At a certain level, the corporate group think erases any sense in the toymaking executive's mind of what a child wants and appreciates. This is especially true when it comes to adding muscles to characters - a blunder often found in Halloween costumes and action figures, as seen here. The corporate toy exec is under the mistaken impression that by making Han Solo more Schwartzenegger-esque, they are somehow enhancing the heroic characteristics of that character. But what a child REALLY wants, or any fan of character toys for that matter, is an action figure that LOOKS LIKE THE CHARACTER.
The Hollywood toy executive also fails when designing a Halloween costume. For although the muscles PERHAPS make the costume closer to the character, the design failure is this: a child (or adult-child) doesn't don a costume to look more muscular, they don the costume to BECOME that character. As a kid, I didn't want a frakkin' shirt with a picture of Spiderman on it with a flimsy plastic mask, I wanted an actual Spiderman uniform!
Sigh... the wrong kids grow up to be toy makers...
No comments:
Post a Comment