Life

Playing with Playmobil: Fun With Pharaoh

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen November 2, 2009

I love the shopping circulars that come with the Sunday Times (which really arrives on Saturday). I’m a big browser – and not the Internet Explorer kind. Well, I browse online too. But back to one of the few remaining circulars that arrive in the print newspaper.

In this weekend’s paper arrived the Toys R Us “Big Book,” which my youngest still pores through as if it holds the secret of happiness. Perhaps for an 8 year old, it does.

Featured was the newest line from Playmobil: plastic representations of the marvels of ancient Egypt. You can buy an Egyptian pyramid (only $105!) and Sphinx, along with a “Royal Ship of Egypt.”

All sorts of things Egyptian are available in this New! featured set.

You can get an Egyptian family and a Pharoah, even Egyptian soldiers and a masked robber on horseback.

But something seems strangely missing. Where are the little Israelite slaves who built the Sphinx and pyramids? How about a mini-Moses – then you could set up all the little Israelite slaves behind Moses, following him out of slavery.

Now that I’m taking a closer look at the website, I notice something striking; in addition to an airport and a circus, along with a wedding set (featuring a church), Playmobil seems to have a proclivity for making tiny plastic versions of persecutors of the Jews. In addition to the Egyptians Playmobil makes an extensive line of Roman soldiers. Somehow I didn’t notice an “Inquisition” line, or any little plastic torture devices.

For just $14, though, you can buy a set of lance-bearing Roman soldiers and for the low, low price of $10, a “Firing Catapult,” complete with plastic flames to shoot.

Hey kids, if you get your parents to buy you a Playmobil castle set and a few Roman soldiers carrying spears and shields, along with the catapult, you can re-enact the siege on Jerusalem! You can practically hear the screams of the Roman Empire’s Jewish victims.

Fun for all ages!

Of course, you know where the company that makes Playmobil is based, dontcha?

Germany.

Debra Nussbaum Cohen is an award-winning journalist and the author of Celebrating Your New Jewish Daughter: Creating Jewish Ways to Welcome Baby Girls into the Covenant. Follow her on Instagram @debranc or email her at [email protected].

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO