Merchandising ante-litteram

If I go back to my youth, the first action figure inspired from a show I remember is an Interceptor from the series U.F.O. One of those starfighters with a single missile on its “nose” that had to fly back to Moon Base to reload after it had shot. A tactical nonsense but that was sci-fi TV shows prehistory!

Then I remember being very envious of a friend of mine who owned an Eagle from the series Space 1999. It was a very expensive one, you could change parts of it. I couldn’t afford it at that time. But I had a die-cast model of Herbie, the Love Bug, you could split into two parts pressing a hidden button, just like in the first episode.

Then Ufo Robot Goldrake / Grendizer puppets landed from outer space on our playgrounds, Rambo’s plastic knife appeared on someone’s belt, ET doll bewitched countless of kids… Licensed merchandising was becoming more and more common and popular, piece by piece. Last – but not least – the Dancing Baby Groot vinyl figure from the new Marvel Cinematic Universe film “Guardians of the Galaxy”.

One interesting thing only a few know is that to find the very start of this connection between dreams and mass production we have to go back to a time much earlier than Disney Consumer Products foundation in 1929. And we have to move to Vienna where, in 1791, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart premiered his Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte). 100 performances followed that same year and the success was great – and still is. Think that Mozart, together with Georg Friedrich Händel, is one of the first musicians who abandoned patronage to start living on the money he could earn with concerts, shows, editions and… Merchandising? I wouldn’t dare saying it was ment or done on purpose, on the contrary it wasn’t probably even expected, but newspaper at the time reported of a surprising increase in the sales of the “Papageno flute”! (see picture top right).

Now picture this: a boy from more than two centuries ago, standing in front of a toy shop window in Vienna pulling at his mother’s sleeve and weeping for that flute. He is behaving exactly as we were, as our sons and daughters are now and probably how our grandchildren will. Same feeling, same emotion, same desire to handle something resembling a character to play his part, same need to show specific symbols to foster a sense of belonging, same necessity to own a must-have item to honour our merciless pact with consumerism. As then, as now. Isn’t that peculiar? Well, actually not. It just reminds us that we are all human, no matter the time and place, and that if we lever or business on the most basic human attitudes and behaviours we’re on the right track to make it successful, fruitful and long lasting.

The Gallery of the Memory