After Mattel took a loss on the Clash of the Titans toys the almost did it again with Conan the Barbarian.

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.

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Dave Young:

Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast, Dave Young here alongside Steven Semple, and we’re talking about empires, empires. And Steven whispered the subject of today’s empire in my ear, and I would’ve been hard-pressed to call it an empire because I don’t know all that much about it. But I think again, it’s cartoon property that happened after I was pretty much done watching cartoons. He-Man, right? As in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, that He-Man?

Stephen Semple:

That He-Man.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

That He-Man. When you think about it, it’s toys. There’s been movies. There’s the cartoon. It’s pretty huge.

Dave Young:

Yeah. Okay. I’m anxious to hear about it.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

And is he the one that’s become kind of a meme, too? Like, there’s He-Man meme?

Stephen Semple:

Oh, sure. Oh, look, there’s a meme for everything today. So it’s really a story of lost opportunities, but at the same time, sort of seeing changes in the marketplace and doing some really interesting things because in 1975, The Six Million Dollar Man really changes action figures.

Dave Young:

Sure.

Stephen Semple:

Because to make an action figure, you’re only licensing from others, and it was product-orientated rather than brand-driven, and along came The Six Million Dollar Man, and it was a guy. Right?

Dave Young:

I mean, we were all running around going…

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Young:

Pretend we could see, and hear, and lift things.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. And along that time, out was coming the movie, The Clash of the Titans. And so there was this whole thing of, okay, let’s create action figures around Clash of the Titans. And the movie did poorly. And so the toys did poorly. And Mattel had been involved in that. And this shaped Mattel’s thinking because when Star Wars came along, Ray Wagner at Mattel passed on it because of his experience with Clash of the Titans. It’s like, “Well, we’re not doing this.”

Dave Young:

Wow, okay.

Stephen Semple:

Because again, they wanted to create the toy, right? The Star Wars they wanted to create the toys before the movie came out. So another movie comes along, Conan the Barbarian.

Dave Young:

Sure. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Right? And Mattel is like, “All right, we’re going to get all over this.” And they end up buying the license for Conan. They made samples, and they had all these expenses, and then Mattel discovers Conan the Barbarian is an R-rated movie.

Dave Young:

Yeah. No kids are going to see it.

Stephen Semple:

Can’t do it as a toy.

Dave Young:

Oh, no.

Stephen Semple:

But at the same time, they sort of started looking at all of these action figures that are out there, and all of the male figures are kind of wimpy. And they had started down this exploration of making a Conan the Barbarian style action figure. So they thought, why don’t we do this massive figure? And they first did these ones called Tankhead, and Bullet Head, and H-Man. And they wanted them to be comic book-like and bring action to the figure and how they stand. And they were making them bulkier and create this visual shelf presence and over-the-top muscles, all these ideas that they had drawn from Conan the Barbarian.

Dave Young:

All right.

Stephen Semple:

And what they also noticed is that when kids play with things, they want to have the power to do what they want to do.

Dave Young:

Absolutely.

Stephen Semple:

Which is where the line, “I have the power,” came from.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

Where Conan holds up the sword, and he says, “Oh, I have the power.” Right? That whole idea came from watching kids play with toys. And in fact, a lot of the ideas that came from the toy play, they learned from watching girls play with Barbies in terms of-

Dave Young:

Makes sense.

Stephen Semple:

… how they do it and then the other-

Dave Young:

But you’re creating story on the fly.

Stephen Semple:

You’re creating story on the fly. Yeah. And you have the power to create your own story. And what they also noticed was while kids like thinking about dreaming about things in the future, they also like drawing upon things from the old, which is part of the reason why they created things like this Castle Grayskull, right? Yeah. Now, one of the other things that was really interesting about Castle Grayskull when they created it… Now, first of all, when they created it was very expensive. It was going to retail for like $20. And everyone said, “Well, no one’s going to buy this.” But the interesting thing is eve...