Leading on from the previous post, whereas Polly Pocket compacts offered the possibility of a portable, pocket-sized space for thought, the painting of them has offered the possibility to represent pockets of time. Each painting was completed within a few hours during a half term or school holiday. Balanced on bookshelves to dry, they provided reminders of brief portions of time to oneself.

The scale of the first eight paintings has stayed small around life-size, with canvases ranging from 20.5cm x 14cm of the rectangular and 30cm of the square canvas to the 20 cm diameter of the circular canvas boards. This most recent painting has expanded the scale to a 160cm x 160cm unstretched canvas (130cm diameter of the pocket). The idea was that you could sit inside this one.

“Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.”  Virginia Woolf, A room of one’s own, 1928

The compact offers something portable and discrete but rather than opening it up to look at a reflection and apply make up to continue the masquerade of femininity, Polly Pocket compacts contain miniature worlds that inspire play and possibility. Purposely female-dominated spaces that possibly appeal to creative pursuits – a cottage, townhouse, alpine chalet, school, beach house, jungle retreat, sewing room, theatre, ice rink, tea house, garden – or at least offer a space for reflection.

In lieu of a room of one’s own, they offer a symbol of the possibilities of such a room in miniature, of mental space for creating.

Pockets of time series

“I’ll never forget going over with the first models of Polly Pocket, which we wanted to license to them [Mattel]. I rang up Jill Barad [Mattel’s chief executive] and I said “Look, I’ve got something which I think is quite important and I think that we’d like to ask you to be our worldwide distributors, with the exception of Japan and the UK.”… “And so I went over there, I had the entire first year of Polly Pocket, it would have fitted in a box about yea big [gestures, a foot square]…”

“I’d said “give me five minutes before” so I’d set everything up, and I put the whole lot, the entire range underneath my pocket handkerchief. So they came in, they saw this slightly grubby handkerchief sitting on the table (laughs) and .. they looked at each other and thought “The man’s gone completely mad.” So I picked up a corner of the handkerchief and inside it was this tiny figure… So I said “I’d like to introduce you to Polly Pocket” and they said “I can’t even see it,” .. so I held it up, and then I slowly uncovered the other bits and there were little rings with Polly in bed or in the bath or in the car.. that you could put on your finger. .. and by the end they were saying “You know, there may be something in this after all.”

The first year they didn’t sell that many. But the second year in February Torquil got a phone call from Jill Barad asking “How quickly could you get us four million Polly Pocket compacts?”[1]

“We licensed Polly Pocket to Mattel as sales agent for most of the world, but retained all the manufacturing rights (it was made in China) and the sales rights for Great Britain. At one point Polly Pocket was Mattel’s second largest toy range for girls (although far behind the legendary Barbie).”[2]

Mattel went on to license Polly Pockets in the US and the restof the world except Japan and the UK, and then in 1998 when a takeover bid was made for Bluebird, Mattel took over the Polly Pocket Brand. Under Mattel, Polly Pocket changed in scale and focus, she became bigger, had her own racing cars along the Hot Wheels model. She grew again, the focus then became her as a doll, made out of flexible plastic and came with clothes and accessories.

Big dreams come in small packages © Mattel

In 2018 Mattel relaunched the Polly Pocket Brand, with Garrett Sander (of Monsters High fame), taking Polly back to her original scale, with a new range of compacts.

Sky Brown, the world’s youngest female pro skateboarder is now the brand ambassador for the relaunched Polly Pocket brand. Just like Polly Pocket, reads a statement from Mattel, she embodies the brand’s message that Tiny is Mighty.

In June 2019 Mattel marked the 30^th anniversary of the original Polly Pocket line with a special anniversary reissue of the 1989 Partytime Surprise Compact.

[1] quotes above from British Toy Making Project: Mr. Torquil Norman, Bluebird Toys, interview transcript, p23-25 interview conducted by Ieuan Hopkins and Sarah Wood, September 2010, edited by Torquil Norman and Sarah Wood, August 2013

[2] Torquil Norman, p60 “Light the Fires, Kick the Tyres: One man’s vision for Britain’s future and how we can make it work” published by Infinite Ideas, 2010: UK

A portable pocket-sized room of one’s own

A selection of compacts for each year of Bluebird’s production of Polly Pocket before Mattel bought the franchise in 1998

Polly Pocket and Mattel

“The country at that time (of setting up Bluebird, 1979) was entering a recession and I had a strong desire that all our products should be made in Britain.”[1]

“Other key moments were actually moving from Kembrey [street, Swindon] to the next site, also in Swindon but on the other side of Swindon, a much bigger site, the old Plessey factory. When Plessey had stopped making record decks in the UK and moved to Brazil, suddenly there was a huge great factory and that was where we went.”[2]

“… in ’89 I was instrumental in finding the new manufacturing facility because, once again, we’d outgrown out space in Swindon and we took on a factory in Merthyr Tydfil, the old Hoover factory…, which had been built and actually it equally had a moment of glory because it had made Sinclair’s C5 scooter just before we moved in as well. So, that was, great, I mean that really did put the company on the map.”[3]

“In the early days we were proud to put a Union Jack on every Bluebird package with the inscription “All our toys are made in Great Britain”. But after a few years it became clear that we would have to start making toys in China to remain competitive.”[4]

[1] Torquil Norman, p57 “Light the Fires, Kick the Tyres: One man’s vision for Britain’s future and how we can make it work” published by Infinite Ideas, 2010: UK

[2] British Toy Making Project: Gareth Morris, Finance Director and Company Secretary Bluebird Toys, interview transcript, p5-6 interview conducted by Ieuan Hopkins and Sarah Wood, September 2010, edited by Gareth Morris and Sarah Wood, August 2013

[3] Ibid p6

[4] Torquil Norman, p59 “Light the Fires, Kick the Tyres: One man’s vision for Britain’s future and how we can make it work” published by Infinite Ideas, 2010: UK

Polly Pocket 1989-1998

“[Regarding] Polly Pocket, we worked with a group of young guys, particularly Chris Wiggs and Chris Taylor, they ran a little business called Origin which was based towards the Portobello Road, they had developed Polly Pocket with us and they were responsible for all the final designs and the model-making and so on.

Chris Wiggs had one day at a meeting produced – because we used to have brainstorming meetings – produced a wooden box about that size, um, with a little wooden doll in it, didn’t do anything but it was there, which he said he’d made for his daughter six years before, and he said “Do you think there’s anything in it?” and I said “Well, I don’t know, I’ve no idea”, and then I thought about it a bit and more as much as for something to say as anything else, I was holding the doll, and I said “Can you make it bend at the waist? And he said “No, it’s too small”, and I said “Well, come on, you’re a terrific engineer, you know, you can do anything.” So I came back the next week, he’d made a beautiful model of a little doll that moves and sat down perfectly, so I said “Well, hell, we may have something now” and that’s really how it started.”[1]

Inspired by the phrase ‘cute as a button’ Chris Wiggs’ prototype was made out of wood, a powder compact that housed a tiny figure. Wiggs designed the product in 1983, Bluebird licensed the product and launched the line in 1989, it went on to be massively successful.

[1] British Toy Making Project: Mr. Torquil Norman, Bluebird Toys, interview transcript, p35-36 interview conducted by Ieuan Hopkins and Sarah Wood, September 2010, edited by Torquil Norman and Sarah Wood, August 2013

Bluebird Factories

“Of course you can’t start a company with one product so I spent the next few months developing half a dozen more ideas to make up a small range of products. Among them were a beautiful traditional sweetshop and a new design of lunchbox. At that time Margaret Thatcher had hugely increased the price of school lunches and so more and more children were taking their lunch to school in plastic bags. I thought they would much prefer something with a great character like Superman on it than a plastic bag. I also designed a flask with a wide lid so that they could take soup or fruit salad in their packed lunches.”[1]

The Bluebird lunchboxes were ubiquitous in the 1980s. Legend has it that the explosives for the Brighton Bombing by the IRA which targeted Margaret Thatcher and her Cabinet at the Conservative Party Conference at the Grand Brighton Hotel on the 12th October 1984 were carried in one.

The hinge system developed by Bluebird went on to have significance for future container toys beyond the Big Yellow Teapot, there was the Big Red Fun Bus and the A La Cart Kitchen (the no é was deliberate as it was a kitchenette on wheels).

Torquil told me about Bluebird’s specific gearbox hinge system:

“We made the gearbox. It was a plastic carry all which was made of one piece of plastic and the hinges were living hinges, built into the same tool that makes it and when you release it from the tool you have a complete gearbox and all you need to do is fit the little clips on the end to keep it shut. And we called it a gearbox, for all your gear. And it was very popular, it still is, people have still, I’m sure they’ve either found the tools or borrowed them or copied them.

It had a corrugated outside with rounded ends, and the corrugations meant that the product was really quite strong, and it just had two little clips and it was really quite clever.”[2]

So from container vehicles to container dolls houses and boxes for children’s lunch and gear, Bluebird was at the forefront of toy design and responded to children’s fascination with things that open and close and putting things inside other things. The living hinge system would be important for their most famous toy line, one that became a huge phenomenon despite the tininess of its characters.

[1] Torquil Norman, p57 “Light the Fires, Kick the Tyres: One man’s vision for Britain’s future and how we can make it work” published by Infinite Ideas, 2010: UK

[2] Interview with Sir Torquil Norman, London, 15^th May 2019

Polly enters the arena

Torquil Norman left Berwick Toys in 1980.

“I suddenly realized that I could do anything I wanted in life. I spent a month or two walking around the streets, and the garden, trying to work out what I really wanted to do. It came as quite a surprise to me that, at the end of it all, the only thing I had come up with was an idea for a new toy – the Big Yellow Teapot.”[1]

Torquil didn’t want to license the toy to another company, so he set up Bluebird Toys in 1981 to manufacture the Big Yellow Teapot. At a meeting with possible investors in the company he found a helpful advocate:

“As luck would have it, while we were discussing the venture, the tea lady came in and offered us a cup of tea. She caught sight of the Big Yellow Teapot sitting on the table and said ‘Oh isn’t that lovely!” I explained that it was only a model which we were thinking of putting into production. She immediately asked if she could have the first one off the production line. I said of course, if it was ever made. Harry (Conway) said he thought it would be, and sure enough Kleinwort’s agreed to put up the other half of the capital. Now that’s how banking used to be done! And the tea lady got her teapot.” [2]

[1] Torquil Norman, p57 “Light the Fires, Kick the Tyres: One man’s vision for Britain’s future and how we can make it work” published by Infinite Ideas, 2010: UK

[2] p58 Ibid

Bluebird’s Gearbox & Lunchboxes