When Walt Disney gave birth to the first successful film company utiliz­ing animated characters, little did he dream that 50 years later, his lovable Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and other assorted cartoon characters would be breathing new life into so many other industries. During the 1930's, Kay Kamen, created the licensing business as we know it, when he initiated the licen­sing arm for the Walt Disney com­pany. The most natural tie-in with Disney obviously would be in toys, and that's where it all started.

Obviously, the licensor makes the initial investment. If he's lucky, and acquires the right properties, his chances of keeping the coffers filled are very good indeed. Manufacturers, who put up their investment, also do this on speculation. There are cases where they have lost their shirts, and conversely where success stories read like something out of Horatio Alger. Mego, Azrak-Hamway, and Knickerbocker Toys are companies that come to mind immediately on that score.

All companies have been re­porting record sales and earnings with figures rising steadily. Raggedy Ann and Andy, Holly Hobbie and the Sesame Street line are some of the properties around which Knickerbocker has built a solid footing in toy departments throughout the country. And, of course, the wunderkind of all, Mego, has had unprecedented success with Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, Super Heroes and most recently, the Wizard of Oz.

Azrak-Hamway, after purchasing the Remco name two years ago, has created a blitzkrieg line of products that has knocked out buyers who represent stores from literally all over the world. The company attributes at least part of its success last year to two sell-out items bearing the Star Trek identity, The Phaser Gun and the Utility Belt. This year, Azrak-Hamway's belief in consumer recognition will be put on the line because it has expanded even further into the area of licensed properties in several instances.

Among these will be additional Star Trek items, and an introduction of toys built around Space: 1999, I Dream of Jeannie, Batman, and McDonald's McDonaldland with all it's kookie characters. Why have these particular and adverse properties become so successful? Although nobody has a flat answer, constant exposure especially through television, is decidedly one of the most important actors in measuring a property's success. However, one, can never be, sure.

Planet of the Apes products sold well while the original movies were on television, but sales dropped on the products when the TV series built round the apes failed to attract an udience. Kids are pretty sophisticated today, and can recognize shoddily made films. The characters just don' t appeal to them anymore.

Star Trek and its latter-day extra­errestrial companion, Space: 1999, appeal to kids' imagination. The aeries has attracted millions of viewers, and even when Star Trek rag off the air, the show's fan club, The Trekkies," kept Star Trek and :s related products highly visible to ordes of loyal science fiction buffs. Now Space: 1999 looms importantly on the horizon. Raggedy Ann and Andy, and Hol­r Hobbie are witness to another quirk taking place in our society to­ay. Nostalgia is the big kick, and the soft rag, old-fashioned looking dolls bring back memories of happier times to adults who buy gifts for their children. While Holly and Raggedy, Ann have been around for many years in one guise or another, which could partially account for their success,

Polly Pal, another nostalgia-tinged doll doing very nicely, is the recent brain child of designer Leon Jason. Polly Pal was simply a piece of artwork in the shape of a gingham­clad rag doll. What triggers off con­sumer reaction is still a puzzle.

Many experts maintain however, that a great deal of an item's success can be directly attributed to con­stantly bombarding the public with impressions, whether it be through the media, or through promotions run at all levels. Even the retailers have begun to think in this fashion. LCA is a strong believer in a licensing company working with the licensees and with the retailers to in­sure the success of their properties. First, they support their manufac­turers whom they have picked, based on their financial stability, reputability, production and dis­tribution facilities, with individual account executives who have basic responsibility within each product classification.

They then support them with trade advertising (to afford a high degree of visibility to the retail ac­counts) and with selling aids such as brochures which the manufacturers can use in selling the retailer. Another selling aid for the manufac­turer is a demographic kit which con­tains Neilson ratings and other relevant material.

Next a program is designed to co­ordinate property in a retail toy store or in a toy department. This is ac­complished by developing point-of­sale kits, which are made available to retailers who will meet some very minimum requirements to par­ticipate.

A recent development that has taken place not only at LCA, but Hanna- Barbera and other progres­ssive-thinking licensing companies, is to acquaint retailers with the scope of products available, supply them with a list of licensed manufacturers, and show them the point-of-sale material available if they wish to par­ticipate by setting up a "shop con­cept. ".

According to LCA, the range of products and services identified with their Looney Tunes characters rack up more than $100 million at retail alone, and their Super Heroes products in all categories are scoring huge sales wherever they are mer­chandised.

At an A & S branch outlet in New Jersey, the toy buyer gives testimony to the value of licensed products. "We can't keep enough Super­heroes in stock," he says, and everything related to the Six Million Dollar Man does really well too," he continues. "But the king of all licensed merchandising remains Mickey Mouse himself," he states, "Mickey has always been a staple commodity in our department, and with reruns of the Mickey Mouse Club on TV, growth in sales has been spectacular.' ,

Disney products are unique in toy departments. Opposed to licensed properties which bear carefu: watching as to product acceptibility. Mickey and his friends not only mean instant recognition, but are synonomous with quality as well. not only do the kids love Mickey but ..dults do as well. Disney movies "ave been seen by these very same ...dults when they were children. And 1O million visitors are attracted to Disney Parks annually. Walt Disney Productions has a continuing program with retailers ~where they custom tailor a program to suit the individual store's needs.

They coordinate a Disney Merchan­dising Center for which they may supply posters, instore signing, and character costumes for publicity pro­motions.

Bradlees', a chain of stores, head­quartered in Braintree, Massachu­setts, runs promotions regularly featuring Mickey Mouse. Whole families come to see the famous celebrities, so not only are sales generated in the toy department but spillover in other departments register considerable increases in sales as well.

"We display all our Mickey Mouse products in one area rather than breaking them down by categories as we do with most of our other licensed products," says Norman Antell, buyer for Bradlees. "The other category we do that for is Holly Hobbie. We devote 16 feet along a gondola to Mickey and four feet to Holly.

"Nevertheless, we are extremely selective as to which toys we feature. The toy must be suited to the char­ acter. For example, we find a logo simply affixed to a product not hav­ing anything to do with the character isn't that terrific. But a Mickey Mouse drum set does really well because he's always shown playing the drums."

In this regard, retailers voice some complaints about entire lines of merchandise which center around one character. An example of this is one retailer who expressed dissatis­faction with some of the Evel Knievel items. He said that the basic stunt cycle which personified Evers personality to the kids sells very well - and on a continuing basis, but the accessories don't seem to mean as much. The kids don't see Evel in everything just because his name is on it.

Sometimes, a licensed property can be around for awhile and not be very successful at first. Some new licensees enter the picture and im­prove the line with better exposure and more creative, well-made toys.

Such was the case with Sesame Street, according to a buyer with Two Guys, a chain of discount store headquartered in Harrison, New Jer­sey. "Child Guidance really im­proved Sesame Street's saleability here," he says. " Star Trek was around for a long time too," he continues, "but until Mego started promoting it, it wasn't the hot property it is today."

Sometimes a line starts out great but then falls sharply because it has the props pulled out from under. "Mego's Wizard of Oz Easter line was doing great guns here," say Al Fonenot, buyer for Wieboldt's, a de­partment store in Chicago. "But after awhile, Mego stopped promot­ing it on television, so action slowed down. Without that constant ex­posure, sales will probably rise around the time of the annual show­ing of the original movie film on TV," he continues.

The big question for many retailers, however, is whether licensed properties in toy depart­ments are indeed a profitable means of increasing sales.

If a licensed property is being heavily promoted on television, the toy has a built-in inflated price. As such, it simply becomes another "TV toy", to be used mostly as a lost leader. An increasing side develop­ment of this situation, however, is what can happen when one licensee promotes his product on television. The excitement it generates adds an extra dimension to every other property with the same name. His product may not be as profitable to the retailer at that moment, but everthing else in the line suddenly has greater value.

"Because of Knickerbocker's pro­motion on its Holly Hobbie doll, Coleco's stroller and doll carriage bearing Holly's name turned out to be a very good seller;" says Jerry Garfinkle of Child World in Avon, Massachusetts. "Sometimes though, too many manufacturers jump in on the bandwagon, diluting the value of the license.

"I hope this doesn't happen with Space: 1999. So many toymakers are coming out with Space: 1999 products because of its switch to national TV exposure from its current syndicated local coverage, that there may be too much proliferation of product. Consumers tend to become wary of all those goods, especially if they find a rotten apple in the pile." Garfinkle continues.

"We're not mad for licensed goods," says Gayle Hoepner, buyer for Toys Internationale, a specialty toy retailer in Cosa Mesa, Cali­fornia. "For us, licensed toys are either staple or 'trendy' just like anything else. We consider Mickey Mouse a staple item. We sell it year round and never get stuck. Snoopy and Casper the Ghost keep our low-end merchandise like coloring and ac­tivity books moving. We can make a buck on staple goods such as those but we can't afford to compete with larger stores on the highly promoted items that come and go."

Smaller stores, not surprisingly, handle licensed hot properties as sparingly as possible. The feel they must keep some supply of TV promoted toys as an accommo­dation to their regular customers for fear they'll go elsewhere.

According to economic experts in the toy industry, licensing is going to be around for awhile. Any inherent disadvantages are more than over­come by the overall excitement it lends to an industry that might otherwise be in the doldrums. From a manufacturing point of view, the amount of front money necessary to purchase a licensed property compares favorably with how much it would otherwise cost to create and develop a new property where it would reach the same point of consumer identification. With the new attitudes of licen­sing companies to be both friend and advisor to manufacturers and retailers, licensing enters a new era of respectability.

Up until recently, licensing com­panies carried "huckster" reputations. They bought properties - sold them as quickly as they could for a fast fee, and then turned their attentions to other ventures. Complaints have been registered by manufacturers who discovered they had duplicate products in the same categories. This self-defeating situation had, for the most part, been brought about by over-zealous gales of greedy, hard-sell tactics on the part of some licensing companies with "hot" properties.

With the advent of a more in­hibited economy, licensors have taken a long, hard look into their own methods of operations. Evidently, their collective levels of consciousness have been raised. So to insure their own futures as well, they have undertaken the role of management consultant complete with creative and merchandising programs, and fresh conceptual ap­proaches. They now well understand that, in addition to keeping proper­ties "hot," great care must be taken to keep toys both appealing and of good quality.

Price must be watched as well. The way things are going, the toy in­dustry is insidiously evolving into a select group of retail giants who can afford to sell the higher-priced goods. Yet, no one really wants to see the independent toy stores pushed out of existence. Somehow, licensed toys must be affordable to all retailers, large and small.