Inspiration, Inclusion, andthe Making of a Multicultural
Toy Company
An Interview with Yla Eason

Yla Eason is Assistant Professor of Professional Practice at Rutgers University
where she teaches business communications and marketing. She has directed
learning and development for the R/GA digital advertising agency and theCenter for Excellence in Advertising at Howard University and lectured at thebusiness school at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York(CUNY). In 1985 she founded the multicultural toy company Olmec Toysand has earned numerous awards, including the U. S. Business Enterprise
Trust Award in 1996 and the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce’s Alice H.
Parker Women Leaders in Innovation Award in 2020. In this interview, Eason
describes how she founded and ran her trailblazing company. Key words:
diversity and toys; marketing toys; Olmec Toys; toy design; toy industry,
Sun-ManAmerican Journal of Play: Tell us about your background and where you grew up.
Yla Eason: I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during segregation. My grandparents came to Oklahoma along with other Black people who wererecruited by Black leaders Booker T. Washington and Ida B. Wells. Oklahoma was portrayed as a place where there were Native Americans, but
no white people. Government removal of Native peoples in the southeastern United States in the 1830s, known as The Trail of Tears, had madeOklahoma one big reservation. But in the aftermath of slavery in the latenineteenth century, it was also seen as a place where recently emancipatedBlack people could buy land, own land, be farmers, and grow crops. My
grandparents were farmers.
		 My parents met at Langston University, a historically Black college anduniversity (HBCU) in Oklahoma. Before Oklahoma became a state in 1907,
there were more Black towns there than in any other place in America.
And they were all thriving and self-sufficient. Black people owned banks,
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Contact Yla Eason at yeason@business.rutgers.edu

Inspiration, Inclusion, and the Making of a Multicultural Toy Company

movie theaters, pharmacies, land, and homes. Tulsa had these kinds ofBlack businesses. The city’s Greenwood district was known as Black WallStreet. That was the site of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, when a white mob
led an attack that destroyed thirty-five city blocks and left hundreds deadand injured and thousands homeless.
		 I grew up with a very strong Black identity because of where I camefrom and because I had heard my entire life that I should “be a credit toyour race.” I had a huge sense of belonging to a community as opposed
to being an individual. I belonged to a church, Vernon African Methodist
Episcopal church, which is the last building standing from the race massacre of Black Wall Street. I attended Ralph J. Bunche Elementary, named
after the Black diplomat; Marian Anderson Junior High School, named after
the Black singer; and Booker T. Washington High School. But I also knewthat separate was not equal. My grandmother had told me horrific stories
about slavery. I knew Black people had been mistreated and tortured. One
incident from my youth really exemplifies this. When they built our juniorhigh school, it was only the second Black junior high school built in Tulsa.
I remember the teachers and administrators telling us that we just got thisschool built and it has everything white schools have. There is a swimming
pool, tennis courts, and basketball courts. They played Marian Anderson singing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” every morning on the publicannouncement system. And they told us to never touch the walls when you
walk through the hallways. Because when “they” (white people)—and it
was very much them versus us—come to inspect the school and see that thewalls are dirty they will never build a Black school again. We were always
aware that someone else was coming up behind us.
		 But I grew up almost instinctively knowing the wealth, the richness,and the smartness of Black people. I never developed that sense of inferiority that some kids unfortunately grow up with because they are comparednegatively to whites. But in some ways, I was also very simple, contained,
and sheltered. I had not met many white people except on a transactional
basis. All I saw were the benefits of segregation. In fact, I wrote my Harvard
Business School application essay about how, when I came East, it was thefirst time that I realized that white people differentiated themselves by
ethnicities. This was news to me. My life was about Black people and what
we are achieving and doing for each other. And you are fine just as you are.
AJP: How did you play as a child?

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Eason: I played primarily outdoors. I lived in a middle-class, segregatedneighborhood. We would run outside every summer morning, and wewould see who was outside and collect everyone to play. And we played inour yards, or, because there was very little traffic, in the streets. My play was
climbing trees, playing jacks, jump rope, marbles, and softball. I did notoften play indoors or with toys. I do remember playing with some blocks
as a young child. I also had crayons and dough to play with. The first doll
I remember having was a Shirley Temple doll. I asked for that because I
liked her vibrancy, and I envisioned myself as that kind of girl—runningher own little world of adventures and fun. I did not do a lot of hair play orcraft play. Generally, my play centered on having fun with the kids in theneighborhood outdoors. That was my primary form of play.
AJP: You mentioned that you asked your parents for a Shirley Temple doll, modeled after the child actress, singer, and celebrity. Do you remember playing
with, or even seeing, Black dolls?
Eason: Not a bit. I just assumed dolls were a white product. The only dolls I
remember asking for were the Shirley Temple doll and a medical doll,because I envisioned myself as a pediatrician. If you had asked me what
I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you that I wanted to bea doctor—a pediatrician, in particular. And I asked for this doll that wasprobably fourteen inches and that you could clasp casts onto her arms andlegs. She came with bandages. She had all these medical-related accessories.
I think you could even add dots to her body to give her measles. She fulfilled that whole medical fascination for me, and I saw myself as fixing her.
		 If I think about the kind of doll I identified with then, I either identified with the entertainment or lifestyle dolls—not the dress, not the hair,or the clothes, which is most of what doll play is now. Or I identified withthe career doll. I imagined myself as a physician taking care of this doll.
Those are the only two I remember. And while Shirley Temple was a real
person who I knew was white, I do not even think I ever thought about
the color of the other doll. I think she was a model for me to fix, and thatis what she represented to me.
AJP: You founded Olmec Toys in 1985. What inspired you back then to createa multicultural toy company?
Eason: The inspiration was my son, 100 percent. We were in Jamaica on vacation with my then husband, and my three-year-old son was playing on thebeach with Mattel’s He-Man action figure—which was incredibly popularInspiration, Inclusion, and the Making of a Multicultural Toy Company

at that time. And he looked at us and said: “I want to be a superhero like
He-Man, but I can’t because I’m not white.” He said this to us with suchclarity that we were stunned. Keep in mind that we were a college-educatedBlack family. We did not have a television in the house. Our son went to a
Black nursery school. We were part of a Black church. We lived in Brooklyn,
which at the time was not gentrified, in a predominantly Black neighborhood. And he said this to us. We looked at each other in shock. We told
him his skin color was a gift from God and that he could be a superhero,too. And he looked at us with a side eye, as if he did not believe us. Looking
at our three-year-old, we wondered where did he get this sense of whitesuperiority? His imagination was being limited by his skin color. For methat was an outrageous thought. I never thought that in my life. I had neverthought that whites were superior. So, for a three-year-old to say that, it
illustrated the power of toys. That was my wake up. To him, this was partof his identity. And if he and we were important enough, we would havebeen represented in the He-Man line—and we were not. Maybe later theyadded a character, but at that point there was not one to buy for him.
		 We came back from Jamaica, and I started talking to other mothers.
And we talked about the other part of this that seemed insidious, which wasthat the line was called “Masters of the Universe.” For Black people, what
do you relate the word “masters” to? Slavery. We did not even own a TV,so for our son to say that he could not be a superhero because he was notwhite, that concerned us that he was being infused with a white supremacy
mind-set. That is when I realized that a toy could make you feel like you
are not important. A toy could make you feel like you do not matter. A toy
could limit or clip your imagination. And that is when I started thinking
that I needed to understand a little more about toys.
AJP: How did you go about trying to understand toys better? What kind ofresearch did you do?
Eason: We reached out to the Borough President of Manhattan Percy Sutton
to connect me with psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark. The Clarks
founded the Northside Center for Child Development in Harlem in 1946.
Their experiments in the late 1930s and 1940s using dolls to study children’s
racial attitudes concluded that discrimination and segregation instilled afeeling of inferiority and damaged the self-esteem of Black children. Theirconclusions were influential in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education U.S.
Supreme Court decision ending school segregation. I did not get to meet

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his wife, but I did meet with Dr. Kenneth Clark. I asked him if they did
their study again today, what did he think they would find? He said, “Unfortunately, the same thing.” I asked if he thought we should make a Black
superhero, and he said, “Yes, I do.” He then explained that children notseeing themselves does lead to inferiority complexes. He did help make thatconnection for me. He helped me recognize that this was really important.
The other part of the research I did was demographic. What is the target
audience for toys? How many nonwhite children are there in this country,
and what are the demographic trends? That was back in 1985 before you
could look up a lot of this information on the Internet. And that is when I
discovered that by the year 2020 there would be more children of color thanwhite children in the United States. The trend was that the demographics
of children were going to switch in America. I remember saying that in1985 and getting horrific pushback. I said this in one meeting to a groupof toy buyers and one guy yelling out, “I’m glad I’ll be dead by then.” That
was the reaction I would get. I relied heavily on this research. I never went
into these meetings leading with here is the toy, here are the features, hereis the packaging, and here is the price. I always started with a demographic
presentation because I knew I was bringing completely new information
to toy buyers who were, in my experience, always white.
		 In doing this demographic research, I also discovered that not only wereBlack people excluded from toys, but Latinos and Asians were as well. I waslooking at underrepresented populations. These populations were going
to be dominant in the child market in the next thirty years. That informed
my thinking—along with the fact that I grew up in an area with a lot of
Native Americans—in making a diverse line of toys. I also looked closely atthe economics of the industry, and I saw that it was a several-billion-dollar
industry. How much of this market is missing underrepresented groups? It
had to be a significant percentage. I saw this as a market, a business, something we could go into. And that decision was driven by demographics,
exclusion, and understanding how the lack of identity can be harmful to ayoung mind.
AJP: What was your educational and career background? Did you have any priorexperience in the toy industry?
Eason: My first career coming out of college was journalism. I worked for theTulsa Tribune, Dayton Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and New York Times.
That is where I was coming from. Perhaps that background in journalism

Inspiration, Inclusion, and the Making of a Multicultural Toy Company

helped me be curious and ask important questions. I had also earned an
MBA from Harvard. With that training, I had a clear understanding of how
one starts a business and how to go about researching a market.
AJP: Why did you name the company Olmec Toys?
Eason: Before our son was born, my then-husband and I were looking for appropriate names that would reflect our historical African origins. We readseveral books, including They Came Before Columbus: The African Presencein Ancient America by Ivan Van Sertima, the since deceased professor of
Africana Studies at Rutgers University. His book detailed the well-hidden
and little-known presence of Africans in North America before Columbus
arrived on these shores. One major piece of anthropological proof of early
African existence in this part of the world is the huge stone sculptures ofcolossal heads reflecting the Olmec people. These sculptures feature majestic men with wide noses and nostrils and full supple, thick lips—obviously
African ethnic phenotypes. Since we were making toys that would have
African featured faces, since toy making is an art form requiring sculpting, and because the Olmecs were known for their artwork, we decided
the name of the toy company would be a homage to the Olmec sculptures.
Thus, the name Olmec Toys.
AJP: Could you tell us about your first product, Sun-Man? Who is he? How did
you develop his background story and character?
Eason: In the toy industry, there are different categories of toys, and I was targeting the articulated superhero action toy, whose dominant brand was Mattel’s He-Man. Sun-Man came from my imagination and my understandingof melanin. I spent some time researching what makes our skin dark. Today
everyone talks about melanin. I am reminded of rapper Remy Ma’s 2018
song, “Melanin Magic.” People talk about it today, but in 1985 few people
did. I thought melanin is what makes our skin dark, then that is where his
super powers are going to come from. They are going to come from themagic melanin in his skin. As our packaging explained, “The Legend of
Sun-Man continues . . . . His magical melanin skin gave him unequaled,unlimited, and special super strength. Sun-Man’s skin could not be cut,burned, bruised, broken, pierced, stabbed, ripped, or removed, so Pig-Headthe evil wart was plotting to smoke-out Sun-Man. He wanted to see if hecould weaken Sun-Man’s powerful skin through the smoke from the drugs
Pig-Head had just cooked up. But Sun-Man flies free, protecting the rightfor the Galaxy-Trefixa to exist in peace. His rap is clear: ‘Pig-Head listen,

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you’re bad luck. You won’t win, so just give up. Sun-Man is on the scene tostay. My good powers shall rule all the way! The Battle has just begun. . . .’ ”
His skin was indestructible, but because this was the crack era, his weakness was in breathing in chemicals or drugs. That was a nod to the thingthat was destroying many communities at the time.
AJP: What was the industrial design, sculpting, and manufacturing process likefor producing a Black superhero action figure in the 1980s?
Eason: I got lucky that I knew a lawyer who had another toy maker as a client.
His client was not a competitor, and he introduced me to his factory in
China and told me how things were done. I had no knowledge of how theindustry worked at that point. I was then told that, in order to make the toy,
I would have to come up with a design of what it would look like, and I had
to send them sketches. At that time, we did not have computer-aided design(CAD) available to us. Everything was hand-drawn, and you had to provide
a view from the top, bottom, left, right, front, and back of the character toscale in order for them to make the sculpt or initial model of the figure. That
was step 1. I worked with an artist. And I explained what I wanted. Then I
took those sketches over to China and worked with them to get the color
right because I did not see any colors there that actually worked for me. If
you look at the original Sun-Man action figure, there was no other Blacktoy out at the time with that same rich chocolate brown, with a hint of red
and a hint of yellow color. And nothing else had authentic features. It wasvery important to me that he was not just a Black version of a white toy.
His features were sculpted differently to be, I think, a term we are typicallycredited with pioneering, “ethnically correct.” That is what I would say tobuyers when we were out in the marketplace. The phenotype is African.
		 As I worked with the factory, I also found out why these factories did
not want to make more Black dolls. They told me that they used certain
paint pellets to make a white doll. If they started making a Black doll—
which required a different combination of pellets—and then went back tomake the white doll, they had to clean the machines. They did not want to
do that. So, there was systemic discrimination even at that level.
AJP: How did you initially launch Sun-Man?
Eason: I really did not know how the toy industry worked. I did not know that
February is when toys are presented. Sun-Man came out in June. I started
trying to get appointments with toy buyers and I was told, “You are off
season.” They said: “We do not buy toys in June. We buy them in Febru-

Inspiration, Inclusion, and the Making of a Multicultural Toy Company

ary at the New York City Toy Fair.” They did not even want to look at our
product, and they certainly were not going to buy it. And they would ask:
“And who are you? You’re not anyone we’ve ever heard of.” I just got completely dismissed. They did not want me. Then I knew how I had to sellthis product: churches, barbershops, beauty shops, street vendors, cornerstores, people who sold it at the post office to their clubs, people who soldit to their organizations. I sold the toy because it was wanted and needed.
It was just a matter of me getting it out there.
		 We took out a full-page ad in Ebony magazine, which had more than amillion subscribers at the time. Then we had a launch party. A couple of ourinvestors were the actor couple Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, and they spoke
about the legend of Sun-Man. New York publicity was easy to come bybecause we were introducing it at a time when many other Black businesses
were getting started. Spike Lee was just starting to get his films out there.
FUBU (For Us, By Us), the clothing line started by Daymond John (nowalso famous for appearing on the television series Shark Tank), would comeout of this era. It was also the era of Minority Enterprise Small Business
Investment Corporations (MESBIC), which under President Nixon—who
was hoping to get more Black citizens into the Republican party—offeredinitiatives to create more Black businesses. My husband at the time worked
for a MESBIC in Bedford-Stuyvesant as part of the Bedford Stuyvesant
Restoration Corporation. We knew so many Black people doing businessin the mid-1980s. It was a mecca, a renaissance that so many people do noteven realize today.
AJP: If you could not initially get Sun-Man on to major retailers’ shelves, howwere you eventually able to place your products into these stores?
Eason: I was already selling the toys, and there was obviously a market. I usedthat data to get into more stores. I also did a lot of census bureau work andresearched specific zip codes. I took the top ten cities with African Americans in them and then found out which zip codes were predominantly
Black. Then I matched them with retailers in these areas and I would meetwith them and tell them this is where you want to sell our products. They
did not have their own people doing this kind of market research at thetime. Some buyers listened to me and thought that I knew something about
what was coming. Others still, despite all evidence, did not seem to careabout their Black customers. They would tell me, “Blacks don’t want to buy
Black toys. They are happy with white toys.” Or they would say, “I asked

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my Black secretary and she said Blacks don’t want Black toys.” I thought
to myself, that is because she wanted to keep her job.
		 My best advocate was Michael Goldstein, who was the chief financial
officer of Toy R Us at the time. He got it. He understood what I was talking
about. He had that kind of vision. I suggested they let me do the work forthem. I took a list of all their stores by zip code and matched them up withthe census data telling me where Black people lived near these stores. Then
I backed it up by having our staff call the NAACP and the Urban League
and name off stores in their town and ask them which ones did Black people
shop at? I went back to the retailer and told them this is where you have to
put all our products. It was driven by all this data.
AJP: Did you hear from parents and children? What kinds of responses did
you get?
Eason: We did not have a television show to connect directly with kids, as wascommonly done in the 1980s. Parents were the ones who bought our toys. I
did hear from parents at the time that this was solving a problem. It helped
their kids know that they were important. The toy fit well into play with
He-Man. It was meant to be the same size. It could be played with the same
accessories. It could be added to their collection.
		 I not only got letters then, I get letters now from people who were
excited to tell me that they had Sun-Man when they were children. They
often told me how their parents introduced them to Sun-Man saying, “Youtoo can have a superhero toy, you too can be a superhero.” I get that morefrom mostly Black men now as grown-ups than I did back then. Because
now they are sort of awakened to how important it is for them. I just got
an email from a guy the other day who wanted to thank me for making
Sun-Man because it was his mother’s way of showing him that he and otherBlack boys could be strong.
		 I also saw it myself. It made kids’ eyes light up. They saw something thatlooked like them, and it was fun. That was the reaction I got. I remember
going to pick up my son at his nursery school and all these kids swarmed
me and told me that “Menelik told us that you could get us any toy that wewant!” That was my super power to them.
AJP: Your image often appeared on Olmec packaging or in advertising andcatalogs. Why was that important to you?
Eason: I had a few people, mostly Black people, tell me that I should not bepromoting myself as a Black toy company because it was considered aInspiration, Inclusion, and the Making of a Multicultural Toy Company

negative or it would prevent people from buying our products. I had justthe opposite view. It was a unique selling proposition. We are a Black toy
company. We are producing Black and multicultural toys. And I knew I
was selling to parents. We had a comic book that came with the figure andgreat artwork from Black artist Floyd Cooper, but we did not have a television show to accompany the toy line. I felt that once a potential customer
turned the package over and saw our story, they were instantly going torelate to me as a parent and as someone bringing something positive totheir child. And that is why I did that.
		 I have parents today tell me that the story on the back of the package is what got them. And stories are how you connect with people. It is
not the facts, figures, or logic. Our story personalized the company andthe product. We were not Mattel. But Mattel started with Ruth and Elliot
Handler. Hasbro started off with the Hassenfeld Brothers. Most of these toy
companies started as family businesses. That is what I learned, and that waswhat I understood. Companies start with people, whether it is Ford, Apple,
or Tesla, there are people behind them. I felt that that story, our story, wasimportant. And it was also important because people appreciated “buying
Black.” It focused the company in a way that differentiated us from everyone
else.
AJP: Tell us about some of your other products.
Eason: After Sun-Man and The Rulers of the Sun, which included an entire lineof multicultural boy action figures, we created our first girl line, startingwith Butterfly Woman in 1986. These toys were also meant to fit into playwith Mattel’s She-Ra figures. Our toys were girl superhero dolls or action
figures, but they did have clothing you could take on and off.
		 In 1988 we introduced the Bronze Bombers, a 3 3/4-inch action figure
fashioned after a Black army unit from World War I and World War II. We
also later released a second series that came as a set of twelve figures. We
had a relationship with Hasbro. They let us choose the molds for bodies andaccessories for lines they were no longer using. We did not have to pay forthat. We resculpted the heads, changed the colors, and changed the stories
to give our figures their own history. We also worked with Hasbro on otherprojects. We did a baby line in 1993 for Hasbro’s Playskool brand called Kidsof Color. I remember sending some to Spike Lee after he had a child, andhe sent me a Crooklyn jersey as a gift. We designed the toys and dolls andHasbro distributed them. We found that when buying for babies, people

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really wanted a brand name they knew, like Playskool. And for Hasbro, it
was a way for the company to get into the multicultural market with anauthentic partner. The same was true for Hasbro’s Sindy doll. Instead ofmaking a Black Sindy doll, we told them you do not want a Black versionof Sindy, how about Sindy’s friend is our Imani doll. They agreed and sold
Imani. And I remember seeing the reports from Hasbro. They sold Imani
all over the world—Italy, Israel, London, everywhere.
		 Imani and many of our other toy lines were the result of people requesting new kinds of toys. People would say, there is a Black Barbie doll, buteven though she had a different name, she was known as “Black Barbie.”
And since we are not Black versions of white people, you should have aseparate doll. That is where the idea for Imani came from. Like Sun-Man
and Butterfly Woman, we made her what we called ethnically correct at
the time—and with different skin tones. We were the first to do lighter skintones and brown skin tones to reflect the different colors and skin tones ofpeople.
		 We released the Hip Hop Kids doll line in 1991. We did a Meteor Man
action figure that appeared with Robert Townsend’s 1993 film Meteor Man.
We also did baby dolls. We filled out the whole category. Then we madeOur Powerful Past, which were historical figures of Martin Luther Kingand Malcolm X. I went to Malcom X’s widow, Betty Shabazz, and Martin
Luther King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, to get the licenses. We also created the Black by Design game. It was different from other Black inventor
games because it was a memory-matching game in which you matched
images of two Black inventions rather than the inventors. Everything you
matched, including the traffic signal, hairbrush, ironing board, and golftee, were created, invented, or improved by a Black person.
AJP: As the company grew, what kinds of challenges did you face?
Eason: I faced a lot of competition. I had one company just outright copy oneof our dolls. And I remember, after I spent about ten thousand dollars ona lawsuit, I was visited by someone who told me that the company I wassuing sent them to tell me that if you don’t drop the lawsuit they will keep
you in court so long that you will be out of business. They wanted me toknow that they liked me, they did not want to put me out of business, andif they advertise and sell Black dolls that will help me, too. It was upsetting.
I knew I was right, and they knew I was right, but I did not want to be deadright. I dropped the lawsuit and they put out their doll. And it did increaseInspiration, Inclusion, and the Making of a Multicultural Toy Company

the size of the market. It did validate what I was saying about the marketplace all this time. I did probably get a little bit more of a piece of that pie.
But it was a bitter lesson about ruthless business practices ruled by money.
		 The other part of this story is, as the rapper Notorious BIG or Biggie
Smalls said, “More money, more problems.” The bigger you get, the more
successful you get, the more problems you have. And my courses in business school never introduced me to this concept. The assumption was thatin a pure capitalistic society, not only will sales grow, but resources to continue to fuel sales growth will continue to be provided for you. That was nottrue. I had a ninety-day lead time—thirty days to make the product, thirtydays to get it across the water and into warehouses, and then thirty days
to get it into stores. By the mid-1990s, I had a showroom in New York, awarehouse in Virginia, and we were doing over five million dollars in sales.
I later found out that, by the standard of other African American businesses
at the time, we were in the top 3 percent at that revenue. You always haveto put up letters of credit. And if your business is growing dramatically,
you have got to put up a lot of money to get production going, which iswhy companies like Amazon and Tesla are allowed to operate without aprofit for years until the business comes around. That is a standard in new
business structures.
		 This all came to a head in the 1990s when I got into a major retailer,
and they gave me twelve feet of space to sell the product. Our dolls, games,
and toys were blowing out the stores. This was also the time when email
was becoming a standard way to get your orders quickly. I said to theretailer that this is selling much faster than you predicted, but I told you it
would. The seven-day purchase orders are not working for my bank, andI need you to pay in advance to help me to order the product. What happened? A lot of people were buying the product, but I could not keep up
with the sales because the ninety-day lead time I had and the amount ofmoney I needed to keep up with this increased demand. This retailer got
outrageously angry at me. They were telling me that Black mothers werecoming into their stores and asking, “Where are your Black dolls?” And
they blamed not having them on me. Instead of working with me, theywent to their factories in China and told them to start making 30 percent
of all your products in Black. The writing was on the wall.
AJP: As you wrapped up your time with Olmec, did you work on any other toy
or game industry projects?

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Eason: I worked for Bingwa Software, a company started in 1993 by Bill and
Karen Shelton. They developed and published educational software aimed
at students from underrepresented communities. I was their toy advisor.
They brought me in to come up with characters, storylines, and to maketheir software, as we called it, more “toyetic.”
AJP: What does the multicultural toy and doll market look like today?
Eason: It is pretty expansive for girls. There are a lot more options now. Disney’s
Doc McStuffins is a great example. Her character’s mother is a pediatrician,and in Doc’s fantasy world, she fixes her toys and dolls. American Girl dolls
have also been particularly successful. Although there was controversy
when they released their first Black doll, Addy Walker. So many of thesedolls start out in their country of origin, but rather than starting this dollin Africa, they intentionally started her in American slavery.
		 With representations of African Americans in toys and dolls, you arealways thinking about the imagery. I think of it as akin to a centuries-longgiant marketing campaign to demonize, dehumanize, and exaggerate thefeatures of Black people to make them appear like animals. You pull thatimagery through the film Birth of the Nation (1915), mammies who are
only there to serve, jezebels and bucks who are oversexualized women andmen. And you pull that imagery through four hundred years of advertising,marketing, and representations until you get to a point when that is thecultural norm.
		 There is still far less for boys. There is no Doc McStuffins for boys.
Even when Marvel’s Black Panther movie appeared and they released thetoy, you could not see Chadwick Boseman’s face. You could not take themask off. You could not see the rich, dark skin. Why was that the decision? I understand now they are coming out with toys that you can see hisface. But why was that the original decision? It does not seem like we areinterested in Black boys seeing themselves as powerful because maybe thatdiminishes us or we are more afraid of positive Black males. And, if there
is no one in the room advocating for something different, then that idea is
not developed.
		 But I am hopeful that there has been a kind of awakening that has happened following the tragic death of George Floyd. His death was an unbelievable reckoning and eye-opening event in this country. We are seeingsome changes already, but it will be interesting to see additional positivechanges take place because of George Floyd.

Inspiration, Inclusion, and the Making of a Multicultural Toy Company

AJP: What are you currently working on?
Eason: I am working on several projects. I am working on a product line for thegirl craft market and am involved in discussions to reintroduce Sun-Man
and other toys in Olmec’s original line. There is a renewed interest in mycompany from other people in the toy industry and in providing a diverse
set of toys for kids to relate to and play with.
AJP: Can you tell us anymore about the reintroduction of Sun-Man?
Eason: Yes! On September 1, 2021, we announced the partnership agreement
between Mattel, Olmec Toys, and YlaSun. Under this agreement, Mattel
is granted the rights to produce Sun-Man and The Rulers of the Sun collection. Olmec Toys and YlaSun retain all rights to the property. We arethrilled to be able to reintroduce Sun-Man and unite the worlds of The Rulers of the Sun with The Masters of the Universe for the first time since 1985.

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