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Toy stories

Despite Western competition and bankruptcy, the Igráčci — and the rest of the country's toy industry — soldier on

June 13th, 2007 issue

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
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Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
Companies working with wood or metal are able to maintain a strong foothold in the toy market.
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For many Czechs, the assortment of playthings offered by the toy shop chain Bambule evokes childhood memories. Aside from the Barbie dolls, Legos and Thomas the Tank Engine locomotives, Bambule sells handmade wooden puppets, miniature Škodas and stuffed bedtime-cartoon heroes.
Among these traditional toys are Igráčci — plastic, index-finger-sized people whose noseless smiles were once the staple of Soviet-era playpens.  
“Today, I carry them mostly out of nostalgia,” said Jaroslav Novozámský, the company’s owner.
Igráčci were introduced to the country in 1977 as the mascots of the Czechoslavak toy manufacturer Igra. After 57 years in the business, Igra filed for bankruptcy last December, unable to withstand the international competition that is currently testing traditional toymakers.
In January, Bambule bought Igra’s manufacturing plants, assuring that the Igráčci would outlive their namesake. Bambule plans to continue making them, but their production will require extensive modernization, which Novozámský says he’d like to pursue.
“Occasionally, we produce a new batch [of Igráčci], but they’re barely scraping by,” he said. “We need to invest into new technology.”
Since the fall of communism, the toy industry has struggled to keep abreast with foreign importers. The novelty of Western products by toymakers such as Mattel and Lego has stifled demand for local brands, and as toys manufactured in Asia have flooded the market, the profits of local toymakers have plummeted.
“After 1989, there was an enormous growth in competition,” said Jiří Šťastný, marketing director for the Union of Czech Production Cooperatives.
Plastic toymakers such as Igra have been especially hurt by the new competition because of the high energy costs of production.
“Plastic toys require the biggest investment — each new line of toys costs around 3 million Kč [$142,721],” said Pavel Malý, manufacturing director of the Czech toymaker Směr.
Because efficiency was not a factor, the high costs of production were not taken into consideration during the communist regime. But then energy costs went up, and it was no longer possible to make plastic toys at affordable prices, Novozámský said.
Igra was especially vulnerable because its outdated presses required more energy than the newer technology of its competitors.
 “Unlike some other manufacturing companies, Igra was not lucky enough to undergo modernization right before the revolution. The company worked with the same machines since its founding in 1950,” Novozámský said.
Throughout the 1980s, millions of Igráčci were exported throughout the Eastern bloc, and enjoyed popularity in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and East Germany. According to Igra spokesmen, the number of Igráčci made over the decade was equivalent to the population of a small country. A few even made their way to France and the Netherlands.
Despite Igra’s outdated technology, Igráčci survived the 1989 regime change. In 1992, Igra added noses to the figurines, and the assortment of traditional Soviet-era workers such as coal miners and construction workers was supplemented with capitalist icons including women travelers.
The company also produced lines of dolls, wooden ship models and plastic cars that retained their popularity among nostalgic customers, Šťastný said. But, by the mid-1990s, demand for the plastic miniatures dropped, forcing Igra to downsize Igráčci to 10 percent of overall production.
“The stagnation of the late 1990s kept us from making new models,” said Igra’s former director, Oldřich Mašek.  
Unlike company insiders Mašek and Novozámský, who attribute Igra’s collapse to increased competition and outdated equipment, Šťastný says the bankruptcy was caused internally.
“Fifteen years ago, Igra was in first place on the market,” he said. “Igra did not fail because of economic pressures. Its management caused its collapse.”
Bagging competition
Igra was not the only toy manufacturer to face financial difficulty in the 1990s. In order to adapt to the volatile market, manufacturers such as Směr, once Igra’s biggest competitor, survived by reorienting its focus.
“A majority of our production used to be toys,” Malý said, but since the mid-1990s, Směr shifted its production toward plastic goods including shopping bags and food wrappers. Today, toys account for 10 percent to 15 percent of the company’s total production.
While plastic toy manufacturers struggle, companies working with wood or metal are able to maintain a stronghold on the market.
“The companies that are successful today prosper because they make toys out of materials that Asia has not learned how to work with,” Šťastný said.
As the leading metal toy exporter in Europe, Kovap, a traditional Czech toy producer, combats rising labor and energy costs with craftsmanship.
“Certain parts of our montage process require a high level of skill that [Asian toy manufacturers] haven’t achieved,” said Kovap Chairman Josef Kulek. “Our products are more expensive, but the quality is hard to replicate.”
In spite of Igra’s downfall, Pavel Ješátko, marketing director of the popular Czech toy distributor Legáček a Malovánek, says he is optimistic about the industry’s future.
“The initial demand for toys that weren’t available [before 1989] is gradually fading,” he said. “As customers become more discerning, they will look for different, higher-quality products, and their tastes will shift back to Czech toys.”


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