The Toys That Made Us television series is an eight-episode documentary that focuses on the history of important toy-lines. The first four episodes started airing on Netflix back in December of last year, covering Star Wars, He-Man, Barbie, and G.I. Joe. The next four episodes will be available on Netflix in just a couple of days (May 25th), featuring LEGO, Transformers, Hello Kitty and Star Trek. 🙂
If you are a regular reader here, you might remember that back in February, our contributor, William, shared that he consulted for the LEGO episode of The Toys That Made Us via a series of interviews and correspondence with the producers. You can read about his experiences and insights here: Consulting for The Toys That Made Us Film. Below is a short clip from the LEGO episode of The Toys That Made Us published by the Nerdist, giving us a sneak-peek.
Of course, as LEGO fans, we are most interested in the episode about LEGO, but the other episodes are very interesting too. The first episode about Star Wars covers how both Mattel and Hasbro rejected George Lucas to produce toys for the Star Wars movie. Eventually, Lucasfilm signed with Kenner Products, a small toy company that was later purchased by Hasbro. The second episode is about the history of Barbie, one of the most influential toys in modern history, selling over a billion dolls globally. The third episode discusses the initial success and eventual demise of the Masters of the Universe action figure line by Mattel. And the fourth episode covers the first action figure in toy history and one of the most influential boys’ toys of all time, Hasbro’s G.I. Joe.
If you would like the watch the LEGO episode and other upcoming episodes, they will be available streaming on Netflix on May 25th. Below is the trailer for the four new episodes, featuring the history of LEGO, Transformers, Hello Kitty and Star Trek.
What do you think? Are you looking forward to the LEGO episode of The Toys That Made Us documentary? Have you watched any of the previous episodes? Which toys, besides LEGO, had an impact on your life? Feel free to share and discuss in the comment section below! 😉
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I can’t wait. This so cool. When they did the Star Wars toys It was like walking down memory lane and how many action figures I had ( I still have ). It’s amazing on how much the action figures have improved over the years.
Really looking forward to this! A great series so far. I also heard that they are going to continue with further episodes besides just the original eight.
Looking forward to this too! The other episodes were well done. I hope this will be good too. My only concern is that we have seen so many lego documentaries we may not find them as interesting as those less familiar with it.
That was a concern for the team when I consulted with them back in 2016. There is of course going to be some basic overlap to give context, but they were hoping to do something different than the other LEGO documentaries.
We’ll soon see if they managed to do that. Here’s hoping!
The upcoming Transformers episode seems interesting.
Otherwise, I had quite a bunch of Playmobil growing up, and my friend would have wanted to see a My Little Pony episode, instead of Star Trek (which he claims never had much of an impact on the toy business, to begin with).
Can’t wait! Looks good from the trailer!