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Mattel, the toy manufacturer known for producing Barbie and Hot Wheels cars, is making a comeback with its new line of princess dolls representing 17 different Disney characters, including Anna and Elsa, Moana, and Cinderella.
The release of the dolls marks sees Mattel becoming the belle of the ball once again and is something of a turnaround for the company, which has experienced financial difficulties and a lack of creative inspiration in recent years.
The company’s CEO, Ynon Kreiz, has implemented a host of corporate restructuring alongside other changes in order to breath new life in the company’s designs and increase market share.
As a result, sales are once again booming with Mattel seeing an increase in net sales and a swing from a $343 million loss in 2017 to a $730 million profit in 2021.
Toy manufacturer Mattel, best known for making Barbie, has announced a new line of princess dolls representing 17 different Disney characters
The company’s CEO, Ynon Kreiz, has implemented a host of corporate restructuring alongside other changes in order to breath new life in the company’s designs and increase market share
The company’s share price has been hovering around $20, less than half of its 2013 high, but it has been profitable in the first three quarters of 2022.
Mattel’s return to the production and sale of Disney princess dolls comes nearly a decade after losing the license to rival company Hasbro.
Mattel had been the Disney dollmaker since the 1990s but it lost the franchise after developing its own line of dolls that saw an overlap with Disney’s characters.
The company had a relationship with the House of Mouse for 70 years starting out with The Mickey Mouse Club TV in the 1950s.
But when Barbie sales began dwindling from 2012, Disney felt overlooked and Mattel appeared to focus more attention on their best-known product leading to Disney dumping them.
Mattel had worked with Disney since 1955 – and after the latter decided to sell dolls depicting Jasmine, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and co. under the brand ‘Disney Princess’ in 2000, sales soared.
The final straw came in 2013 when Mattel introduced Ever After High, a line of dolls to rival the Disney Princess brand.
Designed to be the teenage daughters of characters like Cinderalla and Little Red Riding Good, the company did not have to pay licensing fees to Disney as the figures were based on fairy tale characters.
Meanwhile, Hasbro was approached when Disney was looking for a new dollmaker to portray the Princesses as heroines as opposed to damsels.
Their shared vision saw each Princess seem more like an individual character – with slightly different heights and waist sizes and features modeled on their animated versions – rather than identical Barbie-ish figurine with painted-on faces and different color dresses.
But now, in 2023, Mattel appears to have finally got the message. The company is once again on the up with new toy lines being launched together and collaborations with other fine-art creators.
It is also broadening the presence of its toy brands, helped by the creation of films and live events – all in an effort to increase market share and broaden the appeal of their toy catalog.
Aurora, Ariel, Pocahontas, Rapunzel, Tiana, Snow White, Belle, Jasmine, Merida, Mulan, Moana, Cinderella and Raya are all part of the new line up of Mattel/Disney dolls
Kreiz is a former television-studio executive who briefly worked for Disney before becoming CEO in 2018.
‘You would come into this building and you wouldn’t think it was a toy company. It felt like an insurance company in the Midwest,’ Kreiz told the Wall Street Journal.
After taking on the role, Kreiz hired Robbie Brenner, a the producer behind Oscar-nominated film Dallas Buyers Club to head up a new film unit.
Now Mattel is helping to produce hit films with links back to its toy brands. Progress has been fast with 15 feature films in some stage of development, including a Barbie film due out this summer.
Mattel ventured further into monster trucks and race tracks for its Hot Wheels cars including radio-controlled cars. It was an area of the toy market where Mattel had little experience and involvement previously
The return of Disney’s partnership with Mattel comes after the company started to ask itself, ‘Are we making good toys?’
‘We’ve shifted from being a toy company that is manufacturing items to an intellectual- property company that is managing franchises,’ Kreiz explains.
‘When we lost Disney Princess, there was a fixation on the numbers—the culture was being driven by spreadsheets and checklists and how to grow through cost-cutting,’ Ted Wu, head of design for Mattel’s vehicles, to WSJ.
‘We weren’t really asking ourselves, “Are we making good toys?”‘
Mattel ventured further into monster trucks and race tracks for its Hot Wheels cars including radio-controlled cars. It was an area of the toy market where Mattel had little experience and involvement previously.
But when Mattel was dumped by Disney, the share price fell by 25 percent and saw three CEOs come and go.
Mattel’s return to the production and sale of Disney princess dolls comes nearly a decade after losing the license to rival company Hasbro. Pictured, a girl is seen with the Moana doll
The new dolls are part of a broader effort to revive the design mojo at the company. Rapunzel doll is picture here, right
For the new line of Disney princess dolls, Mattel aimed to make the design more closely resemble how children imagined the characters should look, based on feedback from focus groups.
To achieve this, designers digitally sculpted features and hand-painted faces on prototypes that were based on the characters’ appearance in films and used new knitted fibers for a more diverse range of hair types.
Some of the new dolls from Mattel come in packaging that can be cut out and turned into background objects, such as a shell throne from The Little Mermaid, enhancing play scenarios for children.
The return of the Disney princesses was a major triumph for Mattel. In recent years, the company has held ‘Big Ideas’ showcases, where employees can pitch new toy ideas to senior executives.
The ‘color reveal’ dolls from the Barbie line, which change color when submerged in water, were developed after Mattel employees were able to suggest ideas to senior executives
The ‘color reveal’ dolls from the Barbie line, which change color when submerged in water, were developed through such a process.
Additionally, the Chief Operating Officer, Richard Dickson, has launched Mattel Creations, which produces higher-priced, limited edition collectors’ versions of toys from various product lines, often in collaboration with artists.
Kreiz closed factories and significantly reduced the number of employees, from 13,500 to 8,500.
He also reorganized the company’s creative divisions, grouping them into teams that design dolls, vehicles, and toys for young children in order to facilitate the sharing of ideas.
Despite such efforts, the company is still working to reach the annual sales of over $6 billion that it regularly achieved earlier in the decade.
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