6-11-07, 9:54 am

Book Review: The Real Toy Story by Eric Clark Free Press

In this nevertheless fascinating critique of the exploitative and cynical toy industry, author Eric Clark, unfortunately, seems to have been drawn into more than a little admiration for the ruthless bosses who make it to the 'top.'

His racy, slangy style, peppered with Americanisms and trade jargon, though it reflects the hectic nature of the business, is rather off-putting.

Most people won't have heard of the vast majority of the toys and games dealt with as these are mostly ephemeral, the author rarely describes them and there are no illustrations.

It isn't until about halfway through that there is any overt criticism of this vast, global industry with, of course, the $22 billion US market almost completely dominant and that dominated, in turn, by the enormous companies Hasbro and Mattel, which stop at nothing to protect their products and profits.

Details of takeovers, sackings, law suits, advertising and the like can get a bit trying. We know how capitalism works and the many horrors described are the direct and, indeed, inevitable results of this economic system. Some important developments are noted, however. The scale of marketing to children in the US rose from $100 million in 1980 to over $2 billion by 2004.

Single toys and even games are now, in the commercial world, largely a thing of the past. A doll, for instance, in addition to having endless accessories, will now be linked, through licensing, with films, TV programmes, story books, food products, children's clothing, bicycles and so on, apparently without limit.

Toys can originate almost anywhere in the chain - with the Star Wars films, for example, with TV series such as Dr Who or from a comic character. A new toy will almost never be marketed now without a multimedia juggernaut assured. Children are crushed ideologically.

But what of the producers of these commodities, normally still thought of as toys? Clark's book gets better as it goes on and the most powerful chapter, the last, is on China.

Chinese workers make about 80 per cent of all toys destined for the US market, in sweatshop conditions, in about 8,000 toy factories employing about three million people, mostly young women and girls, in China's open economic zones - that is, zones open to foreign, capitalist investors.

Details of the short, miserable lives of these workers and their suffering are shockingly detailed in the book. For a comparison, you have to look at the ravages of mid-19th century capitalism in Britain, detailed, for example, in Engels's The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.

No wonder, the author states, 'in what is still nominally a Communist country, this (the Pearl River Delta open economic zone) is a heartland of unrestrained, often brutal, capitalism.' The Chinese have a word, 'guolaosi.' It means death from overwork.

The effect that toys and games have on the minds of children is not the main focus of this book, though there are pointers to it. The focus is on the large firms which, even though it does seem a contradiction, are not particularly bothered about children, except as targets for advertising and, of course, as consumers.

They target girls, down to as young as three, mainly with the intention of turning them into sex objects. Boys, similarly, are encouraged to grow into aggressors.

As to creative play, fun, happiness and helping children to grow at their own pace - that's no concern of the toy manufacturers. Their concern is to make money. In the process, children can be robbed of part of their childhood.

Many people on the left ignore the influence of playthings, deriding the whole matter as not worthy of serious attention.

In other words, they do nothing while children are thoroughly indoctrinated with a capitalist ideology during the most impressionable years of their lives - and then try to change it all later on.

Notwithstanding the drawbacks already noted, this book can open the readers' eyes to the insidious warfare perpetrated upon defenceless children.

--From Morning Star. Bob Dixon is the author of Playing Them False: a Study of Children's Toys, Games and Puzzles (Trentham Books).