R.I.P.: The Father of Playmobil

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One of my favorite toys as a child in the 1970s were Playmobil figures and sets. Remember those?

If you didn’t play with these, or if you just want to enjoy a nostalgic flashback, check out www.playmobil.com.

These were, and continue to be, simple toys for kids to enjoy. They required something that is not often encouraged or fostered today–imagination.

It’s nice to see stores from Target to Toys R Us still packing the shelves with them.

They brought me countless hours of fun as a child with their endless selection of pirates, police, castles, and spaceships. The figures, or people, themselves were as simple as they get. You could hardly call them “action” figures as they didn’t enjoy the thousand joints that today’s figures offer. But they were a thrill of fun nonetheless.

I was sad to see that the father of Playmobil died recently at the age of 79.

Hans Beck was actually trained as a furniture carpenter and was asked by his company to create a toy novelty. What he created was Playmobil in 1974.

Thank you Hans Beck for creating such an amazing little toy with a huge legacy, now being exported to 70 countries from its native Germany. Your innovation and ingenuity are still being appreciated and enjoyed by the young–and the young at heart.