Kenner Products President Bernard Loomis and eponymous mail-order magnate Richard Sears were cut from the same cloth and each experienced enormous success during very distinct periods in American commercial history.
Both were larger-than-life business titans and visionaries, and each figured out how to harness the influence of media to sensationalize the products they sold. The pair also shared an understanding of the incredible power of mail-order. Loomis and Sears saw this method as much more than a simple mechanism to deliver products to customers; to them, mail-order was downright magical.
Like Sears before him, Loomis learned the magic of mail-order through a mix of experience and “gut instinct.” However, according to marketing researchers Joanne Peck and Suzanne Shu, the allure of mail-order is also rooted in several psychological elements.
Peck
and Shu state:
“Research finds that merely touching an object results in an increase in
perceived ownership of that object. For
nonowners, or buyers, perceived ownership can be increased with either mere
touch or with imagery encouraging touch.”
Based on this theory, advertising that incorporates vivid interactive imagery of an item encourages potential customers to imagine touching or interacting with that item, eliciting the sensation of perceived value and ownership. This concept, known as “endowment effect,” is believed to be a primary factor to the success of mail-order catalogs and printed advertising. The anticipation of potentially receiving the advertised item was especially effective on children, who rarely, if ever, receive mail.
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Richard Sears was the undisputed king of mail-order. He was born in Stewartville, Minnesota on December 7, 1863, and was a product of the “Golden Age of Railroads.” His first job was serving as a telegraph operator for the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway. Instilled with a strong work ethic, he quickly climbed the company ladder and was promoted to the position of station agent at the North Redwood Falls train station. But the trajectory of his life changed forever during this time, when he purchased an unclaimed shipment of pocket watches from a Chicago manufacturer.
The advent of the railroad made pocket watches a necessity for most Americans, especially those in the rapidly expanding industry, and Sears made quick work of selling the watches to eager customers throughout the area, making a profit of over $5,000 dollars in the process. Sears was fascinated with the burgeoning mail-order industry that the railroad had facilitated, and he used his profits to start the R.W. Sears Watch Company. Writing bombastic advertising copy came naturally to him, and he placed ads in newspapers, almanacs and farm publications to promote not only his watches, but also the benefits of mail-order commerce.
In 1887, Sears moved his operations to the national railroad hub of Chicago and hired a watchmaker named Alvah Roebuck to help repair the watches he sold. The two men formed Sears, Roebuck & Co. in 1891 and published their first watch catalog two years later.
Following the example of contemporaries like Montgomery Ward, the Sears & Roebuck catalog grew to over 500 pages by the turn of the century and sold practically everything that industrial America could produce. Rural customers were quick to dub the publication “Wish Books,” as many could only afford the dreams that were elicited from within its pages. For those with the means to purchase the wares touted in the catalog, each item that was magically delivered to their doorsteps was an ingenious memento of the industrial age.
During these early years, Sears sharpened his Barnumesque style of advertising to sell the magic of the modern world to his customers using enhanced imagery, along with an elaborately detailed description presented in common vernacular that even the most ill-educated farmer could understand. Sears’ style of advertising was so effective that he would regularly overextend himself and sell huge quantities of an item without having enough stock on hand to fill the orders he received. As a result, he was constantly seeking out manufacturers who could produce the item as quickly and inexpensively as possible, so that he could fulfill the mountain of orders.
Sears’ signature blend of salesmanship, hucksterism, and sensational advertising copy canonized him in the eyes of his clientele and created the company’s fiercely loyal and trusting customer base. Many customers, especially children, saw Sears as an almost enigmatic figure akin to Santa Claus. In fact, when Sears died in 1914, his successors understood the significance of his now legend well enough to keep the news of his passing from the public. The tactic was a success, and many customers continued to address their orders directly to “Mr. Sears” for most of the first half of the 20th century.
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Sears, Roebuck & Co. continued to nurture and grow the customer base that Richard Sears had worked so hard to develop, by committing itself to rigid quality-control standards, as well as by streamlining the process of filling orders promptly through a growing network of distribution plants throughout the country. When the nation’s economy roared in the 1920s, Sears expanded into retail stores to maintain its relevance in a rapidly evolving commercial landscape. When the economy collapsed in the 1930s, the company reached out to its struggling patrons via philanthropic endeavors designed to help them recover financially and prosper. It was in the depths of the Great Depression that the company happened upon perhaps its most captivating idea yet.
In 1933, Sears published the first “Christmas Book” as a 78-page supplement to its main catalog. At a time when most Americans were forced to tighten their economic belts to the breaking point, Sears answered the call with a cornucopia of plenty, advertising dolls, toy cars, Mickey Mouse watches, and Lionel toy train sets. Although few could have afforded the luxuries in that first volume of holiday wishes, it gave the children of the nation hope for better days ahead. By the time the United States victoriously exited World War II, the Sears Christmas Book had become a perennial favorite for families who could now afford to indulge in some of the holiday wonders that spilled from its pages.
In 1968, Sears officially renamed their Christmas Book the “Wish Book,” and in the years that followed, it became a magical conduit through which a new generation of children believed they could channel their holiday wishes directly to the man at the North Pole. It was this adoration that grabbed the attention of a small Cincinnati toy company, which would soon make the iconic publication a powerful component of its marketing arsenal.
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The Man with the Golden Gut
Less than a decade after the death of Richard Sears, Bernard Loomis was born in New York City on July 4, 1923. Bernie, as he was known, grew up poor in the hardscrabble borough of the Bronx and was a product of the “Golden Age of Advertising.”
Although he would become an icon in the toy business as an adult, he had few, if any, toys as a child. Instead, Loomis played stickball with the neighborhood kids and collected baseball cards, as well as autographs of the era’s baseball stars. He also spent a considerable amount of time poring over the pages of mail-order catalogs and dreaming of something better. In fact, Loomis famously told a story at a Lionel sales meeting in which he elaborated, “The toy memory of my youth foretold some imaginative creative capabilities. Lionel trains were beyond my economic reach, but I had a full color Lionel catalog which gave me ownership of every item in it.” Like Richard Sears, Loomis understood the stuff of imagination, as well as the power of mail-order, and he used this “magic” to reinvent the toy industry.
Loomis enrolled at the New York University School of Commerce, but like many young men of his generation, he was called upon for military service in World War II. He served in the Philippines with the Air Corps Combat Communications Team, returning to NYU following his service to his country. Upon graduation, Loomis landed a job in the toy industry as a manufacturer’s representative. He teamed up with Norm Samilson and they formed a small firm named Samilson-Loomis. It was through this partnership that Bernie began to establish strong working relationships with retailers such as Korvette’s, Toys ‘R Us, and of course the “World’s Largest Retailer,” Sears.
In 1960, Bernie Loomis made the fateful decision to join the “Wheels & Wings” division of Mattel Toys in Hawthorne, California, while pursuing a PhD in Marketing from UCLA. He used his newly obtained insight, along with gut-instinct and began experimenting with the idea of using television shows as a marketing vehicle to sell toys. In 1969, Mattel and ABC launched the animated series, Hot Wheels, which ran until 1971, when the Federal Communications Commission pulled the plug, calling it a “30-minute commercial,” which was Mattel’s intent.
Loomis was soon dubbed “The Man Who Invented Saturday Morning,” and in 1970, he became president of Kenner Toys, which was then a subsidiary of General Mills. When Loomis mentioned his new position to a buyer he worked with at Sears, the buyer stated: “We never buy a new Kenner toy in its first year.” Loomis accepted the challenge and soon Sears became one of Kenner’s biggest retail partners.
At Kenner, Loomis finally got the opportunity to realize his dream of using TV as a marketing vehicle for toys in 1974, when the tiny toy company acquired the license to produce a line based on ABC’s hit series The Six Million Dollar Man. Bernie and his team at Kenner used this “toyetic” brand to establish a blueprint for how to successfully leverage entertainment franchises to market a hit toy line and reinvented the industry in the process. In 1976, lightning struck twice when ABC produced a spin-off show titled The Bionic Woman, which presented Kenner with the unique opportunity to rebrand some of their Six Million Dollar Man toys into a successful fashion doll line for girls. The success of these entertainment-based lines primed Kenner to become a major player in the toy industry, but even Loomis couldn’t have imagined the success that the Cincinnati toymaker would soon find.
In 1976, Twentieth Century Fox licensing executive Marc Pevers was desperate to find someone to produce toys for the studios’ forthcoming science-fiction film, Star Wars. Loomis had read about the film in The Hollywood Reporter and Kenner designers Jim Swearingen and Dave Okada were confident that it had the enormous potential to deliver a robust line of space toys. Following a string of rejections from preeminent toy companies including Mego and Mattel, Pevers approached Kenner in January 1977. Loomis had his reservations about producing toys based on a film, because even if it was a hit, it would most likely drop out of the public consciousness before the figures reached store shelves.
Reflecting on the decision, Loomis said:
“We didn't need it though, we had the leading boys' toy in the world, The Six Million Dollar Man and we had a deal on a new TV series, The Man From Atlantis, which was being called a sure-fire hit but I liked the name Star Wars, I liked the robots, and I said ‘The picture will come and go, and the following year we'll take a shot at space with Star Wars’ . . . Marc Pevers, [the person] in charge of licensing for Fox, came to see me in Cincinnati, and I expressed the terms on which we would license Star Wars, and ultimately with no one else interested, he came back and agreed to the terms we offered. The royalty rate was 5% and would go to 6% if Star Wars became a TV series.”
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“A New Hope” for the Toy Industry
Kenner signed an incredibly generous deal to produce Star Wars toys in April of 1977, one month before the movie premiered. The film proved to be a cultural juggernaut and the marketing and design teams at Kenner went into hyperdrive to get as many products onto store shelves as quickly as possible. The company adopted a two-phase plan to meet the rabid demand for film merchandise. First, Kenner released picture-based products such as puzzles and board games, along with “Dip Dots” Painting Sets and “Playnts” poster sets in an attempt to subdue a starving fan base.
Phase two of the plan, considered the most ambitious, included a modest line of twelve 3.75” inch-scaled articulated action figures, three vehicles and a playset. The multi-million-dollar problem was that the timing of the contract couldn’t have been worse, making it impossible for Kenner to get the line designed, produced, and shipped to stores by Christmas of 1977. Much like Richard Sears almost a century earlier, Loomis had overextended himself and did not have the stock to meet this critical holiday demand. As Kenner executives struggled to find a solution, Design Manager Ed Schifman hesitantly proposed they “sell the right to buy the product when it becomes available.” This spark of an idea got Loomis’ attention, and the wheels began to turn. He later stated that it was one of “the loneliest decisions” of his life and famously gambled on the magic of mail-order to solve the problem.
Prior to the 1977 holiday season, executives at Kenner developed one of the most farfetched marketing ideas in the history of the toy industry, the “Star Wars Early Bird Certificate Package” campaign. Richard Sears himself would have been impressed by this now infamous marketing scheme, which was essentially an IOU tucked inside an empty cardboard envelope decorated with Star Wars characters and imagery. To sell this concept, Kenner invested in a 30-second television advertisement placed into heavy rotation during children’s programming on all the major television networks. The commercials followed a model that Kenner advertising became known for during the 1970s and 80s, which featured children demonstrating play-patterns for the “toyetic” items being marketed, as well as easily recreated environments to stimulate children’s imaginations.
Instead of receiving the toys that fans had hoped for, the Early Bird envelope simply included a small product brochure, or “mini-catalog” advertising Kenner’s initial wave of Star Wars merchandise, a cardboard display stand depicting artist renderings of the first twelve figures, a small sheet of Star Wars stickers, and most importantly, a special mail-order redemption certificate that customers could fill out and send in to receive the first four figures by mail the following Spring.
Although Kenner’s strategy was not embraced by everyone, those who did purchase the set and promptly returned their Early Bird redemption certificates were certainly thrilled to find a set of the very first Star Wars action figures ever produced, waiting in their mailboxes within the first few weeks of 1978. For children, this inaugural wave of Star Wars toys must have truly seemed like they had been sent directly from “a galaxy far, far away.”
According to an article published in The Cincinnati Enquirer entitled, “’Force’ Was With Kenner’s Star Wars Certificate Caper,” seven-year-old Johnny Bonner of Royal Oak, Michigan was one of the lucky children to have received the Early Bird certificate for Christmas of 1977. Although he might not have felt so lucky at first, his mother stated, “He understood that the certificate was the only scrap of ‘Star Wars’ treasure available at Christmas.” But she concluded that her son’s “toy gratification was worth it ... he waited, and waited, and waited...and when they finally arrived, he was so thrilled he nearly jumped out of his skin.”
Customers received a plain, white mailer box with a plastic tray that held the first four action figures (Luke, Leia, R2-D2 & Chewbacca), along with a small bag of white plastic foot pegs used to display the figures on the cardboard stand previously received with the offer, as well as a newly updated Mini-catalog brochure containing detailed photos of the entire wave of Kenner’s forthcoming Star Wars action figures, vehicles and playsets. There was also an additional “premium offer” flyer, in which customers could send in $2.00 and two Kenner proof-of-purchase seals to receive the “Star Wars Collector’s Action Stand” by mail. This promotion, which would also be featured on some of the earliest “12-back” figure packages the following year, included a photograph of the display stand along with the figures that Kenner had planned. The ad stated, “This colorful, highly durable plastic stand has places for displaying your four figures, plus 8 other Star Wars figures soon to be available in stores,” to encourage children to collect all the figures that would later be available at retail.
Kenner produced and sold almost 500,000 Early Bird certificates in hopes that this marketing gambit would allow them to recuperate at least some of the profit that they would have otherwise lost entirely, due to the lack of product for the 1977 holiday season. Not only was the plan modestly successful, but it also cleverly established the first in a series of perpetual mail-away offers that rewarded children for collecting the line by redeeming their proof-of-purchase seals to receive additional new figures and accessories by mail, which were “Not yet available in stores!”
Loomis and his marketing team assembled a collection of effective strategies while preparing the Early Bird promotion and this insight would continue to shape the Star Wars line in many fundamental ways. The company continued to incorporate additional mail-away promotions, “mini-catalog” inserts and television advertising, as well as mail-order catalog exclusives for the holiday season, which effectively promoted new upcoming releases scheduled for the following spring.
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COLLECT THEM ALL!!!
Kenner’s Star Wars action figure line exploded into retail in the spring of 1978 and fans scoured stores nationwide in search of the new toys, in many cases pulling them straight from the shipping cartons before they even reached the store shelves. From the beginning, a key marketing element that Kenner incorporated as an integral part of the figures’ packaging was the inclusion of full-color images of all the toys available in the newest or upcoming waves. These images were depicted on the figure card backs, as well as on retail point-of-purchase displays, consistently encouraging customers to “COLLECT THEM ALL!”
By year’s end, Kenner had sold over 40 million units, generating more than $100 million dollars in revenue and company executives knew that they had a surefire hit on their hands with the franchise. In addition, CBS had recently negotiated with Lucasfilm to produce a two-hour Star Wars television special, scheduled to air on November 17, 1978, just in time for the holidays. Lucasfilm hoped that this special might keep Star Wars relevant and in the public’s consciousness until they could produce a film sequel, and Kenner was quick to jump at the opportunity to be a part of it.
Television was familiar territory for Bernie Loomis and Kenner, and they knew that the aptly named Star Wars Holiday Special would be an incredible opportunity to make up for some of the shortcomings of the previous holiday season. Kenner eventually signed on as a corporate sponsor for the epic CBS Special and invested in a multi-million-dollar ad campaign to accompany it, giving the company exclusive access to the characters and storylines that would be included. Perhaps the biggest component of the plan according to Kenner marketing executives was “unquestionably, the most extraordinary, most exciting commercial ever produced for a line of toys. Featuring R2-D2 and C-3PO telling parents and children alike about the entire line of Kenner Star Wars toys,” which was scheduled to air throughout the event.
In preparation for the occasion, Kenner designers were already hard at work on a second wave of figures and vehicles, as well as on several playsets. Early in the development of this expansion, they even designed figure prototypes of Chewbacca and his family, who were set to star in the upcoming television program. Unfortunately for fans, these were never released. However, one segment of the show would attempt to recreate one of the most popular scenes from the blockbuster film, the Mos Eisley Cantina, and Kenner placed a heavy emphasis on these colorful characters as part of their forthcoming wave of merchandise.
As part of the Star Wars Holiday Special marketing blitz, Kenner also approached the “World’s Largest Retailer,” Sears, with plans for a massive Star Wars toy section to be included in the 1978 edition of their now legendary Christmas Wish Book. Sears incorporated full-color images of many of Kenner’s retail offerings for the current year, in addition to early sneak-peeks of the newest figure designs, which were not yet available in stores, but could be purchased in mail-order exclusive “multipacks.” These catalog images, like most of Kenner’s early packaging and television ads, regularly depicted children actively playing with the advertised items, capitalizing on what we now know as “endowment effect.”
The highlight of the two-page spread was the Sears “Holiday Exclusive Cantina Adventure Set,” which sold for the bargain price of $8.77. This simple cardboard “playset” featured graphics from the streets of the Mos Eisley Spaceport and had a similar structural design to the display stand portion of Kenner’s Early Bird promotional set. The company developed this playset primarily as an inexpensive vehicle to market four colorful creatures from the upcoming second wave of figures that would not be available in stores until the following spring of 1979.
Due to the lack of reference material available when designers created these characters, as well as the rush to produce them, Kenner took some artistic liberty in designing the now legendary “Blue Snaggletooth” action figure, along with his colorful cronies Greedo, Hammerhead and Walrus Man. The exclusive blue Snaggletooth figure design was later corrected to a shorter red version for its retail release, based on a similarly costumed character from the cantina scene of the Star War Holiday Special. The 1979 Sears Wish Book saw a return of this highly successful playset along with the farewell appearance of its exclusive blue Snaggletooth figure, however Kenner quietly transitioned to the updated red variant for the final Cantina Adventure Sets that were produced.
Sears Wish Book 1978
Action figure “multipacks” provided Kenner with yet another effective tool for mail-order merchandising and they introduced a total of six different multipacks for the 1978 Sears Wish Book. This approach allowed for larger bulk quantity sales through Sears, as well as for other catalog retailers, because the figures were individually wrapped in inexpensive cellophane baggies and then packaged in plain cardboard mailer boxes. This packaging format was cheaper and more applicable for mail-order sales because it was less bulky, and shipping labels could be placed directly on the mailer boxes. These multipacks also served as a practical format for selling early “exclusives,” because the figures could be packaged quicker and more efficiently and then shipped directly to retailers from the factories in Asia. Most importantly, these cost-cutting measures allowed mail-order retailers to pass that savings on to their customers.
Kenner continued to nurture the relationship they had established with Sears in the 1970s, incorporating full-color, multi-page advertising blitzes that allowed first access to the newest exclusive figures, vehicles and playsets for future editions of the highly successful Holiday Wish Books, as well as Sears’ Spring toy catalogs. These seasonal publications also provided Kenner with an effective platform to promote additional waves of figures to maintain the momentum of the toy line between summer movie launch years. This powerful partnership would remain a principal component of Kenner’s successive Star Wars marketing campaigns until the toy line was discontinued in 1985.
To Be Continued…
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For more information on Kenner's relationship with Sears, click the link below:
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Bibliography
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