Looking Back on "The Toys That Made Us"

I've been cleaning out my Netflix queue, and came upon this documentary series about nostalgic toy lines. Twelve hour-long episodes have been produced so far, covering toys that have made an outsized cultural impact, like LEGO or Transformers. Action figures are of special interest, with episodes devoted to "Star Wars," "Star Trek," "Power Rangers," and WWF/WWE toys. I've seen programs like this before, airing in odd hours on the Discovery or Travel Channels. "The Toys That Made Us," however, benefits from going a little more in depth and leaning heavily on interviews with the creative talent involved.

I instantly became very absorbed by the show, because it answered so many questions I had about certain pieces of '80s and '90s kid culture that I didn't realize I still had. "Transformers," for instance, was huge when I was young. I knew the toys originated in Japan. I knew that there had been a popular cartoon and movie. However, "The Toys That Made Us" cleared up that Hasbro's original '80s toy line had been licensed and rebranded from two existing Japanese toy lines, and all of the franchise's beloved characters and mythology were dreamed up by a couple of Marvel comics writers. The famous musical cues and taglines had originated from the ad campaign for the toys before being incorporated into the 1984 cartoon. Oh, and the reason why I never seem to recall Megatron actually transforming into anything is because he was based on a toy that transformed into a replica Walther P-38 pistol.

For the first time, I was seeing the executives and artists and marketing people who had been working behind the scenes, who rebranded the '60s G.I. Joe toy into the beloved action figure line in the '80s, or who created Hello Kitty because their company was tired of paying licensing fees for the "Peanuts" characters. The episode devoted to "Star Wars" toys is the first out of the gate, because many of the subsequent installments are about other toy lines trying to copy or ride the coattails of their success. I suspect that some viewers might come away disillusioned when they learn that so many beloved toys were made by cobbling together bits and pieces of pre-existing ones, and some cutthroat business decisions drove certain creative decisions - witness the lovely old ladies who used to work on Barbie, cackling over how they took down Jem and the Bratz dolls.

And it was nice learning a little more about the companies behind the toys - Kenner, Mattel, Hasbro, Playmates, and all the rest. Most of the episodes are built around your standard mini-history lessons and talking head interviews, but since the series is mostly about older toys, there are significant ups and downs with even the most successful franchises. LEGO, for instance, nearly went bankrupt in the early 2000s because they didn't anticipate how cyclical their business was becoming. There's usually a nice spin put on toy lines like "Masters of the Universe" going totally kaput in the end, but there's also a refreshing honesty to how the series views the toys. Some fans participate in the show, but they aren't the main focus here. Likewise, the companies aren't allowed to sugarcoat the truth the way you see in "official" accounts like the recent LEGO documentary.

I don't much care for some of the gimmicks that "The Toys That Made Us" uses. The narration and commentary rife with dad jokes can get grating at times, and the low-budget re-enactors and terrible theme music do absolutely nothing for me. However, the show is well researched and informative. The Hello Kitty episode spends a lot of time explaining the concept of "kawaii," and tying Kitty's popularity to Japanese idol culture and celebrity kitsch. The Barbie episode finally gives us a reasonable explanation for the doll's impossible proportions - she was designed that way to make her clothes look better on her. There are some episodes where I wish the series had spent more time talking about the toys themselves rather than all the marketing and media madness related to them, but not many.

Finally, I appreciate that "The Toys That Made Us" is so blunt about the relationship between toys and media and marketing efforts. I find it fascinating that some of the most popular kids' series of the '80s, especially for boys, came directly out of advertising campaigns for action figures - "Transformers," "He-Man," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," and "G.I. Joe." I confess that I never connected much to any of these, probably by design, but at least now I've found a way to decode and kind of understand what makes them tick.

---