(Part Two)

Ah, Spain! I surely did love working with the greatest Spanish doll and toy company, Famosa, on the Costa Azur on the southern Mediterranean coast of Espana. I made side trips to Chupa Chups in Barcelona, but stayed only a few hours. What was I thinking to have missed seeing that great city? 

 

 

 

As in Germany, Famosa was in a region teeming with other doll and toy companies and was also an area of poor soil. Long, long ago, the people of the region had turned to doll and toy making as a means of surviving in an otherwise harsh and arid region.

I had the clear Mediterranean sea to swim in and a receptive audience in my friend Jaime, who I later learned owned Famosa, and his great team. As with Zapf, the decision was made on the spot as to which of my dolls they would license, and I sold a doll or two during each visit. I never made any money, however, but c'est la vie.

I beat my head against the wall trying to work with another of the great Spanish doll companies, Jesmar. Taking a cab there over endlessly barren desert hills and olive orchards, I was sure I was being kidnapped. It was Jesmar that first alerted me to the fact that our highly successful doll, Baby Sip n Slurp, was a truly great doll. So great in fact that Hasbro brought it back a few years ago for a second successful run. 

     

 

 

The Gendarmes at the airport were not so hospitable, as I was the only international visitor at customs, with bags loaded with odd, even suspicious looking doll and toy prototypes of every description. Groups of bored military-looking officers poked through my samples while stinking of gin, packing pistols, speaking no English, and expressing no appreciation for my attempts at levity. I wondered if I might be spending some time in a southern Spanish jail until Jaime might (hopefully) find me and bail me out.

I surely do miss working with Herr Zapf, Jaime Ferri, and those great European toy companies. Each is now owned not by a person or a family, but have been bought and sold by a succession of international conglomerates with no feel for dolls or other emotionally laden toy product. With the owners gone, so has the soul of the companies gone, and in both cases, the business as well.

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