Spotted Online – “The rise and fall of Palitoy” at BBC
There’s a great history of Palitoy at the BBC.com site and I have to recommend that you read it right now. The British toy company sold everything from Action Man (G.I. Joe in Europe) to Star Wars, and the article even shares the fact that Palitoy was a subsidiary of General Mills during the late sixties, the seventies, and up to 1984 when General Mills “decided to abandon all European product development.”
I didn’t remember anything mentioned about the General Mills/Palitoy connection in Playing By Different Rules*, but going back and checking the book’s index it turns out there’s one minor mention of the company in relation to the Monopoly boardgame. I don’t feel so bad now that I didn’t know until this article that Palitoy was owned by General Mills.
A truly fantastic read. Now I ask: Does anyone know of any books about Palitoy?
Related articles
- Long before IDW/Boom series Star Trek/Planet of the Apes: The Primate Directive a toy company had a familiar idea! (thedorkreview.blogspot.com)
- Evel Knievel, Barbie, and Star Wars “Early Bird Kits” in 1977 (battlegrip.com)
- French Star Wars from 1984 (battlegrip.com)
Hi Philip,
I have noticed you have seen the BBC website article about Palitoy that introduced the Inside Out East Midlands film and you have recommended it to your readers. Unfortunately the producer of the article got many things wrong ( e.g. that Spirograph and Airfix were Palitoy products in the 60’s. The company Denys Fisher that owned Spirograph was bought by General Mills as part of its toy group in 1970 and Airfix did not become part of the group until 1981 ) and quoted me saying something I didn’t say which was wrong. I have rewritten the article to explain a more real story about the rise and fall of Palitoy. The media is notorious for getting its facts wrong when interviewing people for stories and the consequence of this is that the information it broadcasts becomes “fact” or “muddies” the correct information already out there.
Star Wars and Action Man : The rise and fall of Palitoy
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Action Man, Care Bears and Star Wars figures were toys almost every British child in the 1970s and 80s couldn’t wait to get their hands on. So why did Palitoy, the company that made them, fall into decline?
They were once the must-have playthings coveted by children across the UK.
Christmases and birthdays were rarely complete without the presence of an Action Man, a Care Bear, a Tiny Tears doll or a Star Wars figurine. All of these toys were made at Palitoy – a company based in the industrial town of Coalville, in Leicestershire.
Yet at the height of its selling powers, the firm was being wound down and closed. What led to its demise?
The company, originally named Cascelloid, was founded in 1919 by a man named Alfred Pallett. He started off in Leicester producing toy windmills and baby rattles and in 1925 produced his first doll. By 1931 Cascelloid was owned by a larger British plastics firm called BXL.
By the 1950s and 60s, Cascelloid’s toy section, now firmly based in Coalville, was performing strongly and marketing its large range of toys with the name Palitoy – a nod to the company’s founder. ( The Palitoy name was registered in 1935 and used by Cascelloid in 1937 when the doll assembly was moved to Coalville )
In the 1960s brands such as Tressy and Tiny Tears were really taking off. Alongside them was one of Palitoy’s most enduringly popular toys – Action Man. Launched in 1966, Action Man was originally based on the American toy G I Joe.
All of this home-grown success brought Palitoy to the attention of the international market and in 1968 it was sold to the US giant General Mills, which already owned other American toy producers.
Following the change of Palitoy’s ownership Action Man ironically became inherently British, with Action Man driving Land Rovers and Scorpion Tanks and wearing anything from a Grenadier Guards uniform to a Manchester United strip: and the character’s most famous feature, his gripping hand, also had its origins close to home.
Former chief toy designer Bob Brechin said he modelled the body part on his own. “We turned him into a British toy,” he said. “We came up with the idea of giving him hair on his head, rather than just painted hair, and gave him his distinctive gripping hand.”
By the late 70s, the success of Action Man meant expansion for the business, with sales topping 20 million.
As well as creating new toys such as Girls World, Striker and Mainline Railways, Palitoy was producing many of its toys under licence, meaning it manufactured and marketed other companies’ ideas and paid for the privilege.
One of the most successful franchises it took on was Star Wars, which became the company’s biggest-ever seller. The range of toys was taken from the American sister company Kenner, which had negotiated the toy licence with George Lucas, but Palitoy was responsible for the redesign of some Star Wars products for a UK audience, including a cardboard, self-assembly version of the Death Star.
Mr Brechin said Kenner’s plastic playset was probably considered too expensive for the British market. Nowadays, the card Death Star is hugely collectable. “I am really chuffed that the collectors, even in the States, are so keen on our design,” Mr Brechin said.
But behind the cuddly toys and action figures, a corporate strategy was at work that would spell the end for the company, and by the early 80s, the production of the most of the toys had shifted to Hong Kong and then China. It was a cheaper process, but the beginning of the end for Palitoy.
The first two years of the decade saw redundancies within the company, despite the fact that, by 1983, it held between 10 and 15% of the British toy market. In 1984, Palitoy’s design and development department was shut down when General Mills decided to abandon all European product development. Two years later General Mills was out of toy marketing altogether and its toy division became Kenner Parker Toys. ( Kenner and Parker were the two major companies in the General Mills toy group. What actually happened was General Mills floated the toy group with General Mills employees getting equivalent shares. )
Action Man was no longer in the range and the licence was returned to Hasbro, one of Kenner Parker’s biggest competitors. Palitoy had ceased trading as such and in effect became a marketing outlet for Kenner Parker, repackaging products ( designed in the United States ) for European markets.
It wasn’t long before Kenner Parker was acquired by Tonka and in 1994 the Coalville site was eventually closed when it was in the ownership of Hasbro, although production had ended there many years earlier
Yet today the Palitoy name is big business once again – this time, at collectors’ markets. One Star Wars figure, the bounty hunter Boba Fett, sold for £18,000 at auction, which experts say is a world record for an action toy.
“It’s crazy, the prices they fetch,” said Mr Brechin. “You can’t believe people are collecting things that were just work to us. I just wish I had kept a few.”
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Inside Out was broadcast on BBC One East Midlands on Monday 14 September 2015. The film is on BBC iplayer for 30 days after broadcast.