Playmobil's owner refused every film license, including Star Wars

Horst Brandstätter, the owner who commissioned designer Hans Beck to create Playmobil in 1974, ran the company on a founding principle: figures should have no fixed identity, so a child's imagination fills in the character. A licensed figure from a film or game arrives with its personality already decided.

For decades that principle meant a flat refusal of film and franchise tie-ins, Star Wars included, even as competitor Lego built an enormous business licensing exactly those properties. In a rare interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung shortly before his death, Brandstätter explained: licensed figures fix the character in advance, and 'I don't see why one should make George Lucas rich.'

He also argued licensed toys have a shelf life tied to a film's popularity, while a plain Playmobil knight or astronaut gets handed down for generations: 'Playmobil should not be thrown away, it gets inherited.' The company kept building its own unbranded worlds — construction workers, knights, astronauts — instead of Star Wars sets or Harry Potter figures.

Brandstätter died in June 2015, still Playmobil's sole owner, with Forbes estimating his fortune near $1.2 billion and the company's revenue around $700 million. Lego, which had committed to licensing years earlier, went on to sales roughly ten times Playmobil's.