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.

Reading through Eric Clark's "The Real Toy Story" one can't help wondering if whatever statutes refer to making false claims about a product apply to books? Sub-titled "Inside the ruthless battle for Britain's youngest consumers" almost the entire focus of the book is on the American experience. As an investigative journalist perhaps Clark should be investigating himself?

The book itself doesn't live up to its billing even with regard to the American scene. Much of the earlier part of the book is a history of the toy and game industry, fill of fascinating but ultimately trivial facts (including the story of trivial pursuit), with only tangential nods towards the ostensible purpose of the book. A number of the later chapters deal with the more substantial issues of how toys are marketed to children, the use of children as leverage into their parents pockets, the conditions of those who manufacture the toys abroad, the sexualisation of children (in particular girls), and the marketing of violent toys (in particular for boys). None of these chapters deals with the issues with any great depth.

In comparison with other writers who have looked at these issues in relation to fast food (Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation: What the All-American Meal is Doing to the World), or Naomi Klein's seminal No Logo this book appears weak and flimsy, and has more than a whiff of bandwagon jumper about it. As a text that would be ideal for a young adult, or older child, it probably has far more going for it.

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.