The Toys That Made Us subtly parodies "success"

Netflix series, the Toys That Made Us, is a look into what is behind success of popular toys from our childhood.
But it not-too-subtly shows what success is really made of: Confusing contradictions.

It's an interesting and well made look at the behind the scenes stories of popular toys. However it's also, intentionally I think, a parody of popular business and entrepreneur media that seeks to explain the "secrets of company/product X's success" with each book, blog or video being the absolute game plan for success. This series calls a lot of that kind of analysis and reporting out as being largely being bull**** because success is hard to explain.

There's a saying that goes:
"Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan"

Possibly never has there never been a collection of stories that prove this more true. Frequently there are multiple people all who claim, with almost perfect memory of events, that they were the creator of a toy. Yet when the missteps and failures are examined there's a collective amnesia as to who made a bad decision amongst the same people who previously could remember in great detail the same exact period of time.


So here are the 11 secrets to guaranteed success AND failure, brought to you by the multi billion dollar toy franchises you knew/know and loved/loved

Barbie

The lesson is never change a winning formula. When you are finally forced to evolve do it very, very gradually.
And fight your competitors at every turn.
Mattel have aggressively pushed competitors out of the market and, in the case of Bratz (which truly was a product that out competed Barbie), they took them to court and used the legal system, instead of their own product innovation, to force them out.
Kind of a bad business model for anyone but the top product.
"It's good to be king" as the saying goes, and that seems to be an important lesson here as well.

Hello Kitty

The lesson is to keep the product exactly the same and don't confuse your fans with too much world building. Keep it ambiguous enough that they can project whatever they want onto it.
But maintain the original design forever, and never iterate on it, or you'll lose your fans.

Another big takeaway is as long as you have a strong brand it doesn't matter what you licence it to, you'll only ever increase awareness and sales because your fans are so devoted they'll buy in to anything with the Hello Kitty name on it. You don't even need strong movie or TV content to support it.

Power Rangers

The lesson here is the world is a much smaller place than you think. Much is made of the differences between various cultures but as Power Rangers shows when you lose that mindset, and with kids they largely don't have it yet, people tend like similar things regardless where they're from.
You just need to remove the bias against things that aren't from your culture. Saban was able to successfully rebrand a very Japanese show as American and in doing so got people to focus on the similarities rather than the differences. Surprise, surprise it turns out Japanese and American viewers both enjoyed the same things.

There is a huge opportunity in recognising the underlying product in one culture that, when stripped of it's purely cultural components, can be successful in different culture. The trick is knowing what is purely cultural and what is product.

NB: Hello Kitty, in contrast, struggled to shake their cultural baggage and was only successful once Japanese culture was more widely accepted in the US. And not before that.

GI JOE

The lesson is don't expect other people to value you or your achievements in the same way you do.
After leading a massively successful toy line in GI JOE the team responsible were suddenly let go. Not because sales fell off a cliff (like with He Man) just because the organisation decided they were moving in a different direction.
That's really hard for people to accept but also a good lesson that if you pour your time and effort into something make sure you either own a piece of it or you're being rewarded appropriately because you may find yourself really disappointed and disillusioned when that dedication isn't recognised by others.
It's not even about money. It's about having a life not filled with anger/regret

Transformers

The lesson is you need to keep evolving your core product. Transformers have changed a lot over the years and things like Beast Wars and the live action movies have been successful because they each established a new definition of the product that brought in new fans.
Sometimes that evolution didn't work but evolution was the key to their continued success.

TMNT

I guess the lesson is almost identical to that of Transformers, which is you need to keep evolving the product to bring in new fans and engage existing ones. Both the toy and the TV/movies have been evolved alongside one and other.
Not everything was a hit but, like Transformers, evolution was the key

My Little Pony

This is a product that relied entirely on a lot of renewal of the line in the form of new characters. But whenever they veered too far away from their initial success the product tanked.
So the lesson is to keep producing new content that sticks to the original successful format but iterates enough to keep it fresh.
But that lesson has kind of been overturned in recent time with the success of Equestria Girls, which are a significant departure from the core product

He Man

It's not super clear but the lesson from here seems to be that sometimes a product is done and no amount of reinvention, evolution, or new content will save it. He Man has shrunk to a niche product from a huge property and trades exclusively on nostalgia now. The oft repeated lesson of needing a strong entertainment product to support your toy products, is also relevant here.

Star Wars

Kenner did poorly in the end from Star Wars. They ended up swallowed by Hasbro in a fire sale because they were so reliant on one partner. Whilst Star Wars was successful that success couldn't save Kenner. Hasbro, as a result, was forced into the most expensive licencing deal in history in large part due to Kenner's previous Star Wars deal.

The lesson is even the deal of a lifetime isn't worth it if that deal leaves you wholly dependent on one business partner/customer for your survival. Lucas Films' interests and Kenner's interests aligned until they didn't and that was very bad for the dependant in that relationship, which was Kenner

The Stars Wars licence is seemingly a poisoned chalice. It brought down Kenner and almost destroyed Lego, twice. The allure is the size of the franchise in terms of popularity but the price of the licencing and the up and down performance of the individual movie and TV properties means it's a big bet that carries a higher amount of risk than people bargain for.

Professional Wrestling

There isn't any any lesson here. That's the lesson. A lot like wrestling itself.
Still counts as a lesson.

Star Trek

This is a lesson that flies in the face of the lessons that other products have taught us.
It had a strong enduring brand with devoted fans (Hello Kitty), it evolved over time in a way that brought in new fans but also served existing fans (My Little Pony, Transformers) and it had successful movie and television shows to drive sales (He-man, Transformers, Wrestling, TMNT, Star Wars) however it was a disappointment for many, many people who took it on.

The lesson is devoted fans are a double edged sword, they offer guaranteed sales but they also are hard to satisfy. The more devoted they are the sharper both those edges become. Fans won't just buy anything with the Star Trek name on it (unlike Hello Kitty).

LEGO

This is the story of how every good idea is a terrible idea as well.

Do licencing agreements? Star Wars is a raging success one year and the next almost bankrupts the company. But not just once, twice!

Star Wars and Harry Potter would make LEGO heaps of money and one year hurt them so badly LEGO went at Mattel to see if they wanted to buy the company to save it from bankruptcy.

Do your own licenced properties? Excellent idea if it's Ninjago or Bionicle. Terrible idea if it's Galidor or Jack Stone.
LEGO for girls? Terrible idea if it's Scala. Great idea if it's Lego Friends.
Go back to basics? Sure City is a huge hit. But a line about magical ninjas, Ninjago, is even bigger and once your patents ran out the basic bricks lose significant market share.

There's literally no common thread that runs through the LEGO business story. Any overarching philosophy they've had has both made them heaps of money and threatened to destroy them at some point.
It's fascinating to see LEGO employees talk enthusiastically about the success of a certain strategy in one scene only to awkwardly admit the same strategy also bombed spectacularly in the next scene.