I didn’t expect to fall in love with Playmobil. I mean, there’s so many things that I already have cluttering my life – did I really need to add another galaxy to the myriad universes that compete for space in the cosmos of my bedroom? ‘Need’ is such a strong word, especially when ‘want’ tends to dominate my impulses anyhow. Move over, Lego and Kubrick and Minimates and Famosa and Heroclix and gashapon and Microman and Ci-Boys and 3age – Playmobil is movin’ in.
Playmobil doesn’t really have the century-long history that most notable toys have, and was in fact born in Germany during the mid-1970s. Like most miniature figural lines, it uses a generic body which is outfitted with different accessories and paint schemes to differentiate one figure from the next. The real artistry in any minifigure is how unique each one appears using this single basic form, and Playmobil runs the gamut. While many earlier sets remain difficult to find, you can still easily assemble an entire Playmobil world relatively cheaply. Single figures are often only a few dollars and come with a huge collection of surprisingly detailed accessories, and playsets aren’t too much more expensive.
But we all know what Playmobil is. None of it really made sense to me until I came across a beautiful 3-inch tall deep-sea diver on the shelves of the local everything-store. My love of nautical things is pretty enormous. I not-so-secretly believe that I’ve spent past lives as pirates or manatees or some kind of super-talented anemone who would have been a concert flautist had I only the hands to operate a flute properly, so perhaps that explains my attraction to the underwater world. So when I saw the little man in the huge, strangely antiquated diving helmet, brandishing a dagger, something about it called out to me. Finally, I had an adventurer brave and in-scale enough to face my amassing army of octopi.
The deep-sea diver was only the beginning. I’d idly observed the nifty Playmobil section any time I found myself in the Times Square Toys ‘R’ Us, but I never partook – maybe because I knew it would be a long, tumultuous stumble down a path of no recovery, or maybe I just hadn’t found the right figure yet. Exploring these now, though, comes the realization that I could staff a whole pirate ship with about 50 swarthy scalawags and each of them would be different. And I could give them islands to sail to. And I could haunt them with skeletons… and a circus. On Halloween. In outer space. And it would be tear-jerkingly stellar.
Thus is the expansiveness of Playmobil – simple in construction, and endless in variety. Even my little diver comes with a helmet, a dagger, a length of rope with a hook to lower him to his adventures, a flashlight, a belt, and big shoes weighted with real metal slugs – and that was only about three bucks. At the moment, he’s plumbing the depths of my nigh-unnavigable computer desk, tethered by my wireless router. Good luck, little guy.
Because Playmobil is still based in Germany (and even in US distribution of their toys, German precedes English in the assembly instructions), they are dispersed and licensed differently to every country that chooses to distribute them. As a result of this, some items only make it to certain countries and are difficult to obtain by completists, but the internet, more than ever, is the great collection equalizer. Collectobil catalogues hundreds of these sets by theme, aiding you in your quest to get some really neat ones – even though the site hasn’t been updated in over a year. Playmoboard offers up some more 
current forums for the many collectors, should you have any questions.
I admit that I get excited about a new toy about eight times every six minutes, but I like to think that my childlike appreciation of these is part of my charm. I mean, I appreciate them on an artistic and creative level, but also, GLOWING SKELETON.
Really, is any more explanation needed than that?
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