Word: toying
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Mattel gives much of the credit to saturation selling on TV. In 1955, Mattel, still a fledgling firm with annual sales of only $6,000,000, decided to move into toy burp guns. Anxious to give the new product a big advertising sendoff, the Handlers nervously agreed to sponsor Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club show for a year, at a cost of $500,000. Recalls Ralph Carson of Los Angeles' Carson-Roberts ad agency, which handles the Mattel account: "We were on the air six times and nothing happened. Then the Mattel people came back from...
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...
...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...
...their drive for the top, the Handlers this year alone have doubled their plant space and payroll (to 4,400). At Mattel's Los Angeles factory, a staff of 200 toy developers, including chemists, sculptors and engineers, tinker behind locked doors on an annual research budget of $1,500,000. Currently, the company has 17 new toy "principles" ready to employ in a variety of toys. Exults Jack Ryan, a onetime missile engineer who heads Mattel's R. & D. department: "We're right out on the frontier of technology...
...they run out of Lowenbrau . . . order champagne''), the confusions of parenthood ("How Sears helps your daughter choose her first bra"), nostalgia ("Our beer is 50 years behind the times"), hypochondria ("Take Geritol to end tired blood"), and the competitiveness of childhood ("Every boy wants a Remco toy"). Inevitably, the most heavily used selling themes turn on three aspects of existence that particularly fascinate Americans: youth, sex and romance. Pepsi-Cola, once typed in the public mind as a sweet, cheap drink ("Twice as much for a nickel, too'',), almost certainly owes much of its upsurge...