Tag: mattel history

How does Mattel solve a problem of its own design? The problem: a doll, fashioned seven decades ago, with a ridiculously tiny waist, perfectly-arched feet, living in a Pantone 219C pink house, the embodiment of the Perfect Woman™. The California-based toy conglomerate, since the turn of the century, kept drawing cards that augured trouble for its 400+ toy portfolio: misguided acquisitions, dwindling sales, debt crises, stiff competition, a public relations nightmare. More damningly, Barbie dolls, Mattel’s origin story, were proving to be its Achilles Heel. Criticism mounted over its relevance in a world eager to redefine beauty standards and undo gender norms.

Mattel’s solution? Reinventing the $3 toy into a multi-billion-dollar “pop culture company”, as Richard Dickson, COO and president of Mattel, said in a recent interview. Mattel was ready to have a “dialogue” with consumers, morphing into a “canvas” for conversations and experiences, he says. The canvas currently is painted hot pink: Barbie x Gap clothing, Barbie x Impala rollerskates, Barbie luggage, a Barbie Xbox, a Malibu Dreamhouse. The canvas can be a brand, franchise, an idea. The rumoured $100 million marketing strategy will be a playbook next applied to Hot Wheels, UNO and other playthings in Mattel’s toybox. Welcome to the Mattel Cinematic Universe. Here, life is Mattel’s creation.

Mattel started with a trio in a garage, circa 1945, Los Angeles. Ruth Handler, her husband Elliot and Matt Manson (Mattell is a portmanteau of the latter two; Ruth’s name couldn’t fit into the title, Eliot revealed later). Mattel sold picture frames, then doll furniture and toys. Matt withdrew his participation due to poor health, transferring the remaining stakes to Ruth. Ruth proposed a heretical product (by toy industry standards): a doll with breasts. Her own daughter Barbara played dress-up with baby dolls or one-dimensional paper dolls; it dawned on Ruth that young girls were conditioned to dream of becoming mothers or caregivers — nothing more, nothing less. This inspiration concretised on seeing Bild Lilli, a doll modelled after a cartoon character in a Swiss local newspaper. The first Barbie doll ambled through the breach wearing a black-and-white striped swimsuit, hooped earrings, sunglasses, priced at $3 then.

Ms. Handler wrote in her 1994 biography: “My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices.” A world, with countless versions, was brought to life: soon came the Ken doll, the Barbie Dreamhouse, Barbie’s best friend Midge, sister Skipper, Ken’s best friend, Barbies of varying skin colours, partaking in sundry professions.

Mattel had acquired 10 other companies by the 1970s, but the Handlers soon resigned when a 1974 investigation found them guilty of falsifying financial statements and mail fraud. Ms. Handler’s next project involved creating prosthetic breasts for cancer survivors (she herself had two mastectomies). This history is documented in the movie, when Ruth’s character in a dream-like setting muses about her illness and financial hiccups. “Ideas live forever, humans not so much,” she says.

Undeterred, Mattle persisted on its way to success. It’s the world’s largest toy maker today in terms of revenue; Barbie and Hot Wheels continue to be its most valued brands. Ms. Handler wrote: “People in the retail business use an expression for a popular product – they say it ‘walks’ off the counter. Barbie didn’t walk. She ran.” Barbie accounted for more than half of Mattel’s sales within initial years of launch..

The old guard gone, Mattel, then helmed by Arthur S. Spear, initiated a strategy of hit and try: acquiring game consoles (almost pushed the company to file for bankruptcy), publishing house (sold four years later), launching action figures (later dropped, causing a $115 million loss), charting paths into multimedia with a $3.6 billion investment in Learning Company (an expert likened to “falling off a cliff’). The company was in financial trouble, recovering briefly in the early 2000s, by refocusing on what they are good at: basic toys. “The strength of Barbie and other important brands — combined with two years of cost-cutting — have lifted the stock of the company, the nation’s largest toymaker,” a 2003 article in The New York Times noted.

The respite was short-lived — the aughts presented challenges new and old: children moved on from analogue toys to digital, competition emerged from new franchises, Barbie’s feminity was still regressive. Russia banned Barbie dolls in 2002 for stimulating “early sexual interest”; Saudi Arabia banned it for carrying a “symbol of decadence to the perverted West”. India saw Barbie enter the market post the 1991 economic reforms, “cultural norms embodied in both written legislation and in the ―unwritten laws of the Indian public precluded Mattel from successfully selling Barbie‘s gendered and ethnocentric values to Indian female children”, a 2009 paper argued. Scandal struck in 2007 due to quality control, when Mattel recalled 1.5 million Chinese-made toys tainted with lead paint. Profitability between 2000 and 2014 was unsteady: Barbie sales dropped by 16% (its lowest sales volume in 25 years), Fisher-Price (which manufactures baby toys) were down by 13%.

Analysts agreed Barbie, and Mattle, were in their decline phase, struggling to stay relevant. Mr. Dickson who re-joined the company in 2014, when speaking of Mattel’s new vision, implied it was time to revisit its roots: “What made us great to begin with? And how do we start to personify our purpose through meaningful touch points and execution?” 

Mattel’s Barbie problem also became its solution. The doll received updates to respond to a shifting culture around 2016: Barbie dolls could be astronauts, Presidents, doctors, even Frida Kahlo. There were three additional body shapes, seven skin tones, 24 hairstyles, 22 eye colours. There was a hijabi Barbie, a Barbie in a wheelchair. (New versions were criticised for being tokenistic gestures, doing little to be truly subversive). The doll’s sales grew by 16% eventually, per reports.

Mattel was reinventing, and that meant revisiting the notion of enlivening the toys on celluloid (the process of making Barbie started in 2014). The new CEO Ynon Kreiz in 2018 shuffled things around: reducing manufacturing load, forming a film department, revamping social media presence, meeting with agents, networks and studios. They had an enviable intellectual property with a built-in fan base; an IP ripe for mining at a time when viewers were fatigued by superhero franchises and the ‘Marvelification’ of cinema. “It’s not about making movies so that we can go and sell more toys,” Mr. Kreiz said in an interview. The movie doeshelp though: the marketing had built awareness about the film as well as Mattel among women under 35 years of age, the higher ever seen by the company, according to The Quorum. Mattel has since announced 14 more movies, streaming shows and video games based on its toys. A theme park is being built in Arizona.

What lies at the heart of Mattel’s inner sanctum? A desire to build a bottomless dream house, a meta realm that incarnates a brand into culture. Mr. Dickson in a media interaction mused: “Barbie’s not just a toy. She’s a source of inspiration.”

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Margot Robbie in a scene from Barbie.
| Photo Credit:
AP

For now, Phase 1 for Mattel’s Cinematic Universe begins with betting on feminism, seemingly embracing the critique and subversion designed into Barbie’s plot (“We’re doing the thing and subverting the thing,” director Greta Gerwig said). The doll was an inescapable symbol of what is expected of women, succumbing to capitalist ambitions and a sexualised male gaze. The chant “I am not a Barbie doll” pealed through women’s equality marches in the Seventies. With Barbie, Mattel swooped in with reinvention, complicating the idea of what is expected of women, showing a polarising doll on a soul mission. “We’re in on the joke,” says Margot Robbie, the star of Barbie and ‘Barbenheimmer memes’. In the movie, Ruth tells Barbie that her original creator had to be a woman, she says, even if men in suits dominate the Mattle boardroom, pontificating about women’s rights, trying to construct a woman’s world from scratch.

It all comes back to Ruth Handler, and her divisive doll. Mattel’s story is inevitably tied to the two: each desired relevance, reinventing oneself while searching for a purpose. Mattel still has a job to do, however: to make money. In the elaborate, self-aware joke drenched in fuschia pink, one wonders if subversion is the main bit. Can Mattel perform the ultimate balancing act, chasing both money and meaning?