Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2014/04/11/playmobil_40th_anniversary/

Happy 40th Playmobil: Reg looks back at small, rude world of our favourite tiny toys

Little men straddle LOHAN, attend tiny G20 Summit... ah, sweet memories...

By Jasper Hamill

Posted in Bootnotes, 11th April 2014 15:05 GMT

How would you celebrate the 40th anniversary of Playmobil? Make a block booking, obviously.

Leaving aside the fact that joke probably refers more to their minifig mates, El Reg is delighted to see that the toy is celebrating its 40th anniversary.

Our love of the tiny happy figurines is longstanding and cannot be rationally explained.

So it is with some pleasure that we tell you that during this month in 1974, the world's first Playmobil toys hit shelves around the world.

Known as a "klicky", the first range of figures included knights, native Americans and builders - a combination not seen again until the rise of the Village People a few years afterwards.

They were devised by the German inventor Hans Beck, who convinced the company Brandstätter to start producing them.

Four decades later, the world's Playmobil population is growing faster than humanity. According to the German firm's boffins, 3.2 Playmobil figures are produced every second, whereas just 2.6 babies are born in the same time period.

On its Twitter feed, the British Playmobil team has been attempting to whip up a bit of enthusiasm for the 40th anniversary.

Hopefully it's not toys based on the bizarre diorama seen beneath, which shows a creepy man from the seventies corralling a pack of dogs with a string sausages.

As with every period of mass immigration, the influx of plastic figures has set the world a-chattering. So what sort of people are these Playmobil folk?

Hipsters, apparently. Just replace the word Williamsburg for Shoreditch and you've got a picture-perfect portrait of a young urban Nathan Barley type.

From the department of Rude Re-enactments...

Of course, as regular Reg readers know, our love and appreciation of Playmobil stretches back a good few years ...You'll find The Register's full coverage of all that is Playmobile, featuring a good many of our famous "re-enactments", here.

Our shock image of the Tenerife sex dangle

Our Playmobil re-enactment of the naked middle-aged Brit tourist who found himself dangling from a Tenerife apartment block.

Police bust Playmobil Jesus

Just one enlarged segment of Lester Haines' magnificent depiction of the 2009 G20 Summit.

Our four-step Playmobil guide to becoming a Taoist master

The El Reg guide to becoming a Taoist master

Our playmonaut tries out a jetpack, watched by a circling vulture

And finally, our heroic Playmonaut, who gave his life for the cause after hastily pulling out of SPEARS

We'd like to offer a hearty big up to reader Robin for pointing out the 40th anniversary of Playmobil.

He wrote: "If you guys do write the story and I get a hat-tip at the end, then that would be the pinnacle of my otherwise tedious IT career."

There you go Robin. We hope that's cheered you up. Now get back to work. ®