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| From Simpsonswiki.com |
It’s time for another tale of starting and stopping a toy
line. I’ve done this with many different lines over the years and there are
always different reasons involved for what happened.
Today I’m going to talk about Playmates Toys’ line based
on the long-running The Simpsons animated
series. It was called “World of Springfield” and was one of the largest and
most comprehensive collections to kick off the new century.
Today’s post is going to be light on pictures since I
don’t have any of my own collection. For a comprehensive look at the line,
check out WorldofSpringfield.com.
As an interesting note, consider the difference between
Playmates and Hasbro as a producer of retail items. Right now Hasbro has
Marvel, Star Wars, Transformers, and Jurassic World in the boys’ category. And
yes – I am aware that a certain percentage of the population finds that
categorization archaic, but I also don’t care. I’m not here to get into a
gender dispute. I’m here to talk about Simpsons toys.
So Hasbro has all of these licenses that produce various
forms of media throughout the year. Marvel is putting out two movies a year.
That’s essentially a years’ worth of product. Disney is releasing one Star Wars
movie a year now. Six-ish months of product. Transformers vary release-wise,
but the line is still strong on its own and maintains a presence year-round
even without media support. Jurassic World is dinosaurs and dinosaurs always sell. For a while, at least.
My point is that not only does Hasbro have all of these
different focuses, but that they’re essentially fighting one another for space
in the toy aisles. Think about this one – Hasbro nabbed the Star Trek license
from Playmates in 2013 after the abysmal performance of the 2009 movie toy line
and they haven’t produced a single item
outside of their Kree-O offerings. Would any other toy company have just sat on
the rights to make action figures of one of the most successful science fiction
franchises of all time? This is the fiftieth anniversary of that franchise and
there’s a new movie coming out and nobody
is making new toys.
Maybe that’s a whole other post.
Then there’s Playmates, who has Ninja Turtles. That’s all
they worry about. All year.
As such, they have great success in both releasing new
characters and keeping older figures circulating. They’re pretty amazing at
refreshing the line with new products. And they don’t have to worry about the
media for some other license interfering with their sales plan for TMNT.
World of Springfield had a similar situation.
The line launched at the turn of the century, in the
middle of the show’s eleventh season and amidst a certain amount of fanfare
thanks to the still-relevant Toy Fare
magazine. The Simpsons was
experiencing something of a resurgence in popularity at the time, though there
were still those that claimed the show was in decline (something that has been
happening since its second season).
If you had asked me how I felt about The Simpsons that year without referencing the toy line, I couldn’t
have answered you. Most of my Simpsons
memories revolve around the Treehouse of
Horror specials and the first decade of the show.
After high school I used to hang out at this food
delivery service where all of my friends worked. It operated out of a
townhouse, so there was a TV and VCR and a revolving cast of weirdo tenants.
They didn’t have cable, so we watched VHS tapes we rented from the Blockbuster
across the street, as well as a stockpile of tapes with stuff recorded from
various peoples’ homes. A few of those tapes were crammed full of six hours’
worth of The Simpsons episodes and
they got more play than anything else. I’d say that period was the height of my
Simpsons fandom.
Well, technically 2000-2002 was the height, since that’s
when I was spending a buttload of money on the toys.
I have to
admit that I was a victim of the hype for this line. I was excited for the
technology and for the quality of the sculpts. Sound chips were the big gimmick
for the line, and were an inspired decision on Playmates’ part. While
playability is always a consideration for toy lines, the one enduring factor of
the shows’ iconic status is its quotability. Not many television shows have infiltrated
modern pop culture in the same way that The
Simpsons has. Its creative team has produced some of the funniest and most
memorable lines in the history of television. That’s why there’s a whole
website dedicated to memes from the show.
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| From Simpsonswiki.com |
How the sound
chips worked was also quite smart. Each figure came equipped with a contact
point that interacted with the playsets that were produced. Plugging a figure
onto the contact points on each playset and then pressing a button would
produce different quotes sampled from the show. Each figure interacted with
multiple playsets, so to hear every phrase from every figure you had to buy all
of the playsets. The only limitation with this ingenious interactive feature
was that newer figures couldn’t interact with older playsets since the sounds
were all loaded onto those.
This made for
a compellingly collectible toy line.
The figures looked
fantastic, but didn’t have much playability, with fixed legs and a total of
four points of articulation – cut joints at the shoulders, neck, and waist.
Their appeal relied on the combination of the sound chip interaction and a
decent assortment of character-specific accessories. For example, Homer came
with a donut, a can of Duff beer, a remote control, and a bag of Salty Snax.
Each piece was chock full of detail and had excellent paint apps. Every figure
in the line had this kind of assortment of props that were recognizable from
the show. Honestly, the accessories were almost as exciting as the figures, as
so many of the items had been made iconic on the show. A Homer Simpson without
a donut is like a Batman without a Batarang.
*Ahem*Mattel*
The first
series consisted of Grampa, Krusty, Homer, Bart, Lisa, and Mr. Burns – all
heavy hitters. There were also two interactive playsets – the Simpsons’ living
room with Marge and Maggie and the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant with Homer
in his hazmat suit.
Here’s how
invested I was initially – I even bought Lisa
Simpson, a character that I cannot stand. I had to have the whole family.
However, I
wasn’t completely, all-the-way all-in, as I stuck to my normal habit of only
buying each character once. I avoided costume changes for the most part. Still,
with the wealth of memorable supporting characters that the show had this still
meant a good-sized collection of toys. And playsets. Large playsets that didn’t
display particularly well.
Each playset
consisted of a base, two walls, and an assortment of sculpted pieces like the
counter of the comic book shop, the Simpsons’ couch, or arcade machines. Mostly
these were background pieces and the figures couldn’t really interact with
them. For example, Reverend Lovejoy couldn’t stand on his pulpit. The bases
were all od shapes and weren’t designed to fit together in any way, so they
took up an inordinately large amount of space on my shelves. I remember having
to rework those shelves a lot over
the years that I displayed this line.
I stopped
collecting around Series 9, which hit around the middle of 2002. Each wave was
consisting of more and more costume updates and I believe the playsets
underwent a significant price hike. And might have been getting much more
difficult to find. Disco Stu and Rod and Tod Flanders were the last figures I
bought, and I might have picked up
the Springfield Retirement Castle as my final playset. Maybe not. I know for
sure I stopped buying the playsets because I was out of space.
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| From Simpsonswiki.com |
I think
another reason why I quit World of Springfield was the frustration of
Exclusives. Many of them were nigh impossible to find and I know there were
several that I wanted badly that I never even saw at retail. Toys R Us carried
four Treehouse of Horror sets and I
was only able to get one of them. Fortunately it was the only one with otherwise
unreleased characters – Kodos and Kang – but I wanted the others, as well. An
Electronics Boutique Radioactive Man and Fallout Boy set was impossible to
find. Actually, I think all of the EB Exclusive sets were problematic.
Eventually
the World of Springfield toys got packed up because something else needed the
display real estate. They didn’t pack any better than they displayed. Each of
the figures got a Ziploc bag because of all of the accessories. That was a pain
because I had all of the accessories that I wasn’t displaying in a drawer
together. I had to separate them all out and figure out what came with who – no
easy task in the days prior to decent internet checklists.
Side
Note: Or possibly prior to the point where I would think about looking up an
internet checklist.
The playsets
were large and bulky and didn’t pack well. My usual method of storing large
items are plastic tubs of the sort you buy at Walmart or Target. But these
things didn’t stack and were designed so that you couldn’t fit them together in
any space-saving way. I think I ended up with four tubs for this one toy
collection.
After storing
around fifty figures and fifteen or so playsets for a couple of years and not
missing them I decided it was time to put them up on eBay. For once in my toy
collecting life I just happened to hit at the right time. I believe it was
around 2005, so it would have been after the line had died. Maybe there were
people looking to fill in their collections or folks who had missed it and
decided they wanted Simpsons toys. Whatever the case, despite the fact that
everything was loose I recouped my investment and then some on the World of
Springfield.
I had a lot
of fun hunting down and collecting this line, but never a moment of regret for
getting rid of it.
In the
meantime, if you enjoyed this post and have a story of your own, join the Needless Things Podcast Facebook Group and
get in on the conversation.
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