Martin Luther Playmobil Toy is Fastest-Selling of All Time

Sunday, February 22nd, 2015

The fastest-selling Playmobil figure of all time depicts the founding father of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, Martin Luther:

The German toy manufacturer announced this week that the first edition of 34,000 pieces sold out in less than 72 hours, forcing the company to urgently request its factory in Malta to produce more of the so-called “little Luthers”. Fans have been warned that the next batch will not be available until the end of April.

Playmobil Martin Luther

The plastic toy, complete with a quill, German-language bible and cheery grin, was produced for the German and Nuremberg tourist boards and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, as Germany gears up to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in 2017.

Their Albrecht Dürer figure also sold well.

Playmobil Albrecht Duerer

Comments

  1. William Newman says:

    Interesting. I wonder whether this is the impact of the usual grouchy 11% or the impact of a rather larger group of customers, the kind of unperson customer base that gives Fox its large viewership.

    I also wonder what historical narratives the current controversies fit into most neatly from the German point of view. Here in the USA, it seems as though Obama has put considerable effort into repeating Macaulay’s James II as farce. I can’t think of any comparably close historical match for the current German politics, but that might just be because I’m largely ignorant of the long history of empires and vast coalitions that the locals could mine for analogies to the current multinational political and financial weirdness.

    Also, looking at this from another angle, it’s too bad my dimly remembered highschool German is inadequate for twisting “hier stande ich” into “here I sell [like hotcakes], I can do nothing else”.

Leave a Reply