Where are the All Black Ooshies?

By Benji Crossley

My kids are obsessed with Ooshies. I went to the supermarket this morning and after spending $19 I tried to justify to myself spending an extra $11 so I could get a packet of Ooshies to bring home. Opening the packet, even I am invested in which ones we’ve got and not. We’ve built a display cabinet for them as part of a family activity before bedtime this week. Last night I was at a sports pub quiz with a table of Dad friends, we talked about Ooshies. About trading them. About treks across town to different supermarkets to find display boxes. Five grown men at a sports pub quiz talking about small plastic Disney collectables. Now here I am writing about them. We still won the pub quiz comfortably, feel like that’s important to point out for credibility’s sake.

During the same conversation last night one of the Dads mentioned that he had found his 1995 Caltex (other petrol brands are available) All Black figurines in a box at the back of the cupboard and his 5 year old son now has them lined up carefully on the windowsill in his bedroom. My son as he was getting dressed for a day of adventures with his Mum today said that he wanted to dress in all sports clothes. But I bet if I asked my son about the All Blacks in South Africa and a series starting tomorrow, he’d look at me blankly. In saying that, he does look at me blankly a lot of the time.

When I was six the All Blacks went back to South Africa for the first time in 1992 and I remember being invested in it. I remember the 1995 World Cup sticker book. I remember a Coca Cola promotion from the early 90’s that involved All Black collectables and some kind of points system. I remember the Caltex figurines that the boy round the corner has lined up on his windowsill.

Tomorrow morning, the All Blacks start a proper tour of South Africa. They’re there for six weeks. Seven games. Narratives will build. Stories will be told. Legends will (hopefully) be born. But what are we doing to make sure that that simply doesn’t pass my six-year-old by?  He might sit and watch the games with me when I get up to watch them. He might watch highlights with me. He’d wear a new All Black jersey if I got him one. But where are the Ooshies? Where are the trading cards? Where are the little things that he can remember and treasure? That he can pull out of the box at the back of the cupboard in years to come.

In this time of social media and curated algorithms and content campaigns, organisations focus on capturing the market on social media. Getting engagement, impressions, clicks, video views and eventually turning all that into people signing up to mailing lists or apps so they can mine our data. But we seem to have forgotten that the wide eyed impressionable fans that are most easily captured are kids like my son. Capture him at 6 and you’ve got him. Well at least that’s how they got me and most of my mates. Then you’re not having to rely on “edgy” content and banter to try and grab him back when he’s 16-24.

New Zealand Rugby via Adidas and various licensing partners have got much better at leveraging their brands to try and do different and fun bits in the last few years but I really feel like they’ve missed a trick with this tour. Where are the Ooshies? Where’s the sticker book? Where are the action figures? The lego sets? The things that every kid takes to school and sits down at the table and talks with their friends about.

You don’t have to look hard or that far back to see a proof of concept, a friendly time zone for a football world cup had every kid at my kids school talking football. They all watched the final in class. They all talked about trading cards, about the world cup ball they’ve got, about Messi and Haaland, they were engaged.

A South Africa tour should be iconic. It should be something my kids will talk about in 30 years time like the 96 tour is to me and my friends. But it won’t necessarily be the rugby that makes it iconic for six year olds. It’s all the other stuff. It’s the sense of something big, of something to share with Mum and Dad, something to share with your mates at school. And for me, that means Ooshies, it means trading cards, it means sticker books. It means all the extras.

Watching Will Jordan score the series winning try in Soweto or, checks notes, Baltimore should lead to my boy getting his Will Jordan figurine and having it pride of place in his bedroom. It should make the Will Jordan sticker or trading card the most desirable item on the playground. But right now, the most desirable item on the playground appears to be a small plastic version of (insert favourite Disney character here) that we’ve been tricked into buying by supermarkets.

It’s probably too late for this year but let’s learn the lesson for RWC next year, or for the Lions in 2029 but please please please let’s not get to South Africa coming here in 2030 and still be talking about small Disney figurines.