History Ch. - The Toys that Built America: Series 1 (2021)

The Toys That Built America chronicles the stories & rivalries that gave rise to the modern toy industry. Against the backdrop of events like the Civil War, the Great Depression, and the Vietnam War, visionaries like Milton Bradley, the Parker Brothers, Ruth and Elliott Handler, and Merrill Hassenfeld all courted failure and ruin at every turn on their way to building billion-dollar empires.

Part 1: Masters of Invention
The incredible creations of some of the most iconic toys in history happened by chance. During World War II, a naval engineer accidentally creates an iconic spiral toy that walks down stairs, when he's trying to come up with a way to protect ship equipment from damage. At the same time, an engineer is trying to invent a synthetic rubber for the war effort and instead creates a strange putty that becomes another world-famous toy. It's the origin stories of these toys and more, and the genius entrepreneurs who brought them to the world


Part 2: Clash of the Toy Titans
As the post-war baby boom creates unprecedented demand for toys, Ruth Handler turns her greatest gamble into the most recognizable toy in the world. Meanwhile, rival Merrill Hassenfeld, at the reigns of a company that will one day be one the most famous brands in the world, tries to capitalize on Handler's success to launch a military doll for boys–which is brilliantly rebranded as the world's first "action figure," and eventually spawns a tv series and a movie franchise. For decades, these two companies battle each other to dominate the toy industry. But when the cultural landscape shifts, they are forced to make desperate choices that ultimately earn their toys immortal status.


Part 3: Toy Car Wars
As car culture cranks up in the early 1950s, a young machinist in England invents one of the world's most successful toys when he creates a toy car small enough to fit inside a matchbox for his daughter to take to school. In Los Angeles, Elliot Handler creates one of the biggest toy rivalries in history when he brings on a former missile designer to make a toy car behemoth of his own.