Bollywood – Wacckopedia

Bollywood is an Indian company based in Mumbai, which is famous for manufacturing collections of soft toys. It is the leading soft toy maker of India and has 98.7% market share.

Bollywood

Etymology

The name “Bollywood” is derived from Ball-y Woods, which Described the crotch of Dadasaheb Phalke, the first CEO of the
organisation. But since the controversy-ridden organisation did not want another controversy, the spelling was changed to be in sync with lollypop, signifying the family-friendliness of the brand.

Soft toy collection

Unlike other soft toy makers, Bollywood does not sell single-piece soft toys. It sells soft toy packs consisting of 4-5 or even more soft toys in it. Usually, each pack contains:

• A hero toy named Rahul, Vijay or Prem
• A girl figurine named Puja, Anjali or Priya
• A scary toy named Gabbar, Mogambo or Choudhury Saab (who may be the girl figurine’s mechanical/canonical father)
• Several other smaller toys, colloquially called extras, which can be carried around in pocket (Bollywood included these toys in the packages so that children playing with a collection can have some of the toys with them even at their school)

In many collections, popular toys are repeated with new clothing. Although rival soft toy makers have criticised this move as lack of innovation[1], the market analysts and the buyers don’t seem to have any issue with it.

The concept of soft toy collections has become widely popular and is considered to be one of the reasons behind the astounding success of Bollywood.

History

Back in 1900s, soft toys were sold as single pieces in India (Newsreel Inc. was the market leader at that time with 68.99% market share). However in 1913, Dadasaheb Phalke, the then CEO of Bollywood conceived a revolutionary paradigm regarding the strategy for selling toys. Instead of selling single toys, his vision was to sell multiple toys in one package, thereby realising the idea of a cohesive group being better than the sum of its parts.

The first collection of toys released by Bollywood was named Raja Harishchandra. A carton of wafers was packed in with the toys. Phalke later revealed that he believed these free goodies would help to escalate the sales of otherwise dismal quality toys made out of unprocessed bio-waste[2].

Bollywood signed a $12.79 million deal with Story Confectioneries, who would supply the wafers. The deal still continues, which is renewed every 5 years for an undisclosed sum of money. Market analysts believe that this deal is the perfect example of symbiosis, which has helped both of these companies to remain buoyant and profitable even in the toughest market situations.

1910s – Early 1960s

Throughout this period, Bollywood manufactured several toy collections, out of which many were tremendously famous and profitable for the organisation.

Out of them, collections like Mughal-e-Azam and Mother India were especially successful and are still sold/bootlegged. Dev Anand and Dilip Kumar were the most famous hero toys of their time. Dilip Kumar was actually designed as Yusuf Khan, but in the last moment, due to a production glitch, the name was wrongly printed on the collection cover.

Since then, many other hero toys have been released with altered names, the most famous of them being the 1990s/2000s superhero toy Akshay Kumar. Another noteworthy toy of the era was Manoj Kumar, whose fans loved to call it The Faceless Doll.

Late 1960s – 1980s

Although Bollywood had produced singing toy collections since 1930s, but the practice reached its zenith during this period. Bollywood tried to rope in musical legends like Elvis Presley to produce pre-programmed music mouthed by the toys, but when all of them rejected[3], Bollywood opted to lure in software engineers who would copy the music from the west and become music directors, instead of becoming assistant engineers in their companies.

Some of these music directors became so famous that they had toys designed after them. Most famous of them was Bappi Lahiri, who had revolutionised the idea of ‘bling-bling’ in the songs by adding sound effects similar to farting with a running stomach.

In addition to music, toy collections with an action theme became immensely popular. Collections like Don, Deewar, Sholay sold in great numbers. People liked The Angry Young Man hero toy named Amitabh Bachchan and based on its toy-value, even some of the dismal collections went on to become hugely profitable ventures for Bollywood. Amitabh Bachchan was so influential that it became the first toy whose statue was featured in Madame Tussauds.

Other influential toys were Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Khanna and Jeetendra, although these toys are more popular because of their canonical offsprings Twinkle Khanna, Akshaye Khanna and Tusshar Kapoor.

1990s – Early 2000s

The late 1980s were not very good in terms of business for Bollywood, so, in the 1990s, a change in paradigm was triggered by new age toy designers like Aditya Chopra, Karan Johar etc. They started designing a different type of toy collection called College Toys.

This lineup was different from the approach of their fathers (Yash Chopra and Yash Johar, two stalwart designers from 1970s), who concentrated on the Play with your family concept. The new age designers started making collections to be enjoyed with partners only. Another trend caught up with these new designers, which became instantly popular with youngsters. They kept the name of the collection so long that it would take a day just to print the name on the box. As a result, abbreviated forms of collection names like BJWNGE (Blow Job Was Not Good Enough) gained popularity and became a cool way to refer to these collections.

Shah Rukh Khan replaced Amitabh Bachchan as the most popular toy to be bundled with several hit collections like DDLJ, KKHH, and so on. Other noteworthy hero toys were Salman Khan and Aamir Khan. During this decade, the girls also gained significant popularity and dolls like Kajol and Rani Mukherjee became part of male fantasies, which was yet unheard of, thanks to the pristine outfits of yesteryear dolls. This led to Bollywood’s obsession with sex in the next decade.

2000s and beyond

Currently Bollywood is busy spreading its popularity in the international market too, and has been immensely successful in markets like USA, UK and Australia. Currently Bollywood holds a 0.05% market share in the toy industry throughout the world, which is expected to rise to 0.09% by 2020, thanks to the high number of G.O.A.T. students starting to stay abroad.

In a quest to penetrate into the international market, Bollywood has shed off the clandestine image and has explored various darker themes in the recent toy collections. These range from homosexuality to heterosexuality and from dyslexic kids to haunted kids. This foray into uncharted territories has garnered acclaim from the buyers and toy connoisseurs[4].

Since toys don’t age, popular toys like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan continue to feature as college kids in the collections released in this decade as well. A new hero toy named Hrithik Roshan has also come up and is hugely popular among the teenage girls demographic.

Another popular concept taken up by Bollywood in this era is, packing in six Hero toys in one collection, branded as a “Six-Pack”. This concept gained popularity when 6 Shah Rukh Khan toys appeared in the collection Om Shanti Om and set the toy market “on fire” according to the package designer Farah Khan.

Bollywood has come up with another unique idea of Item Numbers. Generally, a voluptuous girl figurine is packed in secretly with a collection and due to word-of-mouth, the collection gains huge popularity.

Controversies

Right from the very beginning, Bollywood has attracted a lot of negative attention[5]. It started in 1915 with the Indian Cow Monetization Association blaming Bollywood for not paying for the bio-wastes they procured for making the toys. Some of the major controversies surrounding Bollywood are:

• Indian Cow Monetization Association blamed Bollywood for procuring bio-wastes for free in 1915.
• A group of American musicians (who later went on to form BFMF – Bollywood For Mother Fuckers) criticised the practice of copying their music, but could not take any legal action due to convoluted international laws[6].
• Various cultist organisations of India have questioned and threatened Bollywood toys for practising what they could not in real life, like mass sodomy. Viv Sena, started by fans of Vivien Leigh is the frontrunner in these campaigns.
• Some terrorist organisations and their leaders have claimed that Bollywood often took loans from them but never paid back. Those terrorists who were looking to make some money were flustered. However, due to the lack of any co-ordination in Bollywood, the terrorists did not know whom to approach/kill for the money[7].

Awards

Many corporate organisations have come up with awards for Bollywood toy designs. The awards have become a de facto measure for designers about whether to rinse and repeat toy designs. Since Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan have received most awards, they are repeated the most. The most important awards pertaining to Bollywood are:

• National Toy Awards – awarded by Government of India
• Indian Toy Fair Awards
• ISTA (Indian Soft Toy Association) Awards

See Also

• Homosexuality
• Dyslexia
• Item Number

References/Quotes

[1] “They (Buyers) got no choice!” – Jack da Mota, CEO of Bull Toys
[2] The Truths and Lies Behind Harishchandra by Dadasaheb Phalke, Orangutan Books
ISBN 0-191-31944-5
[3] “It’s better to be lonesome and rot in jail than to sing for a doll” – Elvis Presley
[4] “I love to see my 2-year old Rakhi wearing that bikini like Kareena Kapoor” – Rajesh Paul, IT consultant from Kolkata
[5] “We are soft targets.” – Salman Khan
[6] “They toyed with us!” – Brat Truck (of BFMF)
[7] “Our children! play!! with toys!!! made out of terrorists’ money!!!!” – Aaj Ki Taza Khabar!!!!!

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