As of: February 14, 2024, 2:29 p.m
By: Andrea Kästle
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The Tonies radio play characters are very popular with children.
The police have now caught a gang that has stolen the figures on a large scale.
© kästle
The popular Tonies radio play characters were stolen on a large scale from shops and bookstores in the Munich region.
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- The characters are small, funny and very popular with children.
But Tonies, as they are called, are not actually made to be played with; rather, in conjunction with appropriate loudspeakers, they are sound carriers.
You put them on the speakers - and then they work as an audio book.
However, in the last few weeks it has been difficult to get any of them.
Because they were stolen.
And on a grand scale.
Now the police in Bayreuth have been able to seize around 2,000 of the audio figures during a routine check in a car trunk.
It is still unclear whether these included the Tonies who were lost in Munich and the surrounding area, but it is possible.
One distracts the bookseller, the other clears the shelf
Across the region, shelves containing the figures were cleared out.
The Isartal bookstore was affected in two ways, the Tonies disappeared in Pullach and Ebenhausen.
The same thing happened with Rupprecht in Grünwald as in Starnberg.
At the Hugendubel in the city, the Fünf Höfe branch, 150 of the small, very popular figures were taken away.
“They did it very cleverly and organized it safely,” reported a Rupprecht employee in Starnberg when asked.
The thieves came into the bookstore in pairs, one distracted one of the two booksellers, while the other cleared out the Tonie shelf.
Stuffed the figures with packaging into their trouser and jacket pockets and the cameras recorded it.
At Rossmann in Ebenhausen, which also has Tonies in its range, you can now only get the figures at the checkout.
The police are not unfamiliar with the phenomenon
Of course, everyone affected filed a report with the police.
But she is also helpless at first.
Because, as the Grünwald department head Andreas Forster says, it is difficult to prove to someone who sells such figures on Ebay today that they sold off a whole bunch of recordings yesterday and the day before yesterday.
The phenomenon of attractive products that everyone knows and wants being stolen from stores is “not unknown.
That happens every now and then."
And in the case of the Tonies, it may not be over yet.
The damage caused to the business people is not insignificant.
One of the characters, which has been available in endless variations for years, as Raven Socke, Wilder Guy or Bibi Blocksberg, costs 16.99 euros, and of course you also need the Tonie box that goes with it.