Christmas 2013: Inside a Chinese toy factory
- 10 years ago
Malcolm Moore visits the Atopp toy factory in Shantou, finding remote control helicopters and harmony
Yang Jiandong is a Chinese Christmas elf; toys and gadgets division.
Here in steamy South China, 6,000 miles away from your front room, the trim and sprightly 39-year-old runs one of the thousands of factories that make the iPads and Furbies, Transformer robots and LeapPads that will soon be waiting under our Christmas trees.
This year, his favourite gadget is a remote-controlled flying battle drone from the movie Avatar.
He giggles when, after navigating it around the showroom, it crashes into the wall. "No problem," he smiles. "These ones are hard to break".
His company, Attop, turns out 800,000 remote-controlled helicopters a year but also makes accessories for Barbies, puzzles and Hot Wheels cars for Mattel.
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Yang Jiandong is a Chinese Christmas elf; toys and gadgets division.
Here in steamy South China, 6,000 miles away from your front room, the trim and sprightly 39-year-old runs one of the thousands of factories that make the iPads and Furbies, Transformer robots and LeapPads that will soon be waiting under our Christmas trees.
This year, his favourite gadget is a remote-controlled flying battle drone from the movie Avatar.
He giggles when, after navigating it around the showroom, it crashes into the wall. "No problem," he smiles. "These ones are hard to break".
His company, Attop, turns out 800,000 remote-controlled helicopters a year but also makes accessories for Barbies, puzzles and Hot Wheels cars for Mattel.
Get the latest headlines http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Subscribe to The Telegraph http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=telegraphtv
Like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/telegraph.co.uk
Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/telegraph
Follow us on Google+ https://plus.google.com/102891355072777008500/
Telegraph.co.uk and YouTube.com/TelegraphTV are websites of The Daily Telegraph, the UK's best-selling quality daily newspaper providing news and analysis on UK and world events, business, sport, lifestyle and culture.