In 1973 the Organization of Arab Oil Exporting Countries cut its oil exports in an attempt to put pressure on the West to withdraw its political support from Israel, which was then at war with Syria and Egypt. The oil embargo, the first oil crisis, crippled the West. Road traffic ground to a halt and the economy faltered. Conserving resources became the order of the day. The plastics industry, brought to its knees by an insufficient supply of petroleum-based raw materials, was struck particularly hard. Faced with the same insurmountable shortages that brought many other companies to the brink of insolvency, Geobra Brandstätter, a company in Zirndorf, Germany, drastically reimagined its line of products: instead of hula hoops and other large plastic toys, the company began producing small, moveable play figures: on 2 February 1974, Geobra Brandstätter first revealed its innovative seven-centimeter-tall plastic toy to the public at the Nuremberg Toy Fair – and made quite a splash. The company was raking in millions of German Marks by the the end of the year thanks to its Playmobil figures – a construction worker, a knight and a Native American – safeguarding its future for decades to come. Playmobil remains Geobra Brandstätter’s most important product to this day. GD