REVIEWED: SEASON 3 (ALL EPISODES) | WHERE TO WATCH: NETFLIX
Back for a third season of four episodes, The Toys That Made Us is an unashamed nostalgia-dive into childhood. The first two season brought us the histories of Barbie, Transformers, Hello Kitty, and Star Wars figures, and the third season doesn’t let up on the story if iconic playthings.
Pitching off with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Season 3 also features Power Rangers, wrestling figures, and – continuing the loose, one-girl’s-toy-per-season attraction – My Little Pony. The shows have a familiar make-up, with talking head pieces from the toys’ creators, and those who subsequently worked on the lines, and often include longtime collectors, sharing their experiences of the toys as they appeared on the shelves.
Each episode gives a fair bit of background, and lots of information that few but the hardest of hardcore toy fans would know. With those properties borrowed from – or expanding into – other media, there’s also brief overviews of the genesis of those ideas, as with the first episode’s focus on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book, and its creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.
While there’s something for everyone in these shows, this is a series clearly aimed at those of a certain age, the first generation who were unable/unwilling to let go of their childhoods as they moved into adulthood, and whose childhood toys and TV programmes came from a pre-Internet, pre-collectable time. For those of us that fall into this audience, even the shows that feature the toys that were not our particular flavour of escapism hold the interest; these are the toys that our brothers, sisters, neighbours, and schoolmates cherished.
The tone can sometimes be a little irreverent, but this is a labour of love, and those interviewed are clearly having the time of their life revisiting something that, for most of them, was the product of just another day at the Hasbro, Kenner, or Ideal office. There’s little bitterness, too, which you might have expected from workers-for-hire who generated massive profits for their corporations, and which tells its own story about the kind of person attracted to designing kids’ toys.
Series creator Brian Volk-Weiss has had a further series greenlit by Netflix – The Moves That Made Us – and it’s hard to imagine the streaming service not picking up Toys for a fourth outing. Who knows, we may get to see the birth of M.A.S.K., the Care Bears, Madballs, or Rainbow Brite yet!
With the real world for grown-ups becoming increasingly unhinged and unpredictable, there’s a security and warmth in fleeing back to your childhood years. The Toys That Made Us allows us to do exactly that, and long may it continue. Now, where’s our Spirograph episode?
