Feel Like A Wreck?

Persuading the kids to love crash dummies was easy; winning over Tyco's own sales force and merchants was tougher. Many were taken aback by the violent smashups. When Tyco's salespeople were first shown the line there was dead silence. "These guys usually give us a round of applause," says Lyden. "This was more like one hand clapping."

The applause was not thunderous from retailers at first, either. Kmart didn't buy Crash Dummies at all. Others, including Wal-Mart, ordered conservatively, fearing they'd be left with excess inventory if the controversial toy flopped. Toys "R" Us, the nation's largest toy retailer, liked the idea but hated the dull white packaging. Tyco responded by ordering up a fluorescent orange box-an alteration that cost nearly $100,000 and delayed production by four weeks. "We had no other choice," says Tyco senior vice president Jim Alley. "Toys "R" Us is a 2,000-pound gorilla."

Determined to win over the naysayers and preserve its $3 million investment, Tyco revved up its marketing engines. At a presentation for toy buyers at Tyco's Mt. Laurel, N.J., headquarters that fall, executives arranged for a car to crash through a showroom wall, throwing a human crash dummy onto the floor. After the audience regained their composure, the dummy escorted them into a room filled with swivel chairs customized with seat belts. There, they were shown the toys, test data-and a $700,000 computer-animated advertising campaign that included a 20-second safety message. The efforts paid off. By February, when Tyco officials took their product to Toy Fair, they had already shipped tens of thousands of units to stores across the country.

Road pizza:

But Crash Dummies ran into still more brick wall. After its Toy Fair debut, the press criticized the toy's graphic violence-and animal-lovers objected to two Crash Dummy characters-Hubcat, a feline with tire treads on her back, and Bumper, a dog that gets squashed. (The company had backed off from the names Road Pizza and Splat the Cat.) The folks at the DOT were getting edgy, too. They worried that the toy would overshadow the public-service campaign and bowed out, prompting Tyco to replace the original DOT dummies with others named Slick and Spin. Instead of rolling over and giving up, Tyco committed $7.2 million to a safety-promoting ad campaign, which has solidified the toy's positioning for the yuletide season. (A typical commercial begins with one Crash Dummy saying, "I feel like a wreck!" "OK," replies his companion, and together they drive into a tree.)

If Tyco's hunches prove correct, Crash Dummies will be around for yuletides to come. The '93 line will feature villains called Junkbots-dummies gone bad. Meanwhile, Slick, Spin and friends show up on everything from backpacks to bandages. A 30-minute computer-animated special is scheduled to air on CBS this spring. And New Line Cinema, the filmmaker for those reptilian heroes on the half shell, is developing a movie based on the figures', um, lives. The producers must assume that some dummies will watch anything.