Backwards licensing?

Camaro die-cast cars were always top sellers when I managed the Hot Wheels brand at Mattel and the Matchbox brand at Tyco.  As toy companies, we paid royalties to General Motors for the use of the Camaro trademark and were always excited when new models were released.  In an unusual twist, it’s now working the other way as License Magazine reports that “Chevrolet and Mattel have teamed up to bring the Hot Wheels brand to life with the new Camaro Hot Wheels Edition car, the first full-size Hot Wheels car ever to be offered for sale.”

Coincidentally, I appeared with the Matchbox design team on an episode of the PBS series "Reading Rainbow," where I used a Chevrolet Camaro to demonstrate how we used the concept of scale to make mini vehicle replicas of real cars.  Here's an image from the episode.  If you really want to see the episode, you can search YouTube.

The Hot Wheels license on a Camaro is a great idea!  Kudos to GM and Mattel.

Safe Toys - Easier When You Own the Lab

Beyond my work in marketing, licensing,and product development in toys for kids, I have spent a great deal of time working on toys for dogs during the last few years.  This ad, which I found in a consumer publication for dog owners, raised a perplexing question.

How could it be cost effective for a specialty pet toy company to put all their items through the rigorous testing that's required of children's toys?  Smaller toy companies often struggle to cost effectively test their products for small parts, heavy metals, and phtalates, and the tests are required by many governments as well as large retailers.

After doing a little digging on Google and LinkedIn, I learned that the owners of the pet toy company are in the product testing business.  Unlike Mattel, a toy manufacturing company that tests its own toys, this seems to be the case of a toy testing company that's gone into manufacturing, a great  way to vertically integrate and grow a business.

For Safe Made Pet Products, it's a clever and unique position in a crowded marketplace.  In the pet toy business, just like in kids' toys, product is king, and while I've only seen Safe Made's toys on their website, they do appear to be pretty good products.

Unfortunately, Legal

My new Microsoft brand keyboard comes with a 60 page booklet. The entire booklet has been created to protect Microsoft from lawsuits in the event the keyboard malfunctions.

The keyboard cost $14.99 (+ 40¢ government electronics recycling fee).

The booklet, complete with "Terms and Conditions" doesn't explain the features of the keyboard, but I guess they're self-explanatory.

Working with some of the world's largest and most successful toy companies, we always had to concern ourselves with the ramifications of product malfunctions. Instead of creating a 60 page manual for a simple product, though, we tended to focus on making products that were genuinely safe and worked properly.

Just saying.

Hot Wheels Stunt Impresses

Kudos to Mattel for pulling off an amazing stunt as part of a successfully repositioned Hot Wheels brand. On Sunday, May 29, as part of "IZOD Presents Hot Wheels Fearless at the 500™," Team Hot Wheels™ Yellow Driver Tanner Foust successfully landed a ramp-to-ramp distance jump of 332 feet. Foust, a three-time X Games gold medalist and professional stunt driver smashed the previous world record by an impressive 31 feet at the 100th anniversary of the Indianapolis 500.

"Fans witnessed not only a record-breaking jump today, but also an incredible childhood fantasy come to life which engaged multiple generations," said Simon Waldron, vice president of marketing for Hot Wheels®. "Hot Wheels has a deep and rich history in racing that spans over 40 years and there was no better global stage than the Indy 500 to create this once-in-a-lifetime experience."

AdWeek talks here about the marketing behind the move and shows the very cool commercial:

I remember a time when Hot Wheels was struggling as the #2 mini vehicle brand in the US and the #3 brand in Canada. I was proud to play a small part in the repositioning of the brand that led to its eventual return to the top spot.

Toy Tuesday: Which brand is most valuable?

I'm posting this entry from Los Angeles, home of the recent LA Auto Show, where this photo was taken featuring the Hot Wheels logo behind a Chevrolet Camaro. When I was responsible for marketing toy vehicle brands (Hot Wheels at Mattel, Matchbox at Tyco), we relied on the cachet of the Chevrolet Camaro brand to sell our mini vehicles. It looks like the tables have turned, with General Motors now relying on the Hot Wheels toy brand to sell their real cars.

Toy Tuesday: Taxpayer subsidized toy testing?

A little background

Shortly after started my first job with a big toy company at a big toy company (over 20 years ago), we received requests for samples from The Canadian Toy Testing Council. The Council had already been around for many years, and had a history of issuing toy reviews that were often highly critical of mass market and TV promoted toys. My boss was unequivocal in rejecting their request, and told me that they were just a bunch of Ottawa-based moms who lacked the qualifications to effectively evaluate and report on toys.

A year later at the same toy company, the Council called one of our dolls the worst toy of year. I remember the president of the company jumping for joy and accurately predicting that the doll would become the year’s hottest item in Canada. The doll had truly innovative features, a compelling play pattern, and aggressive TV advertising. On top of that, it was featured as the lead toy story on every news program in the country, and typified the expression “all publicity is good publicity”.

As a couple more years passed and management changed at the toy company. It was decided that we should cooperate with the Canadian Toy Testing Council rather than view them as the enemy. We spent a lot of time escorting them through Toy Fairs in Toronto and New York, but there really wasn’t any impact on the reviews our toys received.

It’s different today

20 years ago, there were few sources of product reviews available to consumers beyond the Toy Report issued by the Council. There was no internet, so there was no amazon.com, no toysrus.com, and no mommy bloggers. Today, obviously, things are much different, yet The Canadian Toy Testing Council persists.

And now...supported by our taxes

The Ottawa Citizen reports that the Council has received a grant this year from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, a taxpayer-funded organization whose mission is to build “healthy and vibrant communities throughout Ontario by strengthening the capacity of the voluntary sector, through investments in community-based initiatives.”

The Council issued its annual Toy Report last week, with a list of “Best Bets” that includes a variety of mass market and specialty toys. While I respect the motivation of The Canadian Toy Testing Council, I do question whether it’s necessary or meaningful, and firmly believe that our tax dollars are better spent elsewhere.

Toy Tuesday: Monster High - A New Approach for Mattel?

An interesting story in LA Business Journal talks about Mattel's upcoming launch of Monster High, a new toy line and intellectual property that features characters based on teen children of werewolves, zombies and other creatures "which the company has described as 'Grease' meets 'Addams Family,' because it’s a combination of the gothic-inspired 'Twilight' movies and Disney’s tween-friendly 'High School Musical' franchise."

Mattel seems to have done a good job putting the program together, but I agree with industry analyst Sean McGowan that the line could be either a huge hit or a huge failure.

Interestingly, the article makes several references to the fact that Monster High is "the first in-house toy brand the company has launched since Hot Wheels in 1968." I don't know where LA Business Journal got their information, but I can remember several brands from my time at Mattel in the late 1980s and early 1990s that were developed in-house, though none of them exist today. Just to check, I contacted toy consultant Lynn Rosenblum, who is quoted in the article and worked at Mattel when I did. She verified that many brands from Cherry Merry Muffin (a small doll line) to Masters of the Universe (a hugely successful boys' action line) were Mattel in-house initiatives. Looks like somebody is rewriting toy industry history.

Cherry Merry Muffin

Masters of the Universe

Regardless of whether it was created in-house at Mattel or came from elsewhere, Monster High's success will depend on how it resonates with kids. By the end of the year, we'll all know if it's a hit or a miss.

Toy Tuesday: Chief Amusement Officers

MediaPost New's Marketing Daily website has an article today about Mattel's and Hasbro's Q1 performance. While the article isn't particularly interesting, the opening line is outstanding: "It looks like parents all over the world are relaxing back into their role as chief amusement officers".

With the proliferation of positions with titles like Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Technology Officer, etc., I love the "Chief Amusement Officer" title that accurately reflects the role of parents in their kids' lives.

Toy Tuesday: Barbie in the News - For Better or Worse

As always, Mattel and its Barbie product line are in the news, and as always, there’s a mix of positive and negative spin.

One of the very first product lines I ever worked on was The Barbie School Collection for Mattel Canada. It was a huge success at the time, and represented a real breakthrough in the “back to school” aisle with high quality TV-advertised product.

Barbie School Collection (Mattel Canada)

It’s good to see that Mattel Canada continues to run innovative promotions for Barbie, including their Barbie Academy that will be held next week in Toronto, featuring interactive stations that allow girls to "try on" different professions represented in the line including a surfer, veterinarian, race car driver, dentist, rock star and ballerina.

Barbie Academy (Mattel Canada, 2010)

Meanwhile, Business Week writes this month about Mattel’s foray into online sales direct to consumers, lauding the company for protecting its brand in an era where powerful retailers pose a rising threat with exclusive and private label products.

On the negative side, Baltimore’s ABC2 News presents a confusing report entitled “Black Barbie Sold For Less Than White Barbie”, in which they confuse a marked down black Teresa doll at an undisclosed Wal-Mart store with a full priced white Barbie doll. (For those who don’t know,Teresa is one of Barbie’s friends, and never sells as well as Barbie herself). The report outlines issues of “overcoming decades of racial and economic subordination”. It’s unfortunate that a marked down slow selling doll in one store causes this type of debate.

Toy Tuesday: Puppy Tweets

Last Thursday, Mattel announced a new toy for dogs called "Puppy Tweets" that will launch next week at Toy Fair in New York.

According to CNN,

Puppy Tweets is a plastic tag with a sound and motion sensor that you attach to your pet's dog collar and connect its USB receiver to your computer. Then you create a Twitter account for your dog and enjoy updates all day from Sparky or whatever its name is on your computer or smartphone.

The tag is set with several pre-recorded tweets that are triggered by the dog's activities. So if he's running around, you might get a tweet that says "I finally caught that tail I've been chasing and...OOUUUCHH!"

While my dog doesn't have a Twitter account, he does have his own email address. It's not far fetched to expect dog owners to adapt kids' (or adults') play patterns for their dogs.

Mattel's introduction is a great adaptation of the types of technology that toy companies use in their kids' products, but I expect that Mattel will have a few challenges making "Puppy Tweets" a success once the novelty in the marketplace wears out. The most obvious challenge is to determine where the product should be merchandised at retail. In the kids' toy department? In the pet department? And if it's in the toy department, which aisle? Toymakers often have a tough time working with big retailers to find homes for new innovations, and Mattel will no doubt face this challenge.

When I worked at Mattel Canada, I was responsible for a line of Back to School products that were sold in stationery departments and drugstores, not in toy departments and toy stores like most of Mattel's line. With a dedicated focus on the Back to School line, we were successful in getting placement at retail and strong sell through to consumers. Similarly, Mattel should be able to establish a home for "Puppy Tweets" in mass merchants and big box pet stores with a concerted sales and marketing effort.

Still, I'm not sure that I'd buy it for my dog. For families with both dogs and kids, though, "Puppy Tweets" could have a lot of appeal. What do you think?