Richard Gottlieb

Toys Without Borders
March 6, 2008

I was speaking with Marian Bossard of the TIA last week when she began telling me about the Toy Industry Association’s outreach to the rest of the world.  She filled me in on the TIA’s plans to have a presence this year at shows in Shanghai, Dubai and Moscow.  This is on top of the TIA’s appearance earlier this year in Hong Kong and Nuremberg.  The US toy industry has tended to think primarily in terms of its domestic markets so I was very pleased to hear that the TIA was actively going global. 

So, I responded to Marian with an idea that had been incubating in my mind since the TOTY Awards.  During the ceremonies, Toy Industry Foundation Chairman, Arnie Rubin and Executive Director, Jean Butler, announced that last year the TIF brought toys to children in the Congo.  This was an international outreach that took the Foundation’s efforts in New Orleans after Katrina to a whole new level. 

So I thought, what the TIF is on the cusp of creating is a “Toys without Borders.”  Similar in my mind to “Doctors without Borders” that goes anywhere people need medical help, “Toys without Borders” would go anywhere children are being deprived, whether by poverty, war or political strife of their right to play. 

It would be based upon the notion that any child anywhere in the world has the right to play with toys.  It should make no difference what political, economic, social or religious system is in place. 

I am not sure the TIF could do it alone, so, wouldn’t it be nice for the world’s toy industries, maybe the International Council of Toy Industries (ICTI),  to come together and make sure that toys are made available in all of those little hells made by adults and in which kids are forced to live? 

 “Toys without Borders;” What do you think?

Posted by Richard Gottlieb on March 6, 2008 | Comments (1)