“Energy Makes Toy Firm Success”
The Nashua Telegraph from May 14 of 1975 offers up this excellent UPI article which features Mego at the top of its game. There are details in this article that we must never forget, and in reading this we can almost see how Mego’s sudden rise could lead to the level of arrogance that would eventually destroy the company. If there’s one thing Mego will be forever known for, it will be the decision to pass on making Star Wars toys.
There are great things to learn about the toy industry from old newspaper articles like this, and I can definitely see how we’re soon reaching the point where someone writes a book exploring the industry’s growth over the last five decades. For example, this particular quote from the article has a detail that deserves some attention.
“In catapulting Mego from 300th place to the top ten in the $3 billion a year toy industry, Abrams did a number of unconventional things. For one, he decided if a big mail order house such as Sears, Roebuck could sell toys the year around, so could Mego. Traditionally, small toymakers had depended on the Christmas season for 75 per cent of their business.
But after he had spent money tooling up for his proprietary toys keyed to Hollywood and TV characters, he decided on a tremendous consumer advertising campaign in the August dog days. Competitors scoffed but the sales were so good department stores began stocking up on Mego toys.”
$3 billion in 1975 is roughly $13 billion in today’s dollars (inflation sucks), but when we check Toy Industry Association numbers we find that the 2014 total was $22 billion; the overall industry has grown a lot in the last forty years.
Related articles
- Spotted Online – Sears Star Fortress Playset at JKM (battlegrip.com)
- Spotted Online – Interview with Mark Bellomo at Geekster (battlegrip.com)
In fairness to Mego, the personal accounts I’ve encountered from both Marty Abrams from Mego and from the representative from Fox (I forget his name) who came to pitch the film to them, it was really not their fault in this case.
Marty and the relevant staff were away in Japan meeting Takara when the rep from Fox came to see if they wanted Star Wars, based on the prior success of Mego’s Planet of the Apes line. When he learned the reason Marty wasn’t there from the staff that was present, that he was involved in developing a new space toy product and would not be back soon, the rep figured that Mego wouldn’t be interested and went to Kenner next, which was literally next door. And the rest is history.
That’s not to say Mego didn’t do some really, really audaciously bad things later, though…
@microbry – Are there any links to interviews or articles on this? I’d love to dig deeper!
IIRC, the interviews were in a couple of print magazines that I may have in my archive, though I seem to recall one online. I’ll do some digging. There might be some info archived in the old Micropolis Embassy Yahoo Group too.
Marty also told this same story at MicroCon ’98. I *might* have a video recording of that, though most of the audio didn’t come out very good from what I recall, sadly.