Arigomi

What is the appeal of Playmobil?

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My guess is that it's sort of like a collectible dollhouse toy? For girls anyway. For boys there are castles and westerns and police themes. I remember getting a couple of "impulse sets" of those when I was small, though I quickly tired of them and moved back to building rainbow-colored forts and houses out of Lego.

I'm thinking they're sort of like Lego, without the building aspects of course, and in terms of playability.

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They are fun to play with. Quite simply.

I had a blue car with a family and some bikes. It was great fun, in my games the car was KITT and the man was Flash Gordon (He had a red waistcoat and a white shirt with a stylised eagle over a red circle. It makes sense when you are pre 10 me..)

Little brother no.4 loves playmobil and prefers it over LEGO. He plays his games and makes all kinds of figures with different characters and suchlike.

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They are fun to play with. Quite simply.

I had a blue car with a family and some bikes. It was great fun, in my games the car was KITT and the man was Flash Gordon (He had a red waistcoat and a white shirt with a stylised eagle over a red circle. It makes sense when you are pre 10 me..)

That was my first and most memorable set too! With the baby and the little kid with the dino shirt! Lots of imaginative stories there. :sweet:

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What draws people to the brand?

It has interesting themes, high-quality materials and can be customised reasonably easily. In fact it shares much of the same appeal as LEGO except, as pointed out, you cannot build as much with the construction parts. While you can build really cool castles and town buildings and their pirate ships are generally excellent, you cannot really use parts from a police station to build a castle etc.

It may also help that the people are larger than LEGO so they are more useful for younger children. I do find the accessories are generally well made but often do not attach as well as LEGO accessories.

Basically I think they found a sweet spot in the marketplace between heavily male-oriented tin soldiers and female-oriented dollhouses in large part by adapting the tradition of toy soldiers to the modern world of plastics. I loved the amazing uniforms and armour and weapons but could also appreciate the fully-stocked grocery store sets. I bought my daughter the huge Victorian house with extra floor and had a great time building it for her and getting all the cool accessories (ie: toilets, wood ovens, baking trays with cookies). I still prefer LEGO but I often want LEGO to make something that Playmobil already has (ie: ROMANS!)

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I loved Playmobil as a kid, I enjoyed having war with the figures and giving them weapons, also because they were bigger than LEGO I could incorporate them into my other action figures.

I guess that's why I, personally, enjoyed them. :classic:

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Playmobil was my Duplo growing up, simply put. But they're not that buildable, so ultimately I grew more into LEGO.

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We had just as much Playmobil growing up as LEGO-- my first set was a family of Eskimos. Playmobil had tons of accessories (and back in the 80s, LEGO had few). The figures are larger and so easier to play with, there were more female figs, so it was definitely a more imaginative type play than what I did with my LEGO, which was typically building.

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I loved Playmobil as a kid, I enjoyed having war with the figures and giving them weapons, also because they were bigger than LEGO I could incorporate them into my other action figures.

I guess that's why I, personally, enjoyed them. :classic:

I agree, the size made able to integrate with other figures on a scale wich Lego couldnt.

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Not to worry. It was an April Fools joke on ThinkGeek.

That doesn't necessarily mean it won't become a real product - many of the ThinkGeek April Fools day jokes have become very popular actual products.

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One thing it shares with Lego is it's very well made in terms of quality and materials. As such it's pretty durable and long lasting (and also, like Lego, expensive). There's a bit of a regional aspect to it as well. In some countries in Europe and South America it's a much bigger deal than Lego is. I was suprised to find out there are several Playmobil theme parks!

A lot of the lines and sets are really good in terms of detail and playability, for the most part better than Lego as far as being a "toy" in this respect. But once you factor in the building aspect of Lego it's no contest!

My kid likes it, but was never crazy about it. Over all he prefers Lego, but I think that's mostly because he's obsessed with Ninjas at the moment!

Oh also: http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/07/the_17_least_appropriate_playmobil_sets_for_childr.php

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It has appeal? I don’t ever see kids in that isle. What do see is it showing up in preschool and nurseries. I’m guessing cost and fewer breakable pieces.

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Its boxes are big and designed to rip any kid that is not better informed off. I know because I had to grow up with a couple of large playmobil sets.

Edited by vexorian

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They are fun to play with. Quite simply.

I had a blue car with a family and some bikes. It was great fun, in my games the car was KITT and the man was Flash Gordon (He had a red waistcoat and a white shirt with a stylised eagle over a red circle. It makes sense when you are pre 10 me..)

Little brother no.4 loves playmobil and prefers it over LEGO. He plays his games and makes all kinds of figures with different characters and suchlike.

I had that car, it was a suzuki swift!! i liked playmobil and always dreamed about the train set's but now i know lego also make train set's which of course are better!!

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Its boxes are big and designed to rip any kid that is not better informed off. I know because I had to grow up with a couple of large playmobil sets.

To be honest, LEGO boxes are the same.

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Not really.

I am not talking about boxes being bigger than needed. But they are large. The stuff inside the boxes are also large. So kids that want big stuff prefer that.

Eventually, you grow up and figure out that the 'play' part of playmobil is just as fun as the play part of minifigs. But all the sets you had are now useless because you lost 10% of the pieces. In the case of LEGO, even if you had only 10% of your collection left, it is still useful.

The most annoying thing is that playbill stuff are often just too hard to disassemble.

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Its boxes are big and designed to rip any kid that is not better informed off. I know because I had to grow up with a couple of large playmobil sets.

Kinda funny you said that because LEGO is the same way. Of course, you can see from the pictures exactly what comes in the box.

Playmobil is actually cheaper; you can buy a figure for $3.00, too, and it's three times the size.

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Playmobil is actually cheaper; you can buy a figure for $3.00, too, and it's three times the size.

Size isn't everything :wink:

I had a couple of playmobil figures as a kid, bought for me by relatives at christmas that didnt know better. My best friend back in the 1980's loved it, I never understood the appeal. Sure I played with it but only at his house, round mine we played with proper toys and Lego ruled!

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I grew up with Playmos,

my old sister was doing the lego stuff and me, I´ve been starting with the first 3 kind of playmos, indians, knights and builders.

Haha, I don´t want to know which kind of poison is in my body, if you know the old playmo knight helmets. :-)

I got my old plamo back from my daughter last week and I sold it to get more lego.

;-)

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Maybe the main reason because some kid love more Playmobils than LEGO is lazyness. I enjoyed playing with them as a kid, but I did prefer LEGO bricks too much (and sometimes old Italocremona's Plastic City bricks).

We had just as much Playmobil growing up as LEGO-- my first set was a family of Eskimos.

Maybe with an igloo :cry_happy: ?

3465.jpg

Edited by Plastic Nurak

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