I was doing a little online shopping and was on the Playmobil site. My cousin's son turns three this year and he is the first boy in 20 years, so he's facing a mountain of hand-me-down girl toys. In particular, I clicked the USA link and then the link on the left called 'Products' to be taken to the main products page. Usually I like to bring by holiday gifts that cannot be easily purchased in the US, so I was curious to see what other countries were offering/not offering so I drilled down through a few of the different country sites.
In particular, if you go back to the US products page from above, and then if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you'll see a bunnies link, which then takes you to another page with a few products, among them the bunnies' school.
So riddle me this batman--why isn't the equivalent product on the Germany page? I realize that cultural differences are considered in the decision to sell a product or how to market it and that you won't find wool socks so often in Florida, for example, but generally I find that so many things such as toys are global these days. So much that you see the same packaging here in Europe and in the US, with 14 different languages on it.
Curiously, in addition to the US site, you can also find the bunny school in these countries: Canada, Netherlands, UK, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. It's missing under the flags of Spain, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Why wouldn't this product be sold in the same place on the website in German speaking countries as the others? I searched but couldn't find it hidden elsewhere either. Although, I must admit, the lack on the Spain site stymies me.
-Would it be because school is serious and not a place for rabbits?
-Is there no love for the rabbit in general in Germany? I searched for rabbits and bunnies on the German site, and there are plenty of them located elsewhere such as in the Noah's ark set or in the magician set.
Accepting any theories on this one.
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4 comments:
I bet you could email playmobil about that, they probably did market research showing that the line would not be as popular here-- in Germany Playmobil is considered one of the more serious toy product lines, and they might have thought it would be bad for their image. Just a theory.
Yeah, it doesn't look like they haev it on the Playmobil Germany site, but I googled a bit and if you go to www.mytoys.de and put
PLAYMOBIL®, 4455 Osterhasenschule in the search function it's there. Weird.
Germans actually LOVE the Hasenschule. You can get little wooden figures all over the place at Easter.
Yeah, there seem to be plenty of bunnies here.
On another note, and probably not connected to your search, but I just thought of it... have you noticed how difficult the German language makes it to search for, say, everything on ebay that is rabbit/bunny themed? So often the Hase or Häschen is part of another word. Like you could find "Rabbit School" on Amazon by searching for "rabbit", but you'd have to know EXACTLY what you're looking for in German. "Hase" won't find "Hasenschule" for you. What a freaking pain.
vallian: i may need to try the email route, as i am curious.
christina: thanks for the research. now i am even more curious as to why it wouldn't be on their own website.
debbie: agreed, it is a hassle. although in the reverse direction it does make a new word easier to figure out since the entire description is in it sometimes.
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