Despite bowing out of toy shops around 1982, the toys' portly forms have maintained an unlikely presence in popular culture ever since. In recent years, they've popped up in places as diverse as Massive Attack lyrics ("Weebles wobble, occasional squabble, But what happens when the bomb drops down?") and the sitcom Friends, where in an early episode - "The One With The Boobies" - Rachel tells a psychiatrist about happy afternoons spent playing with the toys: "It wasn't just the Weebles, but it was the Weeble Play Palace, and - and the Weebles' Cruise Ship. But at least in his first term he ran on a specific slogan - "Compassionate Conservatism" - however much his critics now complain that his policies in office have given the lie to it.As for Mr Kerry, he has yet to find any overarching theme for his campaign.Thus far, the Massachusetts senator has run on his biography as a Vietnam veteran and war hero, and a senator of 20 years standing But what exactly he stands for remains a mystery. The logic behind this is impeccable: "Everybody loves macaroni cheese, right? So that's what Weebles do," explains Smith."There is a kind of history repeating itself here," she elaborates, "but when you repeat history in this industry, it has to be done in a way that's new and fresh.
As a result, the new playsets are based around a central farmyard theme, with two of the main characters, Demby and Diddy - a married couple comprising, improbably, a blue hippo and a purple cow - tottering around growing macaroni for their friends. Weebles still wobble, of course, and are weighted to ensure that they'll never fall down, but they have evolved from chubby humanoids who flew helicopters and visited the circus to luminescent animals who attend barn dances and "grow macaroni on their farm".Hasbro's market research, I am told, has convincingly proved that toddlers respond best to animals and bright colours, so modern-day Weebleville has been formed accordingly. When they are officially relaunched across the UK next week, the parents of today - or the "little boys and girls of yesterday" depending on your perspective - will struggle to recognise the plastic characters they grew up with. "What's old is new again, and people are rediscovering elements of things they grew up with. Today's mum was the little girl who played with Weebles when she was younger, and we want to let her experience that play with her own children."The Weebles of 2004, however, bear only a passing resemblance to the vintage of 1972. Now, more than two decades on, and after 18 months of meticulous planning, Hasbro is preparing to dust off one of the most successful brands in its history, and relaunch the Weebles.Presiding over a meeting in the Mr Potato Head Conference Room, Maureen Smith, Vice President of Hasbro's Playskool division, explains the move - which will be supported by a multi-million pound marketing budget on both sides of the Atlantic."It's part of a society trend - what we're calling 'newstalgia'," says Smith, as the 12 new inhabitants of Weebleville wobble happily on the desk in front of her. The majority of today's twenty and thirtysomethings will have played with them at some point but then, in 1982, they suddenly wobbled off the radar.
On the outskirts of Providence, Rhode Island, an eight-foot tall Mr Potato Head stands resolute under the blazing New England sun, guarding the entrance to Hasbro's international headquarters. Behind him, and through the big glass doors, employees stride down broad corridors clutching armfuls of toys, as a remote-controlled post cart delivers the morning's mail. In the workshop, intriguing, half-finished prototypes litter the desks, while a posse of unpainted My Little Ponies stand quietly to one side. Just audible over the noise, a large R2D2 model whistles and beeps to itself in the corner. Gazing around the building, I get an inkling of how Charlie Bucket must have felt when he walked through the gates to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.
For nearly a decade after their launch in 1972, these cheery, plastic, egg-shaped characters could be found in millions of toy boxes and pre-school pockets across the world. But I'm not here to gawp at the huge variety of toys on display, nor sneak a glance at the hastily covered-up models for Star Wars: Episode III. I'm here, some 40 miles north of Boston, to relive a little bit of my very early youth - and witness the rebirth of a playroom classic.The Weebles - as almost anyone of a certain age will tell you - "wobble but they don't fall down". Hasbro's headquarters are - perhaps even more so than Mr Wonka's fictional establishment - the stuff that children's dreams are made of. These were dropped after disagreements within al-Qa'ida itself..