From Toyetic to Toyesis: The Cultural Value of Merchandising

• In Event: Valuing Entertainment

Abstract

As reportedly coined by Kenner Toys advertising and development executive Bernard Loomis, toyetic is an adjective referring to the potential of a media property to be turned into toys and similar merchandising spin-offs. The business value of such toyetic properties is clear, but over time, the cultural value of being toyetic has also emerged. Merchandising is now regularly used to develop and enrich narratives, to personalise media properties for their audiences and increase the cultural circulation (the shelf-life) of properties, occasionally enabling them to jump media platforms and survive in new textual environments. Through the case study of the Toy Story trilogy, this paper traces the development of toyetic properties. It argues that these are important forerunners of convergent media and that what we are seeing now is actually a realization of toyesis, where paratextual relays make texts multi-origined and therefore more capable of flowing back and forth across media platforms.

Professor Jason Bainbridge is Chair of Media and Communication at Swinburne University of Technology. He is the author of over forty articles and book chapters on aspects of media culture and representation and is the co-author of Media and Journalism: New Approaches to Theory and Practice (3rd edition 2015).

Author

• Jason Bainbridge, Swinburne U of Technology