Dream station DICKIE TOYS

The little firefighter in a "children’s paradise" called Dickie Toys.

At the same speed and power as its own model cars, Dickie Toys moves towards the top of the international toy market. This second oldest brand in the Simba Dickie Group is one of the trendsetters in radio-controlled toy vehicles. A fast-moving story.

Dickie Toys is simply toy heaven, especially for little boys. Anything in real life that has wheels, anything that moves, honks, blinks lights or goes broombroom, races or digs, shovels or snarls, you’ll find it all here. The range includes every technical toy you can possibly imagine – mechanical or electrical, classic, up-to-the-minute or futuristic, from police cars to rescue helicopters, farm machinery, construction machinery, emergency vehicles of every kind, sports cars and flying machines, and many of them are radio controlled – not to mention accessories such as garages and workshops.

Dickie Toys fascinates father and son

"What makes Dickie Toys so special is the virtually limitless range of new products, which we are adding to all the time – fathers and sons are equally fascinated," says Dickie Toys Managing Director Oliver Naumann. Dads adore the technical refinements of these miniature speedsters. Kids love to play with everything they see in the street or on TV: a car just like pop’s, fire engines, ambulances, Formula 1 race cars. And when it comes to driving a Porsche – well, fathers and sons are of one mind.

"In this segment, toy trends follow the larger fashion", says Oliver Naumann. You keep your finger on the pulse, your eyes peeled and so new ideas continue to pour forth. While dads enthuse about sit-on lawn mowers, racing weekends on the Nürburgring or a session learning to operate heavy equipment, their offspring revel in off-roaders or cranes that are bigger than they are themselves.

Boundless enjoyment: Little boys love the new garages and cleaning stations.

Keeping pace is absolutely essential in the market for boys’ toys. "Trends come and go faster all the time, so we have to react fast and fl exibly," explains Naumann. And that is Dickie Toys’ great strength. The brand is one of the leading European toy producers. Neumann sums up the firm’s recipe for success: "What excites us is not what exists now, it’s what’s going to exist in future." Every year 200 new products hit the market.

A moving story

The unassailable position in the boys’ market held by this Bavarian toy manufacturer is not the only reason why the Group attaches such importance to Dickie Toys. It was with this firm that it all began: it was the take-over of Dickie Toys that created the Simba Dickie Group. This is what happened: in 1971 Wolfgang Sauerborn founded the toy making firm Sauerborn & Stübinger, and in 1978 Dickie Toys Hong Kong. Sauerborn was among the first German entrepreneurs to import toys from the Far East.

Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Sauerborn, on a visit to the Nuremberg Toy Fair, met Jörg Stricker, head of the Toys Institute at Sonneberg. They decided to co-operate. By May 1990 they were already testing out a repair and service facility with twelve employees. In 1991 Sauerborn was one of the first West Germans to translate the "blossoming landscapes" slogan into reality, cutting the first sod for the Dickie Toys branch in Sonneberg. In 1992 they opened a state-of-the art racing track for model cars, which now hosts Europe’s leading youth racing competitions.

Irresistible RC: It is very easy to let racing cars rip.

A stroke of fate changes everything

A 4,500 square meter warehouse was inaugurated in 1993. But everything was to change in a fraction of a second: On 7 June Wolfgang Sauerborn, then aged 49, was killed when his private jet crashed at Cologne airport. His widow, Barbara, did not wish to carry on with the firm. She started looking for a family firm, a local one if possible, so that her employees’ jobs would be safe. It was no surprise, then, when the Sieber family and its firm Simba Toys was the preferred candidate to take over all the rights and duties of Dickie Spielzeug, Dickie Tamiya and Dickie Hong Kong Ltd.

Sound, action! Dickie Toys’ Music Cars roar just like real racing cars, play hit songs, steer forwards and backwards and even dance. The star of the series is the 50-centimeter Music Car Truck.

Things really then began to speed up for the Dickie Toys brand, which was already manufacturing exclusively in China. At that time Dickie-Tamiya was marketing its model sports cars solely in Germany. The new owners pursued the internationalization of Dickie, alongside expansion of their own Carson brand for worldwide marketing. They took the greatest care to avoid developing Carson products that might compete with Tamiya.

Birth of the Simba Dickie Group

In 1994 the Dickie management moved from Nuremberg to the Simba Toys headquarters in Fürth. In the same year the product range was enriched by the first jointly developed Light&Sound construction vehicle. In 1995 Dickie Toys went into the license business. Shortly afterwards they had their first big break: a contract with future seven-times Formula 1 champion Michael Schumacher and a Benetton RC racing car started the real RC hype.

Further milestones followed. 1997 saw the launch of the first RC Fendt tractorwith-trailer. In 1998 overseas demand for road safety training vehicles suddenly shot up. A year later the group acquired the well-known toy firm Schuco and rechristened it Dickie-Schuco. In 2000 Dickie Toys’ RC Unimog was named model of the Year. Oliver Naumann was appointed Marketing Director of Dickie Spielzeug. The brand was now firmly established as a trendsetter for anything that roars and races, including some mechanical masterpieces. In 2006 Naumann was promoted to Managing Director and the firm acquired the lucrative licensing rights to the film Pirates of the Caribbean. From the very start, Dickie Toys was keen on joint ventures with Chinese manufacturers, giving it more influence over product safety and quality.

Wow! The new RC VW Sirocco RTR, on a scale of 1:10 to the original, is 40 centimeters long.

Licenses boost success

In 2008 licensing was a big success for "The Ludolfs", a family of scrap metal dealers made famous by TV and film. 2009 brought Dickie Toys a first in the history of the Simba Dickie Group: a master toy license from Walt Disney for the children’s action comedy G-Force. Nowadays Dickie products are marketed worldwide through their own branches or by the Simba Dickie Group’s distribution partners. An impressive example is Dickie Toys’ "Shop-in-Shop" presentation in FAO Schwarz’s store on Fifth Avenue, New York, one of the world’s best-known toyshops. It was from the US that a big new trend wave just hit Europe: Music Cars that line up at traffic lights, do fantastic dances and play cool sounds and songs. Dickie Toys is currently offering several Music Car models.

Pretty in pink: Little Girls are fascinated by Dickie Girl. The ‘Pony Carrier’ comes with two ponies and one rider.

Ninety per cent of innovative toys are developed by Dickie Toys’ own product management; only ten per cent are contributed by outside inventors. One of the newest ideas – and a real stroke of genius – is Dickie Toys for girls. This is because girls also like moving toys, such as the pink Golf towing a horsebox, or the dismountable camper van for ponies and a rider.

German-speaking Europe is already firmly in Dickie’s hand. "The next thing is to establish ourselves more firmly internationally, to match our range more accurately to the markets and to further strengthen our position in the licensing business," says Oliver Naumann, planning his route march into the immediate future. He oozes confidence: "So long as folks are fascinated by cars, Dickie will do just fine."