Up next
How Tall Is Jason Momoa?
My Buddy’s advertising worked well. Per Mental Floss, like the television ads, the doll’s advertising copy remained focused on the action-oriented possibilities for boys playing with Buddy, calling him “A little boy’s special friend! Rough and tough, yet soft and cuddly.” Stephen Schwartz may have mentioned to The New York Times that boys and girls both had “soft sides” that responded well to dolls, but in a quote taken by Mental Floss from an interview with The Boston Globe, “My Buddy is positioned as macho. It’s soft macho, but it’s still macho. We show them climbing up trees, riding their bikes. We didn’t position it like a girl doll, soft and sweet.”
The supposedly “macho” approach, combined with the still-iconic theme song, worked. Per toy book author Chris Byne, speaking to Campaign Live, “My Buddy had an amazing advertising campaign targeted to kids, so kids wanted it,” says Byrne. “You can’t underestimate the power of the marketing.” By the end of 1985, My Buddy, which retailed for $25, came in eighth in the list of top 10 best selling toys of the year, with Cabbage Patch Kids taking the top spot.
