The He-Man Effect: How American Toymakers Sold You Your Childhood

In this impassioned and incensed survey of a half-century of hawking toys to kids, Brown (Tetris) investigates toy manufacturers’ strategies for weaving their products into the fabric of American childhood. Brown’s account opens with the post-WWII ascendance of Mickey Mouse (who first appeared in 1928) and other cartoon stars with limitless potential for commercial licensing and the concurrent deployment of sophisticated psychological principles in marketing. From there, he chronicles the FCC’s evolving regulation of children’s TV programming and the wily workarounds of toymakers like Hasbro, culminating in the 1980s bonanza of daytime cartoons that blurred the line between entertainment and advertising. Toggling between PR innovator Edward Bernays and G.I. Joe, television reformer Peggy Charren and Transformers, Brown presents an enjoyable if breezy overview that scrutinizes the inflexible “kung fu grip” of nostalgia (recently on display in the toxic underside of deeply entrenched Star Wars fandom) and cautions against the yoking of children’s toys to vast content libraries that could crowd out imagination with scripted instructions for play. Fittingly, the art’s Ben-Day dots and flattened renderings of action figures nod to syndicated strips and anti-capitalist alt-comics alike. This accessible examination of the wars waged on after-school television and in the toy aisle should interest any reader attuned to the cultural critiques of Naomi Klein and Adam Curtis, as well as those who catch themselves humming the ThunderCats theme. (July)