Left the company years ago (retired) and a friend turned me on to this site, went to a few stores the other day (usually online shopping) and I decided to walk down the toy aisles to see what the old company was up to. Does mattel no longer handle licensed properties? I saw so many products and none handled by mattel. when did mattel lose disney pre-school? The only pre-school i saw were awful little people toy story figures? what’s going on with the company?
8 replies (most recent on top)
Mattel Toys Blow, bottom line. There is no IP no matter how much they sugar coat this soggy cupcake we sit on top of.
Wow. Truly sad news and it seems as though leadership is not diversifying the eggs in their basket. I recall licensing was always the FP/Mattel strong suit and the products were generally really good until before I retired when they were putting using the same mindset for different licenses. Tub toys, cheap figures, cost reduced garbage. I also recall there was a specials division that dealt with making exclusive packs for retailers. I'm guessing that business is gone as well?
By the time the nyc office got shut down most of their licenses under the fisher price name were on their last leg anyway. Disney chose not to renew their contract so it was buh bye to mickey and friends. Not sure if Nickelodeon is still doing business with the company
Mattel may make better looking dolls than Hasbro, but unfortunately they treat their business partners like sh–. They also treat their customers, employees, and vendors in the same horrible way. They are now getting what they deserve when licensors do not want to business with them.
Mattel didn't "let go" or "give up" those licenses. The licensor decided not to renew license with Mattel and go with another company. Perhaps they wanted a fresh take on their license, or they got bored with Mattel's ideas. Better money? Better ideas? Better people? We can speculate all we want, but in the end, it's just business.
Well i was surprised to see that Hasbro was up just 3%. If Mattel had the Disney Princesses and Frozen, those numbers for Mattel would be out of the ballpark. Mattel knows fashion dolls and the mattel Frozen dolls are much sought after as Hasbro Dolls are not even close to the Barbie version. Compare the two dolls, Mattel’s is so much better.
It seems like Mattel has made a deliberate move away from licensed toys. They gave up Monster Jam in favor of creating their own competitive live Monster Truck event tour. They let go of DC toys like Batman, Superman etc. The licensing arm for preschool, Fisher-Price friends, was effectively shut down a couple years ago when they shuttered the doors on it's office in NYC. The toy industry is a lot different nowadays, with lots of smaller companies coming in and scooping up all the hot toy licenses, Just Play, Jazwares, Funko, Lanard etc. or look at Spin Master who works with TV studios to create content for their IP while they handle the toys. That being said, seems like these days having a hot license is crucial to moving units, so Mattel should get their strategy together on this.
We haven’t done much since Disney yanked the princess license and gave it to Hasbro. The only substantial license we’ve had since then is Jurassic World. It is not very profitable because we gave away the farm just to win the license. But the product was actually decent since there were no unrealistic expectations on margin. Ynon is not too worried about getting new licenses because once all of the blockbuster movies are made companies will be clamoring to license our brands.