Word: mattell
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Built-in Whinny. To back up their advertising (''You Can Tell It's Mattel-It's Swell"), the Handlers aim for well-made, moderately priced toys. One Mattel innovation was a mass-produced music-box mechanism that has now gone into 60 million toys ranging from guitars to lullaby cribs. Another gold mine: a miniature voice recording that stands rough handling, allows Mattel's Chatty Cathy doll to speak eleven phrases and a $48 rocking horse to whinny...
...Mattel's Mickey Mouse Club advertising, which plugged the Mattel name as hard as the burp gun, has revolutionized the $2-billion-a-year U.S. toy industry. Previously, toy companies spent most of their ad budget in the Christmas season and concentrated on selling individual items. Today, top companies advertise year-round on TV, and accent the brand name. Mattel, with a 1962 advertising budget of $5,700,000, still plugs harder than anybody else...
...Mattel's biggest success has been the Barbie doll, a more or less scale model of a busty teen-ager which appeals to little girls because it looks "grown up" and to their parents because it is inexpensive. Made in Japan to save on labor costs, the Barbie doll (which now has a boy friend named Ken) is priced at $3 retail and has become, according to Ruth Handler, "the greatest phenomenon that ever hit the toy business.'' Mattel also offers separately a Barbie wardrobe ranging from lingerie up to a $5 wedding gown...
Barbie and her wardrobe reflect a favorite Mattel device that Elliot Handler calls "the razor and razor blade" technique. Explains Handler: "You get hooked on one and you have to buy the other. Buy the doll and then you buy the clothes. I know a lot of parents hate us for this, but it's going to be around a long time." Parents, in fact, get scant sympathy from the Handlers, whose advertising is admittedly designed to evoke the razor-razor blade urge in children. Says Elliot Handler unapologetically: "We feel it's up to the parents...
...Frontier. As chairman and president of Mattel, Elliot Handler, 46, likes to think up new toys. Chic, aggressive Executive Vice President Ruth Handler, 45, oversees manufacture and administration. (By family agreement, they never talk business at home.) Husband and wife aspire to make Mattel the world's biggest toymaker; this year, if their sales hit $80 million as expected, they will achieve their goal and surpass longtime industry leader Louis Marx (TIME cover...