Word: mattel
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...child fights more single-mindedly for a toy than do some 800 manufacturers and distributors for a share of that market. At 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...
...notoriously erratic because they rode up and down with the latest fads. Example: Rubik's Cube, which lasted only one season, 1981-82. Now the toy firms want to grow large enough so that they can take part in several trends at once and get a smoother ride. Hasbro, Mattel and Coleco, the No. 3 toymaker, will account for about 35% of this year's industry revenues, compared with less than 15% five years ago. But these big firms now compete with a manic rivalry that resembles that of computer or soft-drink companies...
Most major companies have stampeded to produce a line of so-called male action figures like Mattel's Masters of the Universe. Since 1982, when the line was introduced, California-based Mattel has sold some 125 million creatures, or an average of eleven of them to each boy in the U.S. between the ages of five and ten. Children collect the 6-in. plastic figures ($5 to $7), whose personalities reflect a blend of medieval and outer-space themes, in order to enact imaginary battles between good and evil. The virtuous leader is He-Man, who fights a never-ending...
...from the malodorous one, He-Man may encounter his toughest rivals in the toy stores, where this year he will face the red-hot Thundercats, from New York City-based LJN Toys, and Sectaurs, a strain of insect-like warriors made by Coleco. To give He-Man some help, Mattel has introduced his shapely sister, She-Ra, which the company hopes will get girls interested in action figures...
...smartest shop in the business right now is Rhode Island-based Hasbro, which this year expects to reach sales of $1.2 billion and surpass Mattel as the largest U.S. toymaker. Hasbro, which is now operated by its third generation of Hassenfeld brothers, has profited from a somewhat contrary attitude. The company avoided getting into video games in 1979, which at the time prompted wags to call it "Has-been." Instead, the company plunged / deeper into conventional toys, which eventually produced such smash hits as Transformers and My Little Pony, a line of plastic, pastel-colored toys...