A ‘happy father, unhappy Greek,’ is how Nikos Papadopoulos describes himself on his blog, now known as ‘Plasticobilism’ (Facebook page here). As a good father he first started purchasing Playmobil toys for his young son. As an unhappy Greek he soon realized that the small plastic men, women and children could be repurposed to create images with a political message, to say the things he wanted to say more playfully and more effectively than with any long-winded political diatribe.
Thus was born ‘Playmobilism’ the first blog and facebook page Mr Papadopoulos, an astrophysicist and professional screenwriter, created in August 2013 to post images of his new found toy-based activism. With its clever and topical posts, the page soon built a significant and devoted following.
That was until March 25th – ironically Greece’s independence day – when Mr Papadopoulos’s Facebook page was suddenly taken down without warning following a complaint made by Playmobil Germany to the social media site. The company maintained that the page and blog violated its intellectual property rights by using the name ‘Playmobil’.
That may seem reasonable. But the company did not stop there. When Mr Papadopoulos set up a new blog and Facebook page under the new name ‘Plasticobilism’ (which while less satisfying, carefully avoids trademark issues), the company was still not happy. Writing to Mr Papadopoulos they stated that he was still violating their guidelines which prohibit the ‘modification’ of their figures in order to make ‘political statements’ and ‘aggressive content dealing with war and violence’. They demanded that he either shut down his page or remove all of the photographs with ‘political content’ (a broad term if ever there was one) and not post such images again.
Mr Papadopoulos refused, protesting that he couldn’t be violating any modification guidelines given that he was not modifying the store-bought figures in any way, only posing them. Furthermore, he pointed out, he was far from the only person on the planet who had thought of using Playmobil’s figures in such a way. He says he spoke to similar groups abroad who claimed that they had never been troubled by the company over any of their (equally political) content. The company also received angry emails from a number of Mr Papadopoulos’s followers and the story of censorship of a Greek blogger by a German multinational was picked up by several Greek news sites.
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Fortunately, for whatever reason, Playmobil eventually decided to back down and reached a compromise with Plasticobilism, retracting its demand that Mr Papadopoulos remove images and asking only that he publish a disclaimer on his sites clearly stating that he is in no way affiliated with the company, which he did. They even apologised for closing his first site.
So for now we commend Playmobil for doing the right thing – albeit only after it behaved like an authoritarian behemoth. For given that Playmobil is designed for kids to ‘recreate and experience the world in miniature’, can't adults be trusted to do the same? Especially given that it is efforts like Plasticobilism, with its replacement of impotent rage with potent satire, that make the real world that little bit better.
