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'Real Toy Story' Reveals Dark Side of Toy Industry

By Michelle Archer, USA TODAY
              
(Jan. 29) - Making and selling toys isn't exactly fun and games.

In fact, The Real Toy Story paints the industry as a shiny apple that is practically rotten to the core.

And if that apple were a toy, a company would make it out of plastic in a Chinese sweatshop for 45 cents, tie it in with a movie or TV show, sell it for $9.99 at Wal-Mart and hope that the kid who wound up with it would nag his parents to buy the rest of the line.

It's not that author Eric Clark has anything against toys. Far from it: The London journalist and father of three opens The Real Toy Story waxing poetically about how toys inspire love and help children develop intellectually, physically, emotionally and socially.

He fondly recollects the slither of a Slinky, the smell of Crayola crayons and the feel of Play-Doh.

What he laments, however, is the evolution, or perhaps devolution, of the industry that puts the toys in the hands of the most innocent and fragile consumers of all.

Market conditions have conspired to make the toy business cutthroat and vicious, Clark writes.

Though the U.S. market alone is huge - Americans spend $21 billion a year on toys, he says - in recent years, there has been no growth, leaving toy companies to fight tooth and nail for their slice of the pie and cannibalize their own market when they have a new hit.

Industry consolidation has left just two major toymakers: Mattel and Hasbro.

About 60% of toys sold in the USA are bought in just three outlets: Wal-Mart, Target and Toys R Us. Collectively, the three rule the industry, influence the toys and prices, even determine the packaging, Clark writes. Wal-Mart in particular is notorious, he says, for squeezing the lowest prices out of suppliers.

Adding to the difficulty of the market is the bright-eyed little customer. Kids are famously fickle, with short attention spans that make the shelf life of the majority of toys less than one year.

Kids are also abandoning toys at an earlier age. Ironically, Clark writes, the trend of KGOY - kids getting older younger - is partially the fault of the toy industry's marketing tactics of using sex and violence to attract kid sales.

Clark traveled far and wide to interview more than 200 people for his exposé. He opens at the annual toy fair in New York, journeys to small-town, independent toy stores, and ends the book where about 80% of toys sold in the USA are made: China's Pearl River Delta.

Along the way, he adds fun facts to the doom and gloom, including:

--Fewer than 4% of the world's children are American, but American kids consume more than 40% of the world's toys.

--Tickle Me Elmo was Tickles the Chimp in prototype.

--Play-Doh was first marketed in 1956 as a wallpaper cleaner.

Clark saves the worst for last. The final two chapters, "Grabbing Them Young" and "Santa's Sweatshop," may send shivers down grown-ups' spines.

--"Grabbing Them Young" reveals the sometimes nefarious marketing methods aimed squarely at kids as young as 6 months.

Beyond the bombardment from television, companies are increasingly using the Internet to both reach and analyze kids. One company, in one day, analyzed 475,000 individual blog posts to learn what they had to say about products.

Hasbro, Mattel and Disney have all been clients of Girls Intelligence Agency, which recruits 8- to 13-year-olds to host slumber parties by giving them products. The girls report back what their friends think, and as viral marketing, are encouraged to spread word of the product in their environment.

--"Santa's Sweatshop" could be a book on its own. It's a quick but chilling ride through China, where about 8,000 toy factories and 3 million workers produce the bulk of U.S. toys. The reason, of course, is cost. Of the $9.99 retail price of a Chinese-made Barbie doll in 2000, Clark writes, only 35 cents went to the producers in China for the factory and the labor.

Despite codes, labor conditions in Chinese factories are still often atrocious. Clark writes a composite of the appalling everyday life of a worker, constructed from reports and clandestine interviews.

The young worker suffers chronic ailments from exposure to toxic chemicals, endures slumlike dormitory conditions and forced overtime, and owes her employer half her earnings to cover her ID card, nearly inedible food, electricity and benefits. Another worker was literally run to death on the factory floor, a victim of a new disease called guolaosi: death from overwork.

Though many a toy buyer has probably suspected the products are the fruits of sweatshops, reading about the policies of some Chinese factories certainly will give grown-ups pause the next time they browse the toy aisles.

As parents, we're not forced to buy, no matter the pressures or the need to show love or to keep kids occupied. In reality, though, Clark points out, the marketing bombardment makes the battle too one-sided for parents not to succumb, at least part of the time.

Perhaps The Real Toy Story will help fortify parents' resolve to buy wisely, with an aim to encourage imaginative, innocent play instead of falling for toys that are little more than mindless, beeping gizmos.

01/29/2007 07:01

Copyright 2007 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'"
– Maya Angelou

 profit by the misery of others is the motto of most big companies

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zymry is off limit

time has come

It's good to know it's not just my kids that get bored with their toys after a year. I've never really minded, though, because my kids get more use out of their toys in a year than the average kid! Toys like Lego, though, are really timeless ... to this day, my hubby and I can have fun with kids and Lego!

I was a little surprised that Play-Dough's original purpose was to remove wallpaper. I'll have to try that sometime, LOL.

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"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'"
– Maya Angelou