Word: coleco
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...game business, yesterday's craze is today's closet stuffer. And no company knows that better than Coleco. Its cuddly Cabbage Patch Kids were once every small child's dream, but sales peaked in 1985 and have been falling ever since. In 1986 Coleco made a seemingly shrewd move in buying the company that held the license to the popular Trivial Pursuit game, but soon yuppies began to grow tired of asking one another questions like "Who played the Lone Ranger's faithful Indian companion...
...during years of heady expansion, the firm said last week it would lay off 35% of the managerial staff at its West Hartford, Conn., headquarters and 50% of its production employees. But as dramatic as those steps were, Wall Street is not sure they will be enough to keep Coleco out of bankruptcy...
...shoppers' imaginations. Sales this year are expected to grow a meager 3.4%, compared with an average of nearly 6% over the past three years. The price of some toy stocks tumbled more than 40% in October, further than the shares of any other industry. Such leading firms as Mattel, Coleco and Worlds of Wonder all posted larger losses than usual in the normally slow first half of the year...
...most successful new dolls have come, once again, from Coleco. Today's $125 Cabbage Patch Kids use the voices of real four-year-old girls. They gulp daintily as they sip from their special cups, giggle if they are tickled and complain when they are turned upside down. Eeriest of all, they can sense, by sending and receiving radio waves, when other talking Cabbage Patch Kids are near. When one doll passes within 25 ft. of another, it calls, "Hi, there! Hey, look who's here! It's my cousin!" The dolls may then break into a round...
...Mattel, the second largest toy company, with sales of just over $l billion, guards patrol the R&D building in Hawthorne, Calif., as if it were a Strategic Air Command base. Understandably. A successful new product can mean buckets of the stuff that grown-ups' dreams are made of. Coleco came charging out of the Cabbage Patch with its pathetic but lovable doll, and currently ranks third, with annual sales of more than $500 million. Hasbro, the leader, with $1.3 billion in sales projected for this year, is considered the industry hotshot. Every year some 4,000 new products soar...