Bernard Loomis, who had no toys as a child but became a toy industry legend by using children's television programming to turn cartoon characters into stupendous toy successes, died of heart disease June 2 at his home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. He was 82.
Mr. Loomis originated the idea of producing television specials and series that promoted toys as much as they entertained – in effect, turning children's cartoon programming into advertisements for toys. This reversed the suddenly quaint notion that toy-selling followed the television program, movie or book.
Mr. Loomis' television special featuring the character Strawberry Shortcake “opened the way for what sometimes seemed to be the transformation of children's television into a promotional arm of the toy industry,” David Owen wrote in The Atlantic in 1986.
Owen included the article in a book of essays he published in 1988. The title referred to Mr. Loomis: “The Man Who Invented Saturday Morning.”
Similarly, Mr. Loomis pioneered the notion of selling lines of toys, not individual products. He introduced the Hot Wheels cars as characters in a television show. He created the possibility of concocting entire imaginary environments with ever more products, as exemplified by the Barbie doll, whose career he shepherded for a time.
“Manufacturers create a fantasy world, and this has led to a very sophisticated relationship between them and the child,” Mr. Loomis said in an interview with Time in 1985. “We are now in the business of multiple sales to the same children in the same fantasy.”
While his most lasting impact came from making toys into both Saturday morning stars and salesmen of themselves, Mr. Loomis' most celebrated single marketing triumph came in the holiday season of 1977 after he presciently acquired a license to sell action figures based on the new “Star Wars” movie, knowing only that he liked the name. When the movie opened, demand for the toys dwarfed supply, so Mr. Loomis sold gift certificates in otherwise empty boxes. He sold more than 500,000.
When he was inducted into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame in 1992, his citation read, “He brought to market an incomparable portfolio of blockbusters, once selling empty boxes at Christmas with the promise of a hit toy to be delivered later.”
Other products Mr. Loomis licensed, including action figures based on the television programs “The Six Million Dollar Man” and “The Bionic Woman,” also were huge hits.
In 1985, Douglas Thomson, president of the Toy Manufacturers of America, said in an interview with The New York Times, “He's probably the most astute man in the industry for the selection and marketing of products.”
As Mr. Loomis moved among the top companies in his industry – Mattel to Kenner to Hasbro – he earned a reputation for improving each. Owen observed that he “had been associated with the largest toy company in the world at the moment it became the largest toy company, on three separate occasions.”
Bernard Loomis was born July 4, 1923, in the Bronx. His father, a Russian immigrant who scraped by as an itinerant salesman, had no money to buy him toys. Mr. Loomis' favorite substitute was a Lionel electric train catalog; its pictures allowed him to imagine he ran a vast railroad.
He figured out how to use a deck of cards to play a full fantasy American League baseball season, making up his own results according to the turn of the cards.
He was a large, precocious boy, skipping several grades and getting a job parking cars at Yankee Stadium at 11. He served with the Army Air Forces in the Philippines during World War II, then attended New York University and sold hardware before becoming a toy salesman.
In 1960, he joined Mattel, rising from sales to vice president and helping develop strategy for Chatty Cathy, the first talking doll. In 1969, when Mattel came out with its Hot Wheels line of miniature cars, Mr. Loomis proposed a 30-minute “Hot Wheels” cartoon show.
The Federal Communications Commission responded to a competitor's complaint and asked stations to log part of the show as advertising time. That killed such marketing strategies until 1980, when less-strict regulators allowed Mr. Loomis' “Strawberry Shortcake” special.
Mr. Loomis already had moved on to General Mills, where he was president of Kenner Toys. He turned down the chance to license Stephen Spielberg's new movie, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” considering it not “toyetic,” meaning its characters would not make good toys. But he spotted a small notice for a movie called “Star Wars” in a Hollywood trade magazine that sounded more likely: Its characters wore distinctive costumes.
In keeping with standard practice, the “Star Wars” toys were not supposed to appear until about a year after the movie opened. The immediate success of the film forced Mr. Loomis to reconsider.
Unable to speed up production, and with the all-important Christmas season looming, Mr. Loomis ordered paper certificates sold in colorful boxes for the price of the toy. Kenner promised to deliver the toys by mail eight months later, at which time a second wave of demand crested, as children competed to get what their friends had.
With Mr. Loomis at the helm, Kenner surpassed Mattel as the world's largest and most profitable toy company. By 1984, he started a joint venture with Hasbro and served as consultant to that firm as it rose to the top of the industry. He operated his own business consulting group starting in 1988 and with his daughter Merrill launched another successful series, Quints dolls and accessories, with Tyco.
Mr. Loomis is survived by his wife of 59 years, the former Lillian Prince; daughters, Merrill Nan Loomis of Napa, and Debra Jan Loomis of Middletown; and two grandchildren.
The Washington Post contributed to this report.
