Word: mattel
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...capture 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 controversial area, however, is toy-inspired shows, which are criticized by children's TV activists as little more than program-length commercials. "Where is it written that Mattel should control the decision making in programming for children's TV?" says Peggy Charren, president of Action for Children's Television, the watchdog group based in Cambridge, Mass. "People who want to produce children's programs with something to say instead of something to sell are zapped out of the system...
...activists are especially upset about a new wave of "interactive" shows, like Mattel's Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. The show, a live-action space adventure, enables children to play along at certain points by shooting at villains on-screen with a special Power Jet weapon (cost: $30 to $40). An electronic signal responds to each "hit" and tots up the . player's score. Charren argues that by encouraging children to buy an expensive toy to participate, such shows unfairly divide the young audience into "the haves and the have-nots...
Nothing infuriates critics of children's TV more than cartoon shows that are produced or partly financed by toy manufacturers. Mattel, for example, used He-Man and the Masters of the Universe to help sell an estimated $175 million worth of toys last year, while Hasbro's Transformers helped generate sales of $214 million. Under President Reagan, the Federal Communications Commission has removed all limits on advertising in children's programming and refused to take action against shows that detractors call "program-length commercials...
...most popular toys of the new breed are likely to be Mattel's interactive Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. The line of 20 toys, which will go on sale starting this summer at prices mainly in the $30-to-$40 range, could generate as much as $200 million in sales for Mattel by mid-1988. The toy line will be linked with a half-hour Captain Power program to be broadcast on Saturday or Sunday nights beginning next fall. A mixture of live action and computer animation, Captain Power -- much like preteen action cartoons -- takes place...