I heard sales of Hot Wheels id at Apple stores are way stronger than forecasts, as they roll out to more retailers ahead of Xmas could it be that Mattel finally has a legit hit toy on their hands for holiday '19?
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Typical Mattel, all hype and hubris with now true follow through to complete the job. Company Needs a broad front of products all selling on all channels, not a hype driven 1 off item. Most recent quarter was bottom line loss of 108 million. HWiD is not even a drop in bucket. Does any exec want to admit that?
Yeah that's Mattel. Too ahead of our time.
Can anyone explain the thinking behind launching you new flagship toy line at Apple stores? I didn't even realize Apple stores sold toys and I go in there quite often for service. I'm typically not very cynical, but I wonder if they had a feeling sales wouldn't be very strong so they sold it through Apple as a way to build in an excuse for soft sales from the start. It's not that the toy line was a dud that didn't resonate with consumers, it's just that the focus on innovative retail channel's failed to generate traction as consumer's didn't realize Apple was a place to buy toys. We was too innovative, too ahead of our time, the market just wasn't ready for a high tech diecast car sold at Apple stores.
This is a lie: Apple store volume is less than $2M, Amazon only appeals to the adult collectors who will only buy 2 of everything. Target is only trying it in 700 stores and Walmart won’t take any of it.
Yeah - big success with “all those other retailers. This concept at best is a hobby.
That's not marketing. That's B.S.
Through a clever bit of marketing, on Amazon they've bundled the new Hot Wheels ID SKUs with older, existing HWs SKUs in such a way the the Hot Wheels ID products retain the hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of positive reviews from the older existing products. It makes the consumer think that Hot Wheels ID has tons of 5 Star reviews. It's super dishonest but I guess desperate times call for desperate measures.
4 years and over 10 million dollars was invested into Hot Wheels ID. We're it to fail it would be one of the biggest toy industry flops ever.
360 degree system of play? Nah. It's cheap plastic track and a lump of metal. There's nothing revolutionary here. Same old sh–.
I'm glad to hear that, this really feels like a new chapter for Mattel. The turnaround has been slow but it's finally taking shape.
How many IDs sold will be considered a success? Sounds like another talking Barbie.
Fake News. Clearly a dud.
Just another massive HW fail, judging by this mom's Amazon review. Excerpt follows:
Sometimes I can get the car to go around (maybe 1 out of 10 times) with out crashing, but most often the car crashes. We keep trying different track configurations, but there are other configurations that make the car crash even more. Then sometimes it flies through the booster so fast it shoots straight off the track like a little missle. Make sure your kids are sitting off to the side of the track and not near the ends because if that car comes flying off the track (which happened with us several times) you don't want to be in it's path of trajectory. Personally I think the speed of the cars is a bit dangerous with little ones around. I know the set is 8 years and up, but the likelihood of there being youngers (sic) kids around, while this track is in use, is probably high in a lot of households.
Repeating, a pig with lipstick is still... a pig. That has wh–ed itself out and lost all respect. Just like the rest of Mattel.
Fake news and hopelessly wishful thinking.
ID will collect dust at the DC’s like every other app enhanced toy. Good luck to all, it will be another graveyard fourth this year.
Well, it had better darn well be a hit, we only spent 4 years and tens of millions of dollars developing the system. RD has staked what's left of his reputation on this being not just a hit, but a template on which future product lines can be built.
Hot Wheels id is not just a toy line, it is the 360 degree system of play, it is the future roadmap of not only Mattel but of the entire toy industry. So yeah, I'd say it's a pretty big deal.
Definitely not the case in Europe!