Bernie Schiff Remco Toys Marketing Director Interview 1991with Ira H. Gallen

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show. We're landing at Idlewild Airport, landing gears down. [00:00:10] Speaker 2: You yourself make the plane climb, bank, dive, and turn in flight. [00:00:16] Speaker 1: Now, back in the early 1950s, during the golden age of television, the Remco Toy Company was one of the first to torment us poor baby boomers by showing off their unique line of toys on television. [00:00:28] Speaker 3: Ooh, look at those big, wet tears roll down tiny tears, Chief. [00:00:34] Speaker 4: Ask for baby Tootles and her three-way supercar. You, too, can have oodles of fun with Tootles and American Character Dolls. [00:00:42] Bernie Schiff: Now, one of the pioneer directors at this time was Bernie Schiff. At that point, I was the marketing director of American Character Doll. This was in 1952. And one day at a Toy Manufacturers Association luncheon, I was sitting at the same table with two young men, Saul Robbins and Ike Heller. And they were saying, gee, you know, we've been watching Tiny Tears on television. We think we'd have an item that could be on television. That item was the radio station. [00:01:13] Speaker 6: Gee, the ball game. It's a real radio and it works great. [00:01:19] Speaker 7: Could I build one, too? Sure. Remco makes it real easy. All you have to do is put together all the parts that come in the Remco kit. [00:01:28] Speaker 2: Remco's giant whirlybird is over two feet long, motorized to taxi anywhere. Fly them from battlefield to battlefield. [00:01:35] Bernie Schiff: The whirlybird helicopter in which we were accused of having too much realism. And in those years, we gradually said we had to have no more than two children. All these things came about as a result of probably getting too ambitious in our dramatic approach. We built a miniature battle to soldiers where the people thought it flew. So as a result, complaints by the public, and we got called down to testify about the truth in advertising with toys. [00:02:19] Speaker 2: The cannon's name is Johnny Repp. Hurrah, hurrah. Give him a hearty welcome and hurrah. Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, oh, men will cheer, boys will shout, the ladies may. We'll all turn out and we'll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home. [00:02:36] Bernie Schiff: As a result, a whole code of ethics was written. I helped write it. Actually, they were a good set of rules. You shouldn't have more than two children. You always had to show the toy in the final seconds of the commercial in a non-not-too-atmospheric situation where it's sitting on the floor on a carpet. And also just show the toy exactly as it was going to be purchased in the store, which was fine. I find that nowadays, you're watching toy commercials, they've gone far afield. I mean, I think the dramatic input that they put in with all the special effects and all the various things we can do with computer editing today and commercials, I think they're way beyond the scope of what the toy actually does in terms of performance. [00:03:24] Speaker 6: We never had fast cuts. [00:03:34] Bernie Schiff: I mean, in those years, because they're still shooting naturally in 35mm, which we were doing then. But in those years, the editors in film used to say to you, you can't have less than two or three seconds, let's say, in a sequence before you could cut or dissolve. And the dissolves were much slower than they are today. Today, they dissolve in a fraction of a second. [00:03:56] Speaker 8: Be the first in your neighborhood to own and operate a Remco movie band drive-in theater. Only $5.98 at your favorite toy store. [00:04:05] Speaker 6: Tiny Tears does everything, everything, everything, Tiny Tears does everything. [00:04:11] Bernie Schiff: Did it to London Bridges Falling Down, the Melody, and my commercial then, it was 52, it's almost 40 years ago. I see the doll commercials today look almost identically the same, except we were black and white. [00:04:27] Speaker 3: Shampooing Tiny Tears' washable saran hair. After your bath, you look so sweet and clean in your pretty clothes. [00:04:35] Bernie Schiff: Ideal had Betsy Wetsy. [00:04:37] Speaker 9: Think of all the fun you'll have giving Betsy Wetsy her bath and shampooing her rooted saran hair. [00:04:43] Bernie Schiff: Tiny Tears wasn't a rip-off. There were a lot of drinking wet dolls, as we called them in those years. Tiny Tears was a drinking wet doll, like Betsy Wetsy. The only difference was it had two little tiny holes in the corner of the eyes for tear ducts. And so when you fed Tiny Tears a bottle, if you left the bottle in and squeezed her, the tears would come out of her eyes. [00:05:06] Speaker 4: For Tiny Tears with Rockabye Eyes, an American Character doll. [00:05:11] Speaker 9: Betsy Wetsy cries real tears. She drinks from her own bottle, just like a real baby. [00:05:17] Bernie Schiff: Ben Mictum, who was president of Ideal, called up Jack Brock, who was president of American Character, and said, Jack, he says, I got a big complaint. Jack says, what is that? He says, well, my daughter's, my granddaughter's insisting on a Tiny Tears doll. It's upsetting me. [00:05:35] Speaker 10: It doesn't matter, because either way, Tiny Tears is all new and more wonderful than ever, just like a real baby. [00:05:43] Bernie Schiff: Most of the shows had live hosts, so we would send a toy, one or two pieces of the toy, along with the television commercials to the various stations, and we'd write a whole lead-in, maybe try to get a 30-second lead-in on top of a one-minute commercial. So, and we also suggested we'd supply toys for prizes, so in that way, we got a stretch. It's a real live radio station. [00:06:08] Speaker 11: Batteries and everything, you can have more fun putting it together and pretending like you're talking to Dick Tracy or just any character you can make up. You might even be able to contact Jingle Dingle and Hoagie here at the weather station. That's what the boy will win. [00:06:22] Bernie Schiff: Remco was formed by two cousins. One was Ike Keller, who in those years was an engineer, a budding engineer. And Saul Robbins, they were both about the same age, they were both about my age, and Saul Robbins was an accountant. And one day, Ike Keller said, see, I got an idea. I've got this made up of toy radio set, a little crystal radio set. So Saul said, gee, that sounds like a good idea. I'll do the bookkeeping. Within a few years, they were doing a million, two million, which was a lot in those years. In those years, like we do today, we hired children performers from good agents who specialized in children. And so Patty Duke was a good performer for a child, so we hired Patty. We hired a lot of kids. [00:07:24] Speaker 4: I take infant toodles everywhere in her car bed. There's your car. So are mine. [00:07:31] Speaker 6: You've almost got the watch. You've got it. [00:07:37] Speaker 8: Down the chute and out it comes. Remember, every boy wants a Remco toy. And so do girls. And so do girls. [00:07:49] Bernie Schiff: In those years, we couldn't seem to make a mistake. Even if we made a mistake, we made a profit because there wasn't that many toys on television. Maybe in the early years when we were first hitting television, I would say between Mattel, Ideal, Remco, American Character, maybe all told, there might be 10 to 15. Today, in the average Christmas pre-sale, there's 600-plus toys. The amount of money spent on presentations today is unbelievable. In those years, you had a modest showroom, and you had your shells with the toys on. The salesman went around and spoke directly with his particular customers, and he'd hold the toy in his hand. He'd tell what the merits of the toy was, and then they'd show the few commercials. [00:08:37] Speaker 6: Today, you go through Mattel or Hasbro, and they have multi-million dollar presentations. [00:08:56] Bernie Schiff: They build special rooms for each category of toy with all sports special effects. They hire actors and actresses to act out the play activities or the characters themselves. It's a big showbiz special today, and I think what's happened is it's going back to what originally was the premise. A buyer goes through the toy fair, and now we are looking at literally almost thousands of toys. And they all have great presentations. At the end, he's got to sit back and say, "Well, all right, they're all going to spend 10 million dollars on television." He then has to look at the toy and say, "Well, as a buyer, what is it going to sell?" And he has to make that decision totally on his own. Figure to devour. [00:09:44] Speaker 6: Wow. [00:09:45] Bernie Schiff: Be afraid. Be very afraid.