Mego 1975 Sales Call Video Series Thread

[palitoy]

Hello,

A while back i recieved a cassette tape recording of a 1975 sales meeting with D. David Abrams (Mego), Morris Kotzer (Parkdale Novelty) at the Shoprite offices in Toronto.

I decided to have a little fun with the video and "Recreate" it in a style we're all familiar with. I'm a toy industry junkie, so being given this tape was a total gift.

The first installment launches this evening at 8pm and it centers around the Waltons and the Wizard of Oz toy lines. I hope you'll take a look.

https://youtu.be/cpjq6FTdL6w

[PNGwynne]

Only fitting that the presentation started with the two greatest Mego lines ever.

The Sunshine Family is fascinating , and this all was delightful. I enjoyed the animation.

[Dan2Dan]

A very creative way to make audio from a 50-year-old cassette tape into an engaging watch!

I've heard and read several times over the years that, back in the 1970s, toymakers preferred to make licensed toys based on TV shows rather than movies, because movies came-and-went quickly (with no VHS or DVD or internet) while TV shows were aired weekly and continuously. So it was really fascinating to hear that manifest in an actual, contemporary business meeting. (I was also surprised to hear that so many American children were apparently watching a TV show at 9-10 PM on a school night.). That said, it wasn't entirely clear to me why American TV ratings would be expected to impress a Canadian toy buyer at a meeting in Toronto...

[Dan2Dan]

I also thought it was notable that the Good Witch was anticipated to be the least popular figure in the Wizard of Oz line. That led me to think that probably Grandpa and Grandma Walton may've had similar status in the Waltons line.

[palitoy]

Hey guys, thanks so much for your feedback. This is one of those niche things that I love and it felt personal. So, I knew it wasn't going to be a huge deal but any interest makes it worth it.

The Sunshine Family admission was a huge win for me, I thought that was the case in a video I did a couple of years back. It brought me a lot of joy.

As for TV licenses, the movie "Dr Doolittle" which was ironically an Apjak film, soured the industry on movie licenses. TV was much safer and for good reason. It wasn't until "Planet of the Apes" sold well did toys think about movies and even then, Kenner didn't get toys to Christmas 1977!

[Sonneveld]

All around great video. How cool to be a fly on the wall and hear the business side of toys.

I'm not surprised that post-Watergate and Vietnam, the mood of the country was yearning for simpler times with the Waltons, Little House, etc.. I saw a Lucasfilm Star Wars documentary which basically said that helped the movie, since the morality of the film was clear, good guys versus evil.

[Dan2Dan]

I'm not surprised that post-Watergate and Vietnam, the mood of the country was yearning for simpler times with the Waltons, Little House, etc.. I saw a Lucasfilm Star Wars documentary which basically said that helped the movie, since the morality of the film was clear, good guys versus evil.

You know, having lived through that time (albeit as an elementary school kid), I feel like this historical interpretation, which I, too, have seen/heard repeated innumerable times in documentaries about 1977 Star Wars for decades, is maybe a little over-analytical. ("Roots" was one of the most popular TV shows of 1977, and it was not a presentation of a simpler, more positive America. The top 3 grossing films of 1977 were Star Wars, Close Encounters, and Saturday Night Fever. The latter two were definitely morally and thematically complex films.)

As a kid then, I had absolutely no sense that Hasbro had evolved a military line of action figures (GI Joe) into the Adventure Team, with fuzzy heads and beards, because of the Vietnam War. My father had volunteered for the Vietnam War years earlier, before I was born, because he thought too many poor kids were being involuntarily drafted, and that that was unfair. He only objected to my playing with the GI Joe Adventure Team many years later because he thought I was too old to be a boy playing with dolls. But I just liked the flocking and the helicopter with working rotors and the mummy casket that opened.

As a kid who saw 1977 Star Wars in the cinema in the first few weeks after its theatrical release, there was absolutely 0% of my instant overwhelming love for it that was about a longing for a simpler time before the Vietnam War. (And in fact, my dad, with whom I saw it, didn't like it very much and vastly preferred 2001: A Space Odyssey.) And all the many years later, when I kept my childhood Star Wars action figures through multiple apartment moves, and when I ultimately bought Midnight Screening Opening Night tickets to Star Wars: the Phantom Menace at the end of the '90s, there was never even 1% of that that had any relationship to the Vietnam War or Watergate. Rather, to me, 1977 Star Wars was a really well-executed summer film with a simple storyline and aliens and robots and the metaphysical Force and cutting-edge special effects that, by happenstance, also benefited from perfect casting of former and future movie stars Harrison Ford, James Earl Jones, and Alec Guinness. I feel like its appeal to kids like me at the time, who I believe formed the backbone of its enduring appeal to this day (which Disney ultimately undervalued, to its financial disadvantage) was much more Joseph Campbell and Lord of the Rings than Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and Saigon.