Getting Playmobilized, Part 1- Playmobil Anatomy!

Let's talk about one of my longtime favorite toys and finally break out of this doll fixation. This is Teatime Tangents and Toys, darn it, not Teatime Tangents and Dolls! 

Whenever you mention Playmobil, a lot of Americans are likely to think of LEGO as well. LEGO and Playmobil are two toys that have existed in a strange kind of competition with each other, since everyone including the manufacturer of Playmobil perceives a sense of competition, whereas I think comparisons are pretty darn apples-to-oranges between the two toys. I adore both, but for distinctly different reasons.

My beloved LEGO is a Danish brick building toy with highly modular parts and plastic figures fit into a system of studs, bricks, and clips, with essentially infinite creative reconfigurable potential. I have a sporadically-used Instagram account (@mr._bricks_db) to document creations with LEGO I've done. Over the years, LEGO parts have gained huge variety in sizes and shapes, allowing for more specialized and intricate constructions. Each year of new releases bumps the potential craft potential of the toy by many tenfolds at least, to the point of LEGO becoming as much an art medium as it is a line of playsets.

Playmobil is a German brand that I'd describe more as "make-believe toys", with their products being more akin to dollhouse kits and dioramas. Things are heavy on assembly, but not with an infinitely permutable construction system, and parts are larger on the whole, with scenes being populated by entirely loose pieces just like a dollhouse. In LEGO, almost everything can be securely connected and static inside a layout. The larger scale and fewer small parts of Playmobil toys makes it suitable for younger audiences than the primary output of LEGO. You put together Playmobil sets to get the designer's vision and the designer's vision only, and you're only doing assembly at all because the toys have enough volume to be better off packed and shipped in parts. 

Beside the fundamentals, the character of Playmobil's brand is a little different. Playmobil has always featured real flesh skin tones for its primary figures, while LEGO's figures are primarily yellow, except for licensed themes where figures have flesh tones. Playmobil's printing design continues to favor shape defined by flat color, and most faces are recurring variants of their original classic template, while LEGO's printing design has turned to featuring more black outlines and hundreds of unique character faces that have left their original classic face as a nostalgia design. Catholic religious products have featured within Playmobil's output from the start, whereas LEGO makes itself apolitical and nonreligious, and until 2016, Playmobil never made licensed products for popular media, while LEGO has done so for much longer. I generally prefer LEGO'S licensed toys for their higher accuracy--they're more willing to produce brand-new parts to accurately match characters' hair and headgear, and LEGO's more flexible modern facial design allows for surprisingly accurate actor/character likenesses within the simple codified face structure. Playmobil licensed faces are just kind of the same or they're a completely different art style, and likeness is either loose and charming or close but weird. Playmobil also held off for a long time on providing names and explicit narratives for its toys and characters, and Playmobil debuted large stylistic departures from its own classic figure smiley face much later than LEGO did with theirs. Playmobil's figures (once known as "klickies"--singular, "klicky") have vague similarities to LEGO's, but Playmobil figures are larger, not designed within a brick system, and have a little less articulation. They also were not able to fully disassemble for total mix-and-match customizing, until the Fi?ures line debuted in imitation of LEGO's successful Minifigures blind bags, with figures that can be taken apart or "popped". (I call assembling them "clicking", so "pop" and "click" are antonyms in this context.) The Fi?ures system is an alternative or parallel system, not the new standard. Mainline figures remain unpoppable.

Even though I don't think Playmobil needs to set itself against LEGO, Playmobil fans and manufacturer geobra Brandstätter (the Brandstätter Group) seem to think there's a rivalry, with Playmobil-only fans perceiving LEGO's popularity as an obstacle to their own brand's, and Playmobil trying to cash in on LEGO's successes...to reduced success. Many of their toy innovations are based upon steps LEGO took, and those aren't all bad. But their Playmobil Movie was a subpar blip no one heard of next to The LEGO Movie they were imitating, and their attempt at blind-bagged figures is going strong, but it's a little weird and more mixed in my eyes. Still, Playmobil was the toy I played with and loved before I played with and loved LEGO, so I have a soft spot for both. I wouldn't get rid of my favorite figures from either brand, and each has merits that deserve appreciation. 

Because Playmobil is kind of the "underdog" toy and because the toys are smaller and simpler, I've actually found it very easy to dive into the aftermarket and buy lots of figures I needed to "catch up" with, since there seems to be hardly any age-based price inflation on the market (if anything, it's inverted, with new stuff being inflated while old stuff is cheap)! Turns out, Playmobil is a much less expensive collector hobby than dolls, and is still about as fulfilling and charming, if not more! The only real obstacle to Playmobil collecting in the aftermarket is finding products you want, since some sets and figures may have gotten limited release (or none at all in the U.S.) and just aren't being offered. But I was amazed at being able to snap up complete figures older than I was for about 3 bucks, so this was overall a very happy jump back into it.

Before we take a leisurely look at my collected Playmobil favorites, there's a lot of minutiae I want to discuss about these figures and their workings. This post will be all about figure anatomy, which I've broken into subsections for what I hope is a more appealing reading format.

Our models

As a Playmo-baseline, we'll use one of the figures I've owned for most of my life, which would have been from 2004 at maybe the latest--it's a scuba diver from the Special theme (single figures in small boxes with accessories, later joined by and ultimately replaced by the slightly more lavish Special Plus theme). He's a precious memory for me, yes, but he also happens to feature the classic face and the most recognizable Playmobil hair piece, so he's the ideal model. His name has always been Derek the Diver to me. First we'll see him without all of his gear.

Hi, Derek!

Playmobil just has such a friendly, timeless look to it that I adore. I think the stylization is absolutely charming and appealing. You can't deny that smile! Indeed, Playmobil's aesthetic is so overwhelmingly appealing to me that I've been sold on princess and dollhouse imagery from Playmobil when those topics never really appealed to me in any other toy brands. There's just something so genuinely magical and gorgeous Playmobil can capture despite (or because of) its simplified art style, almost like you're playing with a fantasy picture book made 3D, and the dollhouse side of its play was vastly more appealing to me--and still is, to this day--than the imagery of mainstream sweet and girly doll brands.

And this is what Derek looks like with all his gear, just to give an idea of what these figures can do up like.

 

Derek used to have a clip-on yellow wristwatch, but
that piece is long gone.

Playmobil figures are about twice the height of LEGO minifigures.

Head and hair

Both figure types have removable hair pieces, but they have different functions and limitations. Playmobil hair options used to all include the indented ring on the top like Derek's--this allows hats and helmets to be attached on top of the hair, and only later were hair elements introduced that featured smooth texture and weren't designed for the hat system. 

Derek wearing a hat piece.

LEGO headgear, however, is single-layered and different pieces are mutually exclusive. It's either a hair piece or a hat/helmet piece or a piece that's sculpted to depict both. You can't stack hats on hair with LEGO. Recently, there have been some more form-fitting headgear pieces created for Playmobil (like swimming caps) which function like hair pieces and thus replace hair on the figures, but the standard is still layers of hair and headgear. 

LEGO minifigures can be displayed bald without looking unsightly and incomplete, but Playmobil heads require a bald-cap bandanna hair element to depict bald characters, or otherwise have a newer bald head with hair that slots into the back. 

LEGO has made some bald-cap pieces for older men or bald men with bandannas themselves, but the minifigure can go without head coverage and look fine on its own. 

A Playmobil figure with the bald-cap bandanna-
an Egyptian tomb robber who was supposed to be 
printed with evil eyebrows!

LEGO hair is attached with a standard LEGO stud, and the hair can rotate freely around the head. Playmobil's hair pops on top of the head and features a ridge at the back that slots into a V-shaped notch in the head to keep it aligned in one way only.

LEGO hair can rotate on the head, Playmobil's can't. The
rotation was used in The LEGO Movie to animate a
 hair toss in the faux stop-motion style of the film!

The hair popped off with the ridge in the back.

The notch in the back that the hair aligns into.

There's very slight wiggle room with most hairpieces to tweak the alignment a little, but it's not much. And you can only get that wiggle room because of another quirk of the Playmobil head--the neck stopper. LEGO heads pop onto a tube-shaped neck peg and they can twist 360 degrees. Playmobil heads have a neck peg that pops down into the body, and this peg features a small molded tab just inside the torso that stops against a groove on either side of the torso's neck hole, restricting the head rotation to 90 degrees on either side. It's an oddly realistic touch for such a small figure.

LEGO can go full Exorcist. Playmobil stops at a human range.

This head stopper feature is what gives you wiggle room to tweak hair alignment--by bracing the head in a stopped rotation and fussing with the hair that way while the head is left unable to turn.

Derek's hair is one of the oldest Playmobil sculpts, and is featured with the classic klicky face in Playmobil logos and marketing. An updated version of the sculpt with more uneven, tousled-looking spikes, also exists, but the original is still in use too.

Playmobil hair can sometimes be trickier to remove. Hair like Derek's is easy because there's gaps to wedge your finger under, but it's also kind of sharp. You get used to it. Other pieces are more rounded and form-fitting and harder to pull. As with LEGO, not all hair options grant the figure as much head articulation, with long hair that falls over the front and back being more restrictive. 

Here's an example of a no-hat hair piece (this one is used for female characters), and a newer figure (Dr. X from Super 4) with a newer bald-sculpted head and a slot for a ring of hair around the back. 

The brown hair does have pin holes in the back for hair
accessories.

Dr. X's weird head crater. The hair only pulls
out from one end.

Almost all hair pieces have tabs at the back, but a strange few also feature protruding X shapes in the middle. I don't know if these have any function, but they certainly have a detriment--we'll see shortly that some figures have slots in their head to hold accessories that slide into the hollow space inside, and with X hairpieces, the hollow in their heads would be blocked off. These two pieces in the photo below are the same shape, but the black one, featured on a figure with head slots, can accommodate the paired figure's accessory while the blonde one would not be able to.

Head accessories

Playmobil heads have indents in the side to attach facial accessories, with the hair coming over to lock these pieces in. The pieces gently hold into these indents and can wiggle a little up and down. Beards are by far the most common application of this system, but clown and witch noses have also been used with these, and gas masks and shades use this system as well.

An indent for face add-ons (each figure has two, symmetrically.)

A beard clipped into the indents.

The beard locked in by hair.

Derek wearing a gas/smoke mask.

Derek wearing shades. These are fairly rare; it's
far more common for glasses and shades to be
printed on the figure's face.

Playmobil has also featured earpiece accessories for the head. Figures with those have indents, but also have slots cut into them so the pieces can slot inside the hollow of the head and connect to both ear spots at once. Since they can't connect across the front as one piece like a beard, the connection is inside the head in the middle. I appreciate that they mostly kept these from being two parts. Earpieces have included headset microphones and hoop earrings, like were paired with this figure, though braids have also been used as earpieces in conjunction with a hairpiece, with each braid being a separate part that fit into the head within the shape of the hair. Mutton-chop sideburns are also done with this slot system.

The head slots...

With earrings in.

The complete belly dancer figure.

The belly dancer wearing a headset mic.

The belly dancer wearing a standard indent 
accessory--the shades.

Honestly, I see no reason at all why this slotted head has not become the standard that all figures share. It can wear anything an indented-only head can, and more besides, so to have only a few figures with the slots creates more restrictive customization. It'd be smart for the Brandstatter Group to switch over to this for everybody.

LEGO beards are attached below the head between the head and the torso, much in the way collars and harnesses are locked into Playmobil figures. With LEGO's beards and mustaches, these pieces don't move as one with the head and they cannot securely or attractively stack onto other neck-mounted accessories like epaulettes. Playmobil has the more graceful implementation of beard parts.

Fi?ures heads are marked with a molded up-pointing triangle to indicate the head pulls out and the figures can be popped. Standard main-set figures do not feature this molding. It's also been helpful to check this for other small blind-figure releases. When getting an EverDreamerz blind figure I just ordered, the first I've owned from the theme, checking the head quickly confirmed to me that the figures from those blind packs do not pop since no triangle was molded on the back.

This is the rear of the head of a poppable figure!

Faces and faces

The classic Playmobil face is a simple noseless smile, similar to the classic LEGO smile.

Photo of the classic LEGO head (not mine).

These smiles are actually produced with dual molding. The head is one color of plastic, while the interior is filled with the face color, which comes out into the holes for the eyes and mouth. It's a really brilliant and heartwarming way to ensure these figures' faces are consistent and will endure any amount of rough play. No matter how much paint they lose in scuffs and tumbles, these figures will always be smiling. Increasingly, however, there are heads produced without dual-molded faces, since they call for specialty prints that can't interfere with the subtle but defined texture of the molded face.  Dual molding is something that LEGO is later to the game on, for once, though they use it to make arms and legs and headgear/accessories in mutliple colors, not to create faces.

There are also Playmobil heads being made now that are reversible, with a face and a hair notch on both sides. Reversible heads were first a LEGO innovation many years ago. Printing on two sides of the head was introduced to depict the literally two-faced possessed Professor Quirrell in the first Harry Potter sets, but then became used to depict alternate facial expressions for countless characters, with the head being able to rotate to display the desired face in front. I have what I believe is the very first released Playmobil figure with a double-sided head--Twin-Face from the Top Agents line, an evil double agent character. 

Twin-Face's good side (molded).

Twin-Face's evil side (printed).

Double-sided heads have no indents or slots;
they cannot wear face add-ons.

Two-faced figures have no neck stoppers (though there's still a small bump the head goes through when flipping sides) and these figures almost always include the most basic classic face as the alternate to the more divergent expressive face. Very few two-faced figures' classic face options include any printing. The classic face is usually molded while the expressive face is always printed, but I think (I may be wrong) that there have been two-faced heads with no molded face, where both sides were all printed. Increasingly, as well, many characters with completely divergent facial designs are not dual-faced, so a more classic look is not provided for their figures. I don't like that. If the primary face has nothing of the classic Playmo-smile, then at least provide that on the other side of the head!

Another drawback with a double-faced head is that the hair the figure is wearing must be able to cover the notch that faces front on either side. Certain hair sculpts do not adequately, or at all, keep the frontal notch out of sight, making these heads a little more restrictive on top of their inability to wear face add-ons.

While LEGO took its time to develop divergent facial designs, they finally created a fully standardized art style for all of their figures to obey. Meanwhile, Playmobil has branched out into increasing varieties of divergent art styles for its expressive faces which don't often work too well for me. I wish the divergent faces adhered more often and more closely to the classic dot eyes and crescent mouths--one of my favorites is the Fi?ures Series 2 prisoner who has a two-faced head including a glum face with the smile inverted! 

Photo by Playmobil.

All of the Playmobil divergent faces I adore have something of the classic mouth in their shaping (if the mouth is classic, the eyes can be more different for me) and feel less like drawings. I think Twin-Face's evil side up there would look much better if his grimace was just the Playmobil crescent mouth turned down and painted solid white with no outlines. Outlines are LEGO's thing and they're fine there. Playmobil doesn't need them anywhere in their mouth designs.

Of course, two-faced Fi?ures figures do not have a triangle molded on their heads to indicate they can be popped.

Many Playmobil face varieties exist even in the classic look, before figures with divergent art styles were made. Some figures have eyebrows, wicked or neutral, many female figures have eyelashes and/or rosy cheeks, and some darker-skinned figures are depicted with white face molding for bright teeth and thus have white eyes as well, which are defined with black pupil printing. East Asian faces also exist with more narrow arc-shaped eyes, though I don't know if these faces are molded in or printed on heads without dual-molding. Many figures have had other features printed on as well, like glasses, goggles, mustaches, stubble, tattoos, and evil shadowed eyes, and there are even some established monster faces like ghosts and skulls for horror figures.

A newer subgenre of face that debuted is the "fairy face", which features smaller black eyes with eyeshadow for a more glamorous feminine look, usually paired with a red or pink printed crescent mouth. 

I do like these faces and I think they work. There have also been fun spooky varieties for vampires and witches! 

Then there's the fashion faces which debuted in a shopping-mall theme with mix-and-match clip-on clothing. These are almost like the fairy faces, but have white sclerae, separate irises and pupils, and printed eye reflections which I don't like for Playmobil. 

My Princess Leonora from Super 4 has a fashion face. 
(The figure's head came to me dented like that.)

They're just a bit too removed from the Playmobil look even though the mouths are the classic shape. I haven't sought out a figure with a fashion face because I don't love the look and there hasn't been a figure I liked enough besides...though that's going to change with Fi?ures Series 24, which includes a spooky (dare I say cemetery?) statue with a fashion face. It's weird but oddly effective for those jarringly lively eyes to be there, and the figure is an obvious slam-dunk for my sensibilities. I need her yesterday.

Photo by Playmobil.
I'm going to get her as soon as I can! (July 
is when they should be released in Europe.)

And before you say "wait, you never sought out a fashion-faced figure but you have Leonora?", yes. I meant what I said. My Leonora, in addition to being dented, is a misprint. This is the divergent face she was meant to be printed with, which I find much more appealing.

Leonora's actual face, as seen in a Playmobil
stock photo.

When I sought her out, I had every expectation I would be receiving the correct face print and ended up with a similar but incorrect fashion-face factory error instead.

There is not a newer persistent substyle of male face rendering in the same vein as fairy faces and fashion faces.

Body articulation

Playmobil articulation below the head is largely similar to LEGO's, with both figures having shoulder swivels that go in a full circle and rotating hands that clip onto accessories. Playmobil's torso and arms are shaped so the figures' heads don't block the arm rotation from "windmilling" in a clean circle. With LEGO, the head has to be off to do that, since Playmobil arms slant outward when raised and LEGO's slant inward. 

LEGO hands include brick connections so pieces can attach to the top surface, while Playmobil's, of course, do not. Both hands function as clips to hold pieces within their brands. Playmobil hands are similar to LEGO's cupped claw shape, but feature a different curve and have a slight bend outward at the end of the inner "thumb" edge.

There are many types of arm sculpts, including ones that have different hands with wider wrists that flow seamlessly into the arm for a "sleeveless" bare look, several varieties of arms for different sleeve lengths and styles, different sculpted armor details, and even, more recently, bare arms sculpted to look beefy and muscular! Arms need to have the "sleeved" look to wear clip-on cuffs and gloves, since they clip into the gap between the arm and hand right on the wrist part. Clip-on bracelets can go on any figure's arms since they just encircle as loose loops. 

Playmobil legs are one-piece assemblies that bend at the hip. LEGO's legs are three pieces, with each leg bending independently on the hip. LEGO legs can bend backward a little, while Playmobil's only bend forward.

Playmobil falls somewhere between LEGO minidoll figures (which I briefly discussed here) and standard LEGO minifigures. Minidolls have essentially identical one-piece leg articulation to Playmobil, but their heads turn 360 degrees and their hands do not rotate. 

Male torsos

The male Playmobil torso is pretty omnipresent and consistent, but a common variant of the torso is fatter, with a forward curve. Plastic longcoat pieces which go over the torso are contoured to be able to fit the fatter torso snugly so both torsos can wear them, and these fatter torsos are paired with legs that have curvature at the top to line up with and complete the belly.

Torso/legs comparison of standard and fatter.

A longcoat element is slightly gappy in front
 on the standard torso...

...but perfectly snug on a fat torso.

Coats like these are locked in on mainline figures since they can't come off the arms. On Fi?ures that pop, they're removable and able to go onto other characters. Derek's scuba vest isn't like these coats because it's a softer plastic and has slits on the bottom of the armholes letting the vest slide off.

Female figure attributes

Female Playmobil figures have a few other points to note. The torsos on classic female figures come in two standard varieties--a sleeker torso, and a torso with defined hips and a larger breast contour. 

The hip curves of the latter torso are designed to slot into giant skirt pieces, which enclose the waist in two halves and come primarily in rounded and bell shapes, with a few sculpt varieties for the former.

I'm quite fond of this system.

While the less curvy female torso is sleeker, it's also wider around the waist and cannot wear these skirts. Despite seeming to be designed primarily for function with the skirts, the more contoured female torso is evidently also chosen fairly often just for aesthetic reasons, since there have been many female figures with the torso who have no associated giant skirts to wear and/or wear torso coverings that get in the way of skirts. A third recurring female torso shape depicts a pregnant belly, and there are a few specialized female torso molds with texture for dresses.

Female Playmobil arms on all figures have a slight curve, while male arms are completely straight.

Unbelievable, the standards we're putting on gender...

Female arms cannot wear full-arm-length clip-on pieces because of this curvature, but shoulder and wrist clip-ons still work.

Arms come in a wide variety of sculpts, and sometimes this breaks the curvature dichotomy--certain male figures have ended up using sculpts designed for female arms. There have even been some female figures who use the male torso--most so they can use armor pieces made to work with the male torso, but there is one lady we'll see later who just has an unaccessorized male torso...but also she's a robot. 

Legs

The queen figure I showed has a robed leg piece, though many male figures have them as well. These come in multiple shapes, and the feet are actually a separate insert held in by a small tab. If you push the tab away with a tiny tool, you can pull the feet out of the robe and swap them out across different robed figures--not intended to be done, but perfectly harmless and doable. This can only really be done with Fi?ures, since mainline figures are not meant to come apart and don't give access the foot-insert tab.

You just have to nudge that tab off the ledge to pull
and swap the feet out.

The foot inserts on wider skirts with a flowy asymmetrical gap are a different shape and I didn't have success popping one out of a piece I had. There's a baggy-pants leg sculpt with inserted feet as well, but they work differently and I haven't had enough pairs of the leg sculpt to try swapping them.

Legs come in just as much variety as arms, if not more, but I have figures with two fun novelty leg sculpts beyond the ordinary. First, there's extra-long legs used primarily for stiltwalker clowns, though this pair was from a very oddly tall pirate ghost...

...and there's also a classic mermaid tail! 

This is no longer how Playmobil constructs their mermaid figures-- the newest ones have the skinny body type with waist articulation and hinged tail fins, but I still like the old style, too.

Popping and clicking a Fi?ure

LEGO minifigures disassemble at the head, torso, and legs. The hands can be removed and swapped without difficulty or consequence, though this is not recommended or intended by LEGO, and legs and arms can be pulled off the torsos and and switched out, but certainly at your own risk--doing so can damage the figures and is also not intended, safe, or recommended.

Since the Fi?ures debuted disassembly for Playmobil, they give easy access to the inner workings of these figures. I chose a fairly complex Series 2 Fi?ure, who I call the Anime Superhero, as an example.

Unlike LEGO minifigures, Fi?ures arms are designed to separate and swap between characters.
Playmo-hands do not come out of the arms.

The classic-bodied figures click onto a skeleton or frame piece inside the torso, which has a socket for the head, clip notches for the arms, and indents that clip onto the bumps on the hip pieces. Mainline frames are a translucent whitish color (this can be seen at the hip region), while Fi?ures frames are fully-opaque grey. Exceptions are figures with translucent torsos, who typically have translucent frames to keep the internal structure from standing out.

I'm really curious about just what is physically different about the heads and frames of mainline figures that makes them unable to pop. I assume it has something to do with the little V-shaped gap at the top of the shaft the head plugs into--perhaps the mainline heads terminate in a wider flare or have a tighter socket so the head can only be popped in, but not back out without extreme and unsafe force?

I wondered if immersion in boiling water could soften the frame of a mainline figure internally and make them poppable. And guess what, it sure did!

Mainline head and frame (EverDreamerz Lady Nightmare)
and Fi?ures head and frame (Series 7 Skater)

I knew my doll experience could come in handy--helpful to have entered that hobby after a life of Playmobil so this revisit can gain some knowledge!

The notches in Lady Nightmare's head appear to just be a newer feature for minimizing plastic use, since I've seen it on a newer Fi?ure as well. The neck socket inside the frame is subtly different between the two figure types, and the Fi?ure head has a subtly less flared knob at the end of the neck peg, which makes a big difference. When I've tried switching some mainline heads onto Fi?ures frames, I've found mixed success. Lady Nightmare clicked and popped well in the Fi?ures frame, but it took more force than a Fi?ures head to both push it in and pull it out, and other mainline heads were much harder to pop even with the Fi?ures frame, indicating the magic is mostly in the reduced flare at the end of the Fi?ures head. So switching the frame will make a mainline figure poppable by hand--there's just no guarantee it'll be very easy.

Frames and heads aside, all other mainline Playmobil figure parts can be used for Fi?ures seamlessly--if you can pop them. Mainline arms, legs, and torsos fit just as easily into a Fi?ures frame. 

Torsos for fatter men have unique interior shapes and their own designated frame shape which does not fit into other torsos, which is good to keep in mind. I'm not sure if pregnant female torsos also need their own frames.

Standard frame on the left, "fat man" frame on the right. The 
fat frame is also darker grey.

Okay, here's the parts of the Anime Superhero connected onto the frame without the torso to illustrate. The head can fall forward out of the front of its socket, but the torso negates that problem completely. (It's good to have a torso, kids.)

It's fascinating to me how disproportionate these look
without the torso on, but it's the same as when they 
have it! Also note the neck- stopper tab on the front of
the head peg.

The legs must be popped into the frame before the torso is slid over it because there's no getting them in the frame if the torso is already on, but the figure can technically click together without the head because the arms clip in and lock the torso on the frame so there are no loose parts. The head just makes the figure lock together even tighter, and must be removed first to take apart the rest. 

To lock the arms in, you have to slide them in the arm holes and then push the whole torso onto the frame while pinching the shoulders.

Arms in, loose.

Arms in, clicked.

And here's the whole Anime Superhero assembled. I love how decked-out these figures can be.

I have no real attachment to this guy, though.

The Anime Superhero and Derek are both good showcases of how layered these figures can get. Collars can be popped in between the head and neck, vests and coats can add shape to a torso, or else belts or harnesses can slide on. Pieces can attach to the wrists and shoulders, or clip onto the whole arm. Some pieces fit onto the bottoms of feet, but others can clip over the front of them. Headgear stacks on hair, rubber cords can connect parts of the outfit together, and accessories complete the lot. LEGO offers some of this, with pieces that go around the neck or cover the torso, and fabric and plastic cape and skirt pieces, but Playmobil can get more decked-out than LEGO and has beaten LEGO to a lot of it.

The skinny bodies

Figures with the skinnier body varieties (which were introduced and made poppable by the time of Fi?ures Series 2) have different structures. Skinny bodies have smaller shapes to represent very sleek costume, swimwear, or undergarmented bodies for figures with clip-on dresses. These skinny bodies include two main types--bending legs and long dresses. With bending-leg bodies, there are two primary leg shapes--one resembling a bikini bottom or a leotard bottom with no extra molding on the legs, and one with molding on the legs resembling swim trunks or athletic shorts. Male and female skinny figures have separate torsos--the female one is more versatile for being smoothly contoured and suitable for undergarments or bathing suits as well as fully-clothed tops, while the male skinny torso is defined with pectoral muscles and thus not used for as many clothed figures--only those with skintight undershirts. Many bending-leg bodies have bare foot sculpts, but there have been varieties with boots and shoes as well. 

On skinny figures with bending legs, the frame and legs are all one piece, but the arms and head and torsos click on in the same way.

A skinny female body with bending legs and the "bikini"
shape, compared to a classic female figure.

The legs and frame are one piece. 

These skinny bodies can wear closed skirts that lock into a clicked figure...

You have to pop to take this skirt off.

...and they can wear clip-on skirts or full clip-on dresses.

This skirt type pulls and clicks down around
her waist into position.

Neither skirt (and certainly not the full clip-on dresses) really flatters the bending legs of these figures, but it's a nice idea.  

Then there are the long-dressed skinny figures, like this lovely Balinese woman.

These figures cannot bend at the waist and don't even have a joint there. Instead, they have a fairly bizarre construction where the foot insert forms a pole connecting to the head, and the skirt contains the clips for the arms. This creates a two-part layered frame.

Uhh...should I be scared?

It's weird, yeah, but hey, it works! I don't really mind the loss of waist articulation on these skinny-dress figures because they're often gorgeous and the seamless shape of the body tends to add something to their concepts. Other static skinny lower bodies have included mermaid tails and snake/genie tails.

Playmobil have also recently come up with a design for skinny bodies with long skirts and bending legs, which is really great to see. 

Close-up on a Playmobil photo from a recent Princess set.

Long-dressed skinny figures can wear short skirts over them, but long dresses with trains prevent clip-on dresses from being overlaid on those figures. Skinny figures have also included their own poofy-ballgown clip-ons, which work just like those on classic figures, minus the need for a specially-contoured torso--any skinny figure without a trailing skirt can wear a skinny poofy overskirt.

Arms from skinny bodies are compatible with each other, but not with classic bodies, and vice-versa. Arms stick to their own body types, and if you care about the gendered curvature disparity, that makes it more frustrating for sticklers.

On all of the skinny figures, the heads pop into sockets that enclose them on both sides, unlike the classic figures. That doesn't affect a darn thing, but it's interesting to me.

I'm not sure if the skinny bodies have differences in frames between mainline and Fi?ures characters, but I assume the difference in head molding is what maintains the pop/no pop dichotomy since the skinny figure heads are the same as the classic figures' in their respective categories.

Child figures

Younger figures are the last things I think are relevant to highlight. Classic child figures are shorter than adult figures and feature nonremovable hair with rounded shapes.

I think I'll call her Susanna, and she's Derek's daughter.

Hats for children have a smaller hollow than adult hats, though they can be forced onto adult hair. On children, the hats just cup the round top of the head almost like a ball-and-socket joint, and thus can be tilted around on the head. There have been newer child figures with bumps in the hair for putting small crown accessories onto, with the crowns encircling the raised areas and staying on.

Child figures have the exact same articulation as adults. They can be popped very easily by just pulling on their heads, unlike the adults. Their frame underneath is very similar to the skinny-adult bending-legs bodies that debuted many years after them, with the legs and frame being one piece and the head socket encircling the head peg.

There's also baby figures. These have bending shoulder joints but no rotating hands or grip, heads that rotate 360 degrees, and bending waists. 

Meet Charlotte.

The baby figures are not really sculpted to interact very well with the other figures. They can't really balance between the arms, and while figures can grab a baby's hands, it's not very elegant, and can look either unsafe, or like they're hauling the poor infant off like luggage.

Derek is a bad father.

I could get a good picture with Derek and Susanna both swinging the littlest one between them...

But then...

*fWWINNNGG!*

...I think Mom needs to take back the kids.

I feel a little guilty about being so mean-spirited with those photos, but it demonstrates a point--these figures are not designed to interact very sweetly with their babies!

Lately, there have also been teenage figures, but they seem to be the same as child figures, just with longer legs. I'd say they're pretty youthful-looking facially for my image of what a teen figure should be, but height-wise, they're about right.

A teenager figure from a recent set's box photo.

Skintones

There are, I believe, now five main human skintones in the Playmobil assortment, but I only happen to have the first four right now. There's a pale White/East Asian tone, a more tanned tone that's been used for various figures, an orange tone that's been used for everything from East Indians to Native Americans to Ancient Egyptians, and a brown tone for Black people. The light tan color was the most recent to be added of the ones I own, coming in close to the debut of the Fi?ures line, and a darker tan falling between it and the orange tone has been added since.

King Balthazar on the right demonstrates the common white face molding with printed pupils used
for Black figures, though I think a few have just used unprinted faces molded in pure black. That seems to be more common now.

End Part 1

The big draw for LEGO minifigures is the way they're built into the LEGO brick system so they can attach to and interact with pretty much every LEGO piece that's ever been constructed for dynamic static displays and play value. I think the big draw for Playmobil figures is just how much the characters can be adorned and built out, with shoulder pads, armor, bracers, bracelets, skirts, belts, harnesses, capes, hats, and skirts...and accessories to actually hold on top of all of those! These simple little figure shapes allow for a ton of stuff to be added on for lots of detail and variety, and especially with poppable Fi?ures, the customization potential is wonderful. I think Playmobil today is pretty stylistically messy, but at its strongest, it has a beauty, sweet charm, and visual draw that can't be beat, and the elaborate nature of many of these toys combined with their satisfying size and simplicity where it counts makes them extremely lovable and fun to play with. 

Now that I've beyond covered the basics of both the classic and modern klicky, the next post should see me looking at some of my favorite and most interesting examples. I won't promise it'll be the only one.