LAKE CONSTANCE, Germany — Hans Beck, the German inventor of Playmobil toys, sturdy action figures designed to encourage imaginative play that quickly became a success after their 1974 debut, has died. He was 79.
Beck, who retired in 1998, developed the simple plastic figures — a knight, a construction worker and an American Indian — partly as a reaction to the early-1970s oil crisis. Because plastic is made from oil, it became too expensive to make the large plastic toys that his employer, the Brandstatter Group, was known for.
The owner of the German company asked Beck to design a toy system, a series of interlocking parts that could be added to and built upon.
When Beck took stock of what was already available, he mainly saw tin soldiers that didn’t bend or move.
Following his toymaking motto — “no horror, no superficial violence, no short-lived trends” — Beck devised a “little guy” just less than 3 inches tall that fit well in a child’s hand. His figures had moving arms and legs that bent at the hip and wore snap-on clothes.
When the Playmobil figures debuted at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1974, they were a resounding flop. Role-playing games as a series were a new concept that most adults could not relate to. But one Dutch company ordered a year’s supply.
Since then, more than 2 billion of the figures have been sold in more than 70 countries, according to the Brandstatter Group, Germany’s largest toy producer and the parent company of Playmobil.
The line has greatly expanded to includes fairies, Egyptologists, knights, vikings, dentists and airport-security staff along with the requisite housing or vehicles. The pieces are not cheap — three Legionnaires can cost $10 while some of the larger set pieces cost more than $100.
One of Beck’s favorite pieces was the pirate ship, introduced in 1978.
He was born May 6, 1929, in Thuringia, a central state in Germany, the oldest son of a self-employed trader. His parents divorced when he was young, and both remarried. He grew up making toys for his eight younger half-siblings.
After training as a cabinet maker, he was hired as a toy developer at Brandstatter in 1958 and rose to head of design before retiring.
