Dr. Robert Goldberg on Toy Packaging in 1998

I visited the Strong Museum earlier this year, spending a day going through the private library’s archives of Playthings magazine. Bound tome after tome of the toy industry’s past kept me entertained and fascinated for hours, and as I flipped through the magazines I kept my eyes open for interesting articles that I may never see again.

In the February, 1998, issue of Playthings I ran across an unexpected article on toy packaging. “Wanted: More Retailer Input,” written by Dr. Robert Goldberg, was exactly the sort of unusual article I was secretly hoping to find as I explored those old magazines. Goldberg, described in the magazine as “a leading packaging consultant,” offered up his (expert) opinions on the toy packaging of the time.

A few items in the article stood out as particularly entertaining enough that I thought you may enjoy them:

• Goldberg argued that packaging designers — “in China and the off-shore islands” — were out of touch with the needs of packaging at retail. Goldberg’s article forcibly stated that “the time has come for these dynamic retailers to wield more influence on the packaging,” believing that toy packaging was actually harming sales of products. Within the article this belief is supported as Goldberg refers to a research project in which “certain slow-moving items were removed from their packages and displayed on a table.” According to the article there was “heightened interest” to the toys once free of their packaging.

• When it came to toys advertised on television, Goldberg said that the toys “should not be concealed in closed boxes, no matter how attractive the graphics and color may be.” When money is spent showing off a toy on television it is counter-productive to conceal that toy behind a package. Packages exist to “fully reveal the toy within and the anticipated fun that it promised when the child plays with it.” Commercials handle that effectively, showing the toy in action, so to hide the toy behind text descriptions and photos negates some of the value of the commercial.

• Goldberg closes the article with a discussion on color, and his snapshot lesson in color and packaging is something I think I’ll share with our production staff at the office. (After all, we can always use another point of view when it comes to something as vital to product sales as color and packaging design.) Additionally, the suggestion that “the same background color be used on both the front panel as well as the side panels to enable a busy consumer to recognize the package when seen from different views” is one of those things that we’ve all seen in practice, if not always as successfully as we would like.

For a single-page article there’s a lot of great info, and Goldberg reiterates his primary statement that toy packaging should not be designed in a vacuum by closing the article with: “Today’s packaging designers have almost a limitless opportunity to create aesthetic designs. But they need input from professional retail executives.” Absolutely, and I know the few times I have taken potential game packaging to retailers we’ve received wonderful feedback that improved the end product. It’s easy to exist and create behind closed walls, but by sharing design concepts with retailers every package can be improved in some way.