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December 2nd, 2008

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No babes in toyland

At the Nuremberg toy fair, fun is serious business

February 14th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO

Children are barred from the fair, where companies like Kovap market traditional Czech toys.

By Patricia Goodson Karhan

For the Post

If there is one place on earth that would fulfill every child’s idea of heaven, it’s the annual international toy fair in Nuremberg, held this year Feb. 16 at the fairgrounds on the outskirts of the city. Fourteen cavernous exhibition halls overflowed with model helicopters, racecars, thousands of adorable stuffed animals, and dolls able to walk, laugh and cry, while the sounds of rich-toned toy musical instruments filled the air. There were costumes, spinning tops, kaleidoscopes, wooden toys, windup toys, games, yo-yos, pull toys — it was impossible to take it all in.

Children, however, are forbidden to attend, which is probably for the best. With more than 1 million toys on display, they probably couldn’t handle the sensory overload.

The toy fair is strictly a trade event, open to manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and suppliers but closed to the general public. This year, it attracted more than 2,700 exhibitors and 80,000-plus visitors from 120 countries as far away as Thailand and as close as Romania and Poland. In the midst of all the color, glitter, sound and hoopla, they coolly sized up competitors, struck deals, made orders, looked for suppliers and evaluated new products, looking for the next must-have hot item.

The biggest draw every year is the model trains, displayed in elaborate computer-controlled setups in which dozens of trains roll through miniature landscapes abounding in tunnels, bridges and quaint villages. These costly and exquisitely detailed sets are not for children, but for grown-ups and collectors. A simple starter set can cost hundreds of dollars, and a hand-crafted all-brass locomotive goes for over $2,000 (43,000 Kč).

The Czech Republic is well-represented in this field by E.T.S. Electronic Train Systems of Prague. The company’s president, Gustav Taus, is a vigorous man of 70 whose dynamism seems unaffected by serious injuries sustained in a car accident a decade ago.

“When I started the company in 1991, E.T.S stood for Experimental Television Studio. I had taught in the industrial department of UPRUM [Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design] and FAMU [Czech Film Academy] and had groups of students who designed and built TV and video cameras,” Taus says. “After the revolution, it seemed natural to turn this expertise into a business, but it quickly became clear we couldn’t compete with long-established Asian firms. So I turned to my hobby, model trains.”

Capitalizing on Czech expertise in metalworking, he began making retro-style rolling stock emblazoned with Czech brand names such as Pilsner Urquell and Budvar. Since then, his product line has expanded to include more than 100 engines, hundreds of freight and passenger cars and accessories such as tracks and transformers. “Our target group is adult men,” Taus admits. “Our trains are not cheap.”

Exporting Krteček
By contrast, Brno’s Moravská ústředna (MÚ) has a long history, founded in 1909 as an umbrella group for several small cooperatives making handcrafts. Under communism, the group grew to encompass cut glass, puppets, textiles, fashion and toys. Now, according to Blahoslav Dobeš, director of sales and marketing, the company focuses exclusively on “anything that can be sewn,” such as puppets, stuffed toys and made-to-order costumes.

The group has more than 300 employees working at five factories in Moravia, but also holds to tradition in employing workers, mostly women with young children, in their homes. “This is a very complicated system,” Dobeš says. “We have to get the materials to workers and pick up the finished product, keep a strict eye on quality control, stay on top of scheduling and reimburse the workers for expenses like heat and electricity. But the system is so well-established that it works well and we plan to continue it.”

MÚ has successfully pursued the expensive but effective strategy of licensing popular Czech cartoon characters such as Krteček, or Little Mole, many of which are known throughout Europe and Japan. The company exports to more than 25 countries, and seems poised to react nimbly to changes and trends.

While it would be logical to assume that cooperatives rose under communism, they were in fact common under Austro-Hungarian rule, according to Jiří Šťastný, marketing director for the Union of Czech Production Cooperatives. One such cooperative, Kovap, a shard of a once-huge conglomerate that broke up after the revolution, specializes in high-quality tin-plated windup toys. While successful, Kovap’s business has been hurt by low-quality knockoffs — so much so that the company’s catalog has a photo of a lookalike tractor alerting prospective customers to the fake. Kovap is suing the producer. But still, a wholesaler at the toy fair had Kovap’s product line on display at its booth with the bogus tractor right smack in the middle.

“People call and complain to us that they have bought one of our products and it fell apart, and we have to explain that it did not come from us,” laments Josef Kulek, the chairman of the cooperative. “It is a very difficult problem, not only for us, but for the whole industry.”

Family affair
Some of the Czech firms are small family-run enterprises, like tiny Noe of Lipník nad Bečvou. The business got started in 1993 after founder Martina Beckertová won a prize for her designs for cloth toys for young children. Since then, she and her husband have developed a broad assortment of colorful products ranging from finger puppets to children’s costumes, and have found a niche market in preschools.

Merkur, which makes metal construction sets (similar to Erector or Meccano sets), model trains and model steam engines, is also a family enterprise, though with a longer history. Founded in 1920, it was rescued from bankruptcy in the ’90s by the father of current manager Radko Kříž. “It was the first bankruptcy after the revolution,” Kříž says with a wry smile. “My father saw it as a tragedy because the Merkur name is very well-known here and also abroad. It took a lot of time and work, but he eventually rescued the company.”

The enterprising Kříž and his brother recently founded a museum devoted to construction sets (made chiefly by Merkur) in Police nad Metují, where the business is headquartered, which attracted 11,000 visitors last year. Closed while a new exhibition is prepared, the museum is set to reopen March 3. Meanwhile, Kříž himself is hoping to put one of his model steam engines to practical use: “I’m trying to rig up a way for it to charge the batteries of mobile phones.”

Even if he succeeds, it probably will not be the “hot item” at the 2008 fair, though it will certainly attract attention. And every little bit helps the Czech companies that survived the upheavals of the 1990s. Their products have given children and adults across the globe thousands of hours of pure fun.

And, in a world weighed down by the vulgar and unpleasant, what could be a finer achievement?

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