials for comic books. Hasbro decided to team up with Marvel Comics and create the Transformers comic book telling the story of the Transformers characters, complete with plots and action. The comic book discreetly served as one big advertisement for Transformers. In addition to the comic book, Hasbro created a Transformers animated show, which told the marketing story loud and clear to millions of children using the medium of television. Essentially, Hasbro circumvented the rule against using animated advertising by creating the animated show, which was basically an entertaining "program-length commercial" and became wildly popular with kids. By reading the comic books and watching the Transformers show, kids had bought into the Transformers story. In turn, when kids saw actual television commercials advertising Transformers toys, they were already immersed in the marketing story, and fully aware of what the characters represented. Kids all over the world were eager to buy the toys and tell their friends. In a stroke of pure marketing genius, Hasbro made millions of dollars from their Transformers toys by using television and comic books as marketing tools to tell a powerful story to children.

In reading about the characteristics and challenges of the toy industry, I contrasted it with the automotive industry. The automotive industry is driven by the tastes of adults, which remains relatively stable and consistent, and doesn't typically change on a whim. This makes the lifespan and production output for cars much easier to predict. Compare this with the toy industry, which is driven by the fickleness and unpredictability of children. What kids are eagerly demanding today could change next week, next month, or next year. Who can predict it? Instant gratification allows children to get sick of a toy quickly, and replace it with a new favorite in a very short period of time. This makes it very difficult to control the manufacturing output. If a company sells 10 million gizmos this year, should output be 20 million for next year? What if the latest craze takes over and wipes out sales? Companies run the risk of losing a lot of money if things don't go according to plan. Additionally, the automotive industry is a seller's market, in which manufacturers can consistently demand higher prices over time for their cars. Contrast this with the toy industry, which is saturated with so much competition, it has become a price-sensitive hyperchoice buyer's market. However, for all the challenges in the toy industry, toys have an advantage over all other consumer products. They are traditionally economy-proof: parents sacrifice and scale back on themselves before they do on their kids. Sales of toys will continue at a normal pace when economic recessions occur. The automotive industry is not economy-proof. Downturns can cause new car sales to stagger, with consumers spending on used cars as a more economical alternative during hard times.

I enjoyed reading the book. Being exposed to the inner workings of the toy industry was truly eye-opening. Children can be incredibly hard to predict, making the marketing and manufacturing of toys a very high-risk, high-reward endeavor. Toy companies can be incredibly cutthroat and competitive in searching for that next big hit, and low-cost way to bring it to market. I found it both fascinating and revealing to learn how many animated movies and television shows have a hidden agenda to exploit their characters and tell a marketing story that will appeal to children and sell toys. (E.g. Toy Story trilogy, Thundercats television show, and so many more). With today's generation of children having an endless amount of activities to choose from, places to go, and programs to watch, it's no wonder toy companies are constantly battling for a position in the impressionable mind of a child.

This is the only book you can find that reveals the inside of the toy industry.

-Definitely an eye-opener. It took some time to get to the point of the book, but author Eric Clark finally sums it up well in his short "Afterword" section: "[At one time]... we could look with confidence to this industry to provide nurture along with pleasure. Not anymore. Now, it's major object is to maximize sales and profits." (-At the expense of kids? -we might ask here.)

Like books about inside corporate banking, trolling for big oil profits, or slashing costs in auto making, Clark reveals more than the reader could imagine there was to learn about the toy business...and it's a rather uninspiring picture. The author describes the involved inventors, CEOs, retailers, marketers, manufacturers, assembly workers, suppliers, governments [especially China], adult consumers...and, of course, the children who are played like a fine fiddle by the entire toy industry in an effort to help kids decide which toys to (have mom) buy...sometimes starting earlier than age 2!

It's a little bit of a depressing read actually, given the warm and fuzzy nature of the topic: "toys." The industry, we learn, is not as innocent and honorable as we might expect/like it to be. It's something like learning about making sausage...we like the end result but are not particularly compelled to want to know about what goes into its production. It's the same with the "Real Toy Story," as we are invited into the murky depths of getting toys out to the consumers -from drawing board to Kmart counter, and some of the process does seem unreal and unfortunate.

The author did a great job of building through some rather dull descriptives about the industry to get us to a riveting chapter about how youngsters (and toddlers and their parents) are often manipulated and mentally man-handled in the name of getting them to buy toys...and in-the-end, making sky-high profits for the handful of huge companies still in the business. It's an interesting book, not a magnetic read, guaranteed to have casual reader to company honcho finish with disbelief about how toys have come to be a cut-throat, heartless, cold, calculating billions-of-dollars business. Too, Clark does a good job of letting us peek into the troublesome goings-on in a sweatshop in China, where line-workers do their toy-making jobs for literally pennies a day.

If you only want to know "toys" as simple playthings, modestly designed to entertain and to occupy kids (and adults!) for hours on end, then don't read this book! On the other hand, if you want to go inside the complex psyche of toy company execs, toy designers, and toy marketing strategists, then read away. The reader will surely never again look at Lego and Star Wars toys, Etch-a-Sketch, Barbi, Monopoly (and the rest) in the same way. Four stars for an informative, useful effort.

This is almost a fun book. It goes into the magic behind all the toys you've enjoyed personally or given to your kids or grandchildren. And, it will intrigue anybody who's ever wrangled with a Rubik's Cube, hugged a Gund Bear or become rich speculating in Mattel shares way back when Barbie was a girl. But, after the fun part, the book hits you in the gut. There's a nasty side to the toy business and author Eric Clark lays it out clearly as he describes child laborers who make toys in Third World sweat shops, particularly in China and Mexico. We recommend this book to anyone who buys toys for children, or to those who want to know about child labor and address its abuses. With its illuminating examination of invention, manufacture and retailing in the toy industry, this is a valuable resource.

I found this book both fascinating and intriguing....... I plan to give the book as gifts. This is a must read for anyone who buys toys! I thoroughly enjoyed it.