Mattel Unveils Fisher-Price Digital Toy Museum

Need to Know

• The Fisher-Price Toy Museum is a virtual collection dedicated to celebrating the Mattel brand’s 90-year anniversary.
• The museum exists on Instagram with individual posts featuring images of Fisher-Price toys, organized by decade, with a caption that describes the toy’s function and date of release.
• Users can also visit an adjacent “gift shop” where items printed with images of vintage Fisher-Price toys are for sale.

Analysis

Mattel subsidiary Fisher-Price now has its own online museum, the Fisher-Price Toy Museum, launched this week to celebrate the brand’s 90-year anniversary.

The Fisher-Price Toy Museum is a virtual experience that lives on Instagram, at @fisherprice.toymuseum. There, the brand’s most popular toys can be “visited” as individual Instagram posts, where they appear alongside photo captions detailing the toy’s function, date of release, and other interesting pieces of trivia and tongue-in-cheek museum-style commentary. The toys are organized by decade, ranging from the 1950s to the 2010s.

A post featuring the Rock-a-Stack, for instance, from the 1960s, notes that the popular rainbow-colored stacking rings are pictured “with its distant cousins, stacked rocks!”, as the image features the Fisher-Price toy styled beside towers of brightly painted rocks, in the style of a real museum diorama. “Even though they’re both very colorful, the Rock-a-Stack is really the one that has helped toddlers learn about colors and hand-eye coordination for over 60 years,” the post continues.

“The Fisher-Price Toy Museum was inspired by the idea that, whether you were born in the 1950s, 1980s or 2000s, everyone has a memory of their favorite childhood toy, and many of those are from Fisher-Price,” Chuck Scothon, SVP and Global Head of Infant and Preschool, Mattel, said in a statement. “The intent of this museum is to take visitors back to their unique childhood experiences, and give them the opportunity to relive their youth, even if just for a few moments.”

The photos for the Fisher-Price Toy Museum were taken by photographer Leila Fakouri, who has previously worked with Levi’s, footwear brand Jeffrey Campbell, and cosmetics brand Almay. The museum was launched alongside a gift shop, featuring 16 items that celebrate the brand’s iconic vintage toys, including tote bags, housewares, and apparel.