How Yla Eason’s Olmec Toys Reshaped the Multicultural Toy Market
Like millions of parents, Yla Eason bought a He-Man figure for her son. But when he told her he wanted to be “a superhero like He-Man, but I can’t because [He-Man] is white,” a shocked Eason resolved to help her child—and Black boys everywhere—free their imaginations.
Eason studied how a toy could affect her son’s self-image. This research led her to psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark, whose mid-20th century doll tests conducted with Black children concluded that racial segregation and unequal treatment harmed Black kids’ self-esteem.
Eason worked with artist Floyd Cooper and manufacturers to produce Sun-Man, a figure with distinct African features, an Afro, and dark skin. She also developed a backstory in which the winged hero derived his strength and invulnerability from the melanin pigment in his skin.
In 1985, Eason, a Harvard-trained businesswoman, founded Olmec Toys to respond to the lack of toys made especially for Black children. Its first ad challenged the status quo, declaring Sun-Man was “More powerful than Spider-Man. More awesome than Superman. Mightier than He-Man.”
Eason approached stores armed with Sun-Man and demographic research showing a growing market of people of color eager to buy her toys. But, when disinterested retailers and racist toy buyers dismissed her, she marketed her line of diverse playthings directly to Black consumers.
Conducting market research and reviewing census data helped Olmec determine from which stores Black consumers would buy their toys. It led to a distribution deal with Toys ”R” Us. There, Olmec launched Butterfly Woman in 1986, its first toy line aimed at girls.
TITLE: Ebony, Black Toys: They’ve come a long way since 1945
CREATOR: Johnson Publishing Company
DATE CREATED: 1985
LOCATION CREATED: Chicago, IL
CREDIT LINE: Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong
“I contracted beauty and barber supply reps, who worked the black ma-and-pa stores across the country to sell the dolls. It became a kind of grass-roots operation that caught on.”
-Yla Eason
Black Enterprise,
December 1986
Taking Olmec From a Product to a Brand
Conducting market research and reviewing census data helped Olmec determine from which stores Black consumers would buy their toys. It led to a distribution deal with Toys ”R” Us. There, Olmec launched Butterfly Woman in 1986, its first toy line aimed at girls.
Backed by investors like Black activists Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Olmec advertised in Black magazines. Using Eason’s face and voice, the company spoke directly to parents about toys that could make their children feel good about themselves. She assured them that “We Are You.”
Olmec’s success, and the changing racial and ethnic demographics documented in the 1990 U.S. census, propelled major toymakers to create more diverse dolls. Hasbro partnered with Olmec in 1991 to offer Imani as an authentically Black companion to Hasbro’s white Sindy doll.
“People would say there is a Black Barbie doll, but even though she had a different name, she was known as ‘Black Barbie.’ And since we are not Black versions of white people, you should have a separate doll. That is where… Imani came from.”
-Yla Eason
American Journal of Play
In 1988, Olmec introduced the Bronze Bombers, an action figure line inspired by the U.S. Army’s mostly Black 369th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed “Men of Bronze” during WWI. Unlike the real all-male group, the fictional team included the female code breaker Agent Telepathy.
Olmec created new products that mashed-up current trends with encouraging messages to children of color. Released in 1990, Hip Hop Kids were 12-inch dolls like B. Boy Smart, a character who loved both math and rap, dressed in hip-hop fashions, and aspired to be an architect.
In actor and director Robert Townsend’s 1993 film The Meteor Man, a strike from a glowing green meteorite gives schoolteacher Jefferson Reed superpowers to fight off gangs terrorizing his neighborhood. Olmec produced licensed action figures of the movie’s lead character.
Following Spike Lee’s 1992 film Malcolm X and renewed interest in the history and leaders of the civil rights and Black power movements, Olmec released the first officially authorized collectible figures of activists and icons Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X in 1995.
Mounting competition forced Olmec to close in the mid-1990s. But in 2021, with renewed interest in Eason’s work to make toys for marginalized communities, she partnered with Mattel to reintroduce Sun-Man and unite the worlds of the Rulers of the Sun with Masters of the Universe.
Credit: The Strong National Museum of Play
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