Toying with Militainment

On September 11, 2001, Wal-Mart reportedly sold 116,000 American flags. The numbers stayed strong thereafter. By May 2002, another 4.9 million had passed through the Wal-Mart checkout aisle and untold millions had sold elsewhere.1 They showed up on porches and picture windows, as license plate frames, decals, bumper stickers, car magnets, and T-shirts.2 The frenzy of purchasing of course drew its energy from a heightened sense of American solidarity and nationalism in the face of an attack. Those who feared being judged as “foreign” defensively hung flags on their homes and workplaces as well. Merchants quickly capitalized on these impulses, incorporating the flag into advertisements for everything from cars to pizza to long-distance service, admonishing consumers to “show their patriotism” through purchase decisions. Jennifer Scanlon notes that such an orgy of flag merchandising wove consumer goods, consumption, the bumper-stickered automobile, Wal-Mart, and geopolitics into a seamless symbolic fabric that swaddled and insulated the “citizenconsumer.” 3 This vision of the good wartime citizen also drew meaning from the official Washington decrees. Speaking on September 27, 2001, President Bush exhorted a Chicago audience that the best way to deal with terrorism was to keep the consumer dollar moving. Rather than stop to think, the president suggested that Americans “Fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.” 4

Coincidental with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, this brand of patriotism turned its eye from memorabilia toward a new array of war-themed consumer goods that flooded the market. Some of the more bizarre merchandise appeared in the form of collectables for adults, namely teddy bears. An astonishing number of venders hawked Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marinethemed teddy bears. The Hamilton Collection issued a military bear complete

with rifle and desert combat gear, striking that careful balance between unconditional love and unstoppable killing machine. An ad proclaimed the bear to be “On the Front Lines of Freedom!” and a “Salute to America’s Military Heroes.” Gemmy Industries of Irving, Texas, rush delivered its Chinese imports of military-garbed plush hamsters in anticipation of the Iraq invasion. A company spokesperson called the hamsters a “marketing home run.” 5 One of the more popular items from the specialty stuffed bear dealer WeMakeBears4U.com-among The Tooth Beary, The Prayer Bear, and The I Love You Bear-was a duo entitled The Shock and Awe Bears, a reference to the US blitzkrieg-style opening bombardment of Baghdad, an attack whose “sheer size” had “never been seen before, never been contemplated before,” according to one Pentagon official.6 The company naturally embroidered one bear with the name “Shock” and the other with “Awe.” The website advertised them as a means to cope with the unfathomable: “While the world seems to be engulfed in ‘Shock and Awe,’ this company tries to soften the effect.” 7

The collectable market paled in comparison to the boom in war-themed action figures, however. With 2002 sales up 21 percent over 2001 (in contrast to standards like Barbie, which lost ground by 14 percent), war toys became the prize of the traditional toy sector. “A whole new generation has discovered G.I. Joe,” declared Hasbro’s director of communications, noting a massive

46 percent profit increase in 2002.8 The crop of post-9/11 war toys was more than an inflation of a long-standing market. The toys themselves changed in significant ways. Like video games, toys of this period gained a much closer thematic relationship to real-world events. In January of 2003, as the invasion of Iraq appeared imminent, Hasbro launched a “Desert Tactical Advisor” figure modeled on the Army’s Delta Forces.9 The top sellers of 2002 were a line of toys from the Hong Kong-based Dragon Models, Ltd. entitled “American Freedom Fighters: Live from Afghanistan’s Frontline.” One of these figures went by the name of “Tora Bora Ted,” whose job, according to his makers, was “centered around Tora Bora, a mountainous stronghold, riddled with caves, where US soldiers battled Taliban fighters in their anti-terror campaign in Afghanistan.” JC Penney offered the “World Peacekeepers Playset,” which, despite its name, was entirely constituted by American military forces. Blue

Box Toys issued a line called “Freedom Force” action figures to accompany the US invasion of Afghanistan. Small Blue Planet, another large toy manufacturer, introduced a series entitled “Special Forces: Showdown with Iraq.” The president of this company, Anthony Allen, described the marketing process: “We started work when the ‘Showdown’ buzzword hit the airwaves. There’s fierce competition among manufacturers to get the new things out first.” 10

Both toy makers and retailers recognized this dictum. Christian Borman, president of Plan-B Toys, related a piece of advice from a potential buyer: “He told us we should wait until the war starts, and whatever logos we saw on CNN, to put that on our toys.” 11 Such market forces increasingly drew the world of consumer toys into the television war in much the same way that previous decades had discovered the merchandising of feature films.