“[Regarding] Polly Pocket, we worked with a group of young guys, particularly Chris Wiggs and Chris Taylor, they ran a little business called Origin which was based towards the Portobello Road, they had developed Polly Pocket with us and they were responsible for all the final designs and the model-making and so on.
Chris Wiggs had one day at a meeting produced – because we used to have brainstorming meetings – produced a wooden box about that size, um, with a little wooden doll in it, didn’t do anything but it was there, which he said he’d made for his daughter six years before, and he said “Do you think there’s anything in it?” and I said “Well, I don’t know, I’ve no idea”, and then I thought about it a bit and more as much as for something to say as anything else, I was holding the doll, and I said “Can you make it bend at the waist? And he said “No, it’s too small”, and I said “Well, come on, you’re a terrific engineer, you know, you can do anything.” So I came back the next week, he’d made a beautiful model of a little doll that moves and sat down perfectly, so I said “Well, hell, we may have something now” and that’s really how it started.”[1]
Inspired by the phrase ‘cute as a button’
Chris Wiggs’ prototype was made out of wood, a powder compact that housed a
tiny figure. Wiggs designed the product in 1983, Bluebird licensed the product and
launched the line in 1989, it went on to be massively successful.
[1] British Toy Making Project: Mr. Torquil Norman, Bluebird Toys, interview transcript, p35-36 interview conducted by Ieuan Hopkins and Sarah Wood, September 2010, edited by Torquil Norman and Sarah Wood, August 2013