October 23, 2019 • 50 mins
Mattel is a classic American Dream story. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, start a company, invent iconic toys and make oodles of money. But of course nothing is ever that simple. This story has it all... young love, a woman a head of her time, a dark moment of fraud, and some truly iconic toys. But... does it have a happy ending?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I think it's safe to say that almost every American
and many people across the globe have some kind of warm,
fuzzy memory tied to a toy or a game or
a doll made by Mattel or one of their famous subsidiaries.
But is digital taking the place of old fashioned toys?
And is Mattel keeping up or on the way out?
(00:27):
This is Physiography, the show where we dive into the
strange but true stories of iconic companies. Whether they're a
current bright star, in the midst of a massive dumpster fire,
or settling into the dust heap of history, they all
have a past worth knowing. I'm Dana Barrett. I'm a
former Barbie owner, a tech executive, entrepreneur, and a TV
and radio host. And over the course of my career,
(00:49):
I've had I think to Barbie dolls, and I've interviewed
thousands of business leaders and reported on the bright beginnings
and massive flame outs of the brands we know and love.
Some of their stories are inspiring, summer full of highs
and lows, and some just make you go ah. Phisiography
is a production of I Heart Radio and dB Media,
and its co hosted as always by my producer and
(01:11):
Hot Wheels guy Nick mean, yeah, hot Wheels. I had
the fancy wheel right that you could store them all in.
I had dozens of hot Wheel cars. And I think
I think everybody has something they remember playing within the
floor of the living room or something that Mattel mate Yeah,
And I think even kids sort of knew the Matel
(01:32):
name because the logo was on things and you sort
of knew. And um, they did also have a lot
of famous subsidiaries, which we are going to get to. They,
you know, like a lot of the companies we've talked
about on this season of photography, they ultimately ended up
sort of buying up some other very well known brands
and intersecting with some well known brands across the years.
So we're gonna get to all of that. But I
(01:53):
think the question, um for this episode is, you know,
our toys are traditional toys kind of at the end
of their usefulness. Is it all going to be digital
and video games? Are people you know, sort of sick
of the old fashioned toys And is Mattel going to
(02:14):
die out because of that if it's even true, or
are they keeping up? And that's a really good point
you make because we all go into the department store
of your choice or or general store of your choice,
and the toy ai'll is very different now than it
was even ten years ago. They've got the big digital
section with like the kids tablets and stuff. It's interesting. Yeah, um,
(02:36):
I think, you know, this is just from my own
sort of anecdotal evidence, but it seems to me that
there are plenty of you know, real life, you know,
plastic toys and games that are still being played. I
was at an event this past weekend, UM where you know,
people were sitting outside on the lawn and there were
multiple kids running around with Barbie dolls. So I feel
(02:58):
like from that first active First of all, I think
the parents have some nostalgia so they bring their kids
to the same toys they had, um. But I also
think the kids are still enjoying those kinds of toys,
So I don't actually think toys are over in that way.
Toys are us maybe over, but toys themselves I think
are going to be around for a while. Right. There's
something about that physical playtime that you just can't replace
(03:19):
with the device. That's right. But I also think to
your point about the toy aisle, there are a lot
of now sort of connections between the physical toys and
some kind of digital something, Right, So whether it's an
app that you can do something with, or some buttons
on the toys that deep and whatever, right to annoy parents, right,
But I mean I think a lot more of the
(03:41):
toys have some crossover into the digital world. There's a
game also that you can play on the device, you know,
on a tablet that goes with the toy, score keeping,
social media NG I mean, there's a lot of that too.
I think there's a ton of integration. And as a
as a person who has kids in the house, it
is kind of interesting to see some of the same
kind of toys I played with as a kid that
(04:03):
now my four year old plays with and then he
takes his tablet and scans the code on the bottom
of his toy and it goes into his app. It's
it's fascinating to me. Yeah, yeah, right, So I think
there's a crossover. And so the question of whether or
not Mattel is going to stay relevant. I mean, I
think we can just sort of look at some of
their numbers. I mean, first of all, who knew that
(04:26):
Barbie had a YouTube channel? Barbie's YouTube channel has seven
point five million subscribers. Wow, that's a lot. Yeah, how
does hot Whales? Comes the competition here? A Barbie girl? So,
how does hot Whales compare? Hot Wheels is not quite
as hot as the Barbie YouTube channel, but it still
has over two million subscribers to the channel. Yeah, and
(04:47):
even just the company's channel, the Mattel channel. Yeah, that's
not bad. That's not bad at all. Yeah. Wait wait, wait, Danna,
did you just call yourself a Barbie girl? Yeah? I
think I did. Wasn't there a song about that? But
(05:09):
we digress as usual. Barbie also has a Twitter handle.
She does. I don't think hers is quite as popular
as let's say, you know, the presidents as an example,
but she has two hundred and seventy thousand followers on Twitter. Yeah.
And Hot Wheels again lower, but it's about that's not
(05:29):
too bad for a right, I mean, and in fairness
to the Hot Wheels in this scenario, like it's a car. Yeah, valid,
Barbie at least is like sort of a humanoid, right. Um. Also,
you know, Barbie has really tried to stay up with
I'm talking about Barbie like she's a person. But the
company has really tried to keep Barbie up to date
in terms of the jobs that they give her. The
(05:51):
you know, the clothes um and the and the styles
and all of that. They've tried different things to make
her multicultural and all of that. In fact, this year
they announced the newest Barbie and she is a judge,
which is super cool. Right, But I wanted to interject
for just half a second, Like you just said, you're
talking about Barbie like she's a real person. That's part
(06:12):
of what I think Mattel has done that's made them
that successful, right, is the personalization of toys. It's my car.
It's a hot wheels, little metal toy that was what
nine cents at the store, But it's my car. It's
that it's that attachment that it's able to build for
some reason. So that's why with the judge, how many
how many young girls now have seen Ruth bader Ginsburg
(06:33):
even as little bitty girls, and now they see they
can have their own Ruth bader Ginsburg and it doesn't
have to be her, it can be me. Yeah in
that judge. That's really cool. Yeah, exactly. And I think also,
you know, they've to your point. I think humanize the
toy because first of all, we do say, like we
call Barbie Barbie by her name, like we don't call
we don't say my doll Barbie, like we just say
(06:55):
my Barbie. Yeah, I don't. I don't think I've ever said,
go you with Nieces, where's your Barbie doll? It's Barbie? Right.
And then on top of all of that, um, they've
made tons and tons of movies cartoons essentially with Barbie
um in them. And then they're really staying current now
because also in nineteen this year Mattel not really Barbie
(07:19):
so much, but another doll line. They're actually releasing their
first ever line of gender neutral dolls. Really, so that
is really staying modern. Yeah, definitely keeping with the times. Yeah,
it's a collection called Creatable World, and you can sort
of dress these dolls however you want and they can
be whatever gender you want them to be. Yeah, very cool.
And speaking of the digital movies, there is actually a
(07:42):
live action Barbie movie in the works, a live like
real because I know that most of the Barbie movies
have been like you know, the digital animated stuff, live action,
real people moving. Yeah, it made me think about one
a few years back with Tyra Banks. But what that
one wasn't I thought it was Barbie, but I researched it,
and I guess Mattel never approved of it, So that
one was like Barbie esque. That wasn't actually Barbie, but
(08:02):
Tyra Banks played a Barbie like doll. She was an
Eva doll. But there's a real Mattel's sanctioned live action
Barbie movie that is going to start may have already
started filming. There's not a lot of detail out about
it already, but it's supposed to come out in Wait
for it, starring Margot Robbie. That's probably a really good choice.
She's one of the biggest stars out there right now,
(08:26):
and she does look a lot like a Barbie. Yea
valid point, so totally perfect. I have to say, though,
if you're somebody who's been listening to our show because
you love business and you don't really care that much
about toys, that Mattel is the number one global toy
company today, so I'm not worried about them. They had
(08:46):
over five billion in total sales worldwide. Five billion. Yeah.
I think we just debunked our argument earlier of the
digital toys taking over. I don't five billions and that's
just the in company Mattel, right, Well, it's the parent company,
right and they, like we said, they own a lot
of subsidiaries now and that includes all of their subsidiaries
(09:07):
and that's a worldwide number. But still it's a lot.
I think they're Okay, I'm not super worried. You know,
it's not a super high dollar stock, um, But I
also think it's probably Listen, do not take financial advice
from me, But I would just say I think to
some extent, it's probably one of those stocks that you
could buy and hold um and not really worry about
it going away. Yeah, it's not like the kind of
(09:29):
you know, if you invest in you know, impossible burghers
or something, you never know what's going to happen trend
wise next year. But I think you with a company
like Mattel, you know, or a Coca Cola companies like that,
you sort of know they're kind of they're here. It's
definitely not a fat does not appear to be a fat.
Now it's been around a while, but listen, it is
a company that's been around a while. It started really
(09:49):
in the forties and fifties and nineties, and fifties. And
the story really starts, though, with a love story. So
we're gonna get to that right after this. Who doesn't
love a good love story, I mean, especially when it
has to do with the start of a toy company.
(10:09):
It feels like very Mr. And Mrs claws to me, Oh,
I didn't think about that. Good point. You know, they
were the first, you know, toymakers who had a company
that you know, global, yes, and really had the best
supply chain of all times, you know, if we're if
we're being honest, um, But look, I mean, the story
(10:29):
of Mattel really does start with a love story. It
was the story of the relationship and eventual marriage of
Ruth Moscow and Isaac Elliott Handler, who in his younger
years was known as Izzy, which was short for Isaac.
They were both they were the same age. I think
when I was doing the research, it looked like they
were both born in nineteen sixteen. Ruth was born to
(10:51):
older Jewish immigrant parents in Denver, Colorado. She was actually
raised by an older sister and her sister's husband who
were pretty successful and so they lived in a pretty
good part of town in in the Denver area. And
again that same year, nineteen sixteen. Elliott is born in
Denver also, but his parents aren't quite as successful as
(11:14):
Ruth's older sister, and so they live in kind of
like the bad Boy neighborhood, like the Rougher neighborhood is
kind of West side story is you saw where I
was going with that and it and so the story
starts really in the nineteen thirties when now they're teenagers.
So ninety two, age sixteen, Uh, Ruth gets her first
car and she's because you know, they were she was
(11:35):
in a good family. They could afford that. So she
had this convertible and she's driving down the street in
Denver and she catches sight of this good looking bad boy,
you know, and gets a crush and turns out that that,
of course that bad boy was Izzy Elliott Handler, but
he also apparently had seen a picture of her at
a friend's house coincidentally and had a crush on her.
(11:58):
That's so crazy. So they ended up meeting shortly after that,
I think at a school dance. And remember he didn't
have money, and so the way those dances were set up.
I love this story, by the way, the way I
just love a love story. The way the dances were
at the time, you had to pay a nickel for
each dance. It was must have been a fundraiser for
something or whatever, and he had a nickel. So he
(12:20):
took his single nickel and he asked Ruth to dance,
and he was like enamored right from the start. He's like,
this is the girl for me. In fact, apparently he
said this is the girl for me just from seeing
her picture. That's how destined these two were. And so
then he had to go back to all his friends
and borrow nickels so he could keep dancing with her.
You know, that's that's a lot better than trying to
get the quarters from your buddies at the arcade for
(12:41):
the for the next game, Right, okay, you go, okay,
co get the girl the better cause yeah, yeah, absolutely,
So essentially, you know, he's the bad boy from the
bad you know, he's not that bad of a bad boy,
but you know, he comes across as a bad boy.
He's not a bad person, he's not in crime, but
he's you know, he's got that what the rebel. Yeah
a little bit, we're making this up a little bit now,
(13:03):
but I just picture him with like the leather jacket.
What I mean, like the James Dean sort of like
you know, apparently he had a sick head of black
pearls that really made Ruth just smelt you know. Um.
In any case, they were, you know, at the end
of their high school years and were sixteen years old,
did another year or two of high school and Ruth,
(13:23):
you know, for the time. I mean, this is the
mid nineteen thirties and this is pre World War Two. Um,
women you know worked. It's not like women didn't work
at all, but they you know, it wasn't it wasn't mandatory. Certainly,
it really just depended on the family and you know,
the amount of money you had or needed or whatever.
But she always wanted to work. This was part of
who she was. And the two of them really were
(13:45):
pretty bold because Ruth actually went on a vacation with
a friend in nineteen thirty five to l A. And
she ended up getting a job out there, Um, in
l A at Paramount Studios. What who was on fake
Aitian and gets a job? Yeah, she was hired on
the spot to work in the steno pool at Paramount Studios.
(14:07):
Do you even know what that is? I have no idea.
I mean, I don't even really remember the details anymore
of what the Steno graphic pool is stanopool, but basically
it's admin work. Okay, Yeah, so um, we will we
will have to google that. We'll leave everybody with some googling,
perhaps in this episode, but in any case, Um, they
were dating by this point Izzy and Um and Ruth
(14:29):
and so um he followed her out there. Wow, so
she got a job and he's like, all right, pack
it up, leaving Denver, moving out to Big l A. Yeah.
And by the way, at this point, neither one of
them had dreams of being toymakers. It wasn't like they
were like, you know what, we're going to start a business.
We're gonna be Mr and Mrs Claus and we're gonna
make toys like that. That was not in the plan.
(14:49):
In fact, is he was Um an artist and he
really wanted to go to art school. That was his dream. Yeah. Yeah.
And Ruth I think just always sort of knew she
wanted to do something um with herself as a career.
She didn't just want to be a wife. She wanted
to work. It was part of who she was. UM.
But in any case, ultimately they sort of found themselves
(15:10):
in business, like many of the entrepreneurs we've discussed this season,
almost a little bit by accident. Yeah, they kind of
stumbled into the opportunity. Yeah, like they had moxie for sure, right,
Like they were, you know, trying to do some make
money and support themselves on the side and um, but
they weren't like, Okay, we're going to start a company
(15:30):
and here's how we're gonna do it. That wasn't the story,
not at all. So the story, in part was had
a lot to do with the fact that they moved
from a shabby place in l A to a slightly
better place, right, yeah, right, exactly. They moved from a
basically the roach motel into a much nicer place that
was slightly more expensive. But the biggest part of the
(15:51):
nicer place they moved into is that the new apartment
had half of a two car garage. So now they
had kind of a non in the house space to use. Yeah.
Now I have to say, I I we brushed over
this because I just I'm assuming everybody understood that they
got married. This was the nineteen thirties. They didn't live together. Um, first,
(16:12):
they lived separately. They had roommates and whatever in l A.
Before they actually moved in together, they got married first,
just to be clear, it was all above board it, yes,
but yeah, they started out after their marriage. Um, I
think they actually went home to Denver to get married,
and then they went back to l A because they
loved it there and Izzie was going to art school
and uh, they just had a dump for a place
(16:35):
first until they found the place with the garage, which,
by the way, they could barely afford it was it
was ten dollars a month more than they had been paying.
Mind you, again, is the nineteen thirties. Ten bucks is
a big deal back then, so it was definitely a
stretch on their budget. But for whatever reason they decided,
we're going to make it happen. Well, you know what
a happy wife, happy life. She saw the place, she
was like, I don't like the bugs in the other place.
(16:56):
I want this one, honey, And he was like, okay, yes,
we're going to make that work. Meanwhile, remember he's still
in school. So this is now around and Elliott is
taking an industrial design class that was focused on designing
consumer items from a new plastic at the time called
loose sight. Yeah, and he sort of put aside his
(17:20):
love of artistry and got fascinated with creating new designs
out of materials like loose sight. And so he started
designing loose sight lamps and picture frames and hand mirrors
and candle labras. And he's doing this in their apartment.
So he's making stuff for them personally to use. So Ruth,
(17:44):
who again always had this kind of business mind, was
super impressed by the quality of what her husband was
doing and she decided that she could sell them. Now
keep in mind, yeah, so they bought some equipment from
another one of our bhisiography companies, Sears Bucks on credit
(18:11):
on credit, spent got two hundred dollars worth of equipment,
and they started to produce these items, these loose sight
items in their half of what was a shared garage
with their neighbors, and they were pretty successful at it.
She went out and decided she could figure out how
(18:31):
to sell these items. That said, their neighbor who shared
the garage was not digging it. Yeah, I gotta say
I would not be a huge fan of my neighbor
having a workshop in our shared space. Yeah, I mean
there were wood shavings and lee site shavings and you know,
dust and schmutz everywhere, and they were not digging it.
(18:53):
But this whole enterprise did not take them long to
get started because they moved there, they start tinkering. Nine
Ruth makes her first sales call and she is I mean,
that's pretty bold. I'm still just impressed with the time
period and the fact that she just went and did this.
She went to a company called Zacho Imports, and UM
(19:14):
showed the designs and Zacho said yes and placed their
first order for five worth of goods and no mind you,
it is nineteen nine bucks. Is a really big order
back in the day, literally to the point to where
when he goes the owner of Zacho goes, okay, I'll
get five dollars. Elliot's like shaking so bad he can't
(19:34):
find a piece of paper in a pin to take
down the order, but finally got his wits about him
and did it, and apparently later when he met up
with his wife there literally jumping up and down, shouting
and celebrating their first sale, which is just yeah, that
love story again, that this partnership between the two is
is is so integral to the whole story. Well, and
(19:56):
I think too, Like everybody who's ever sold anything knows
what that moment feels like. You you sell that first
box of Girl Scout cookies and you're like, who you know?
I think everybody can relate to that. And also I
think it's important to point out we've been using the
name Iszy and Elliott sort of interchangeably, but by this
point he's Elliott. And the reason I want to point
this out is because if you were not clear on
(20:18):
the relationship between Ruth and now Elliott, she was the boss.
She ran the show. So they got married in Denver, right,
and as they're driving back to l A, everyone's still
calling him Izzy. They're in the car and she there's
not a lot of details here. She convinces him to
start going by Elliott. That's all we've really found. But
(20:40):
she made him change his name. Why she once she
had the ring on it. She was like, dude, I
don't like Izzy. We're going by Elliott. And he was like, yes, ma'am, okay,
whatever you say, dear. You know, she was like, I
want the one with the garage. He was like, yes, dear,
whatever you say. But it just goes to prove just
how important she really is. To the story. I mean,
(21:02):
Elliott's name is in the company the l of Mattel,
but really Ruth kind of she was, she was in charge, right,
So essentially at this point in their story, they aren't
making toys. They're making household items essentially out of new materials.
He is the tinkerer, the inventor, the artist, the creative,
and she is the sales She is the business she
(21:26):
is she is essentially the money side. There are a
lot of other partnerships in modern history that we could
compare that too, but this was We'll get into some
of those comparisons right after this. So we are making
our way through this love stories slash business partnership slash
(21:50):
marriage of Ruth and Elliott Handler, and they're making their
way towards toys and towards Mattel. But I was saying
right before we took a break that Elliott was the creative.
He was not the businessman, at least not at that point.
He was the guy who was making the beautiful lamps
(22:11):
out of loose sight and the picture frames and um
the creative, kitchy new items. And Ruth was the one
who was going door to door selling, not door to
door in the neighborhoods, but like to other businesses knocking
on doors trying to get orders, she was the saleswoman
um And so I thought that was so noteworthy for
the time. And I think it really is interesting looking
(22:33):
back on a lot of our photography episodes where we're
talking about women and their influence on businesses, before women
were really allowed to be influencers, does that makes sense?
Before women were executives or ceo s um or presidents
or really any of that, they were the wives in
many cases of these men, and they were half of
(22:55):
the business. Without them, the businesses wouldn't have existed. And
I was saying before the break that it reminds me
of some of the modern partnerships that we have heard about.
So in particular, it made me think about Steve Jobs
and Steve Wozniak, not that they were married and romantically involved,
but Steve Wozniak was the brains behind Apple. He was
(23:17):
the creator, the inventor of the brains. Steve Jobs, not
that he wasn't brilliant, but he was the salesman. He
was He wasn't the tinkerer. He was the salesman and
he knew what it should look like, and how to
package it and how to sell it. Inarguably, Steve Jobs
was the far more famous of the two, which means
if you look at the Ruth and Elliott partnership, really
(23:39):
Ruth should be the more famous one of the two
because she was the one who was making sure people
got the products. Yeah, for the for the the clients
they sold their stuff too. She was the face of
the company. She was and so but just times were different.
So I just thought that was really interesting. Um. I mean,
I'm glad that it all turned out the way it did.
(24:00):
And and by the way, the reason that she was
able to do all of the what she was able
to do, and the same thing with a lot of
these other women we discussed is because their husbands respected
them and their husbands, I hate to say it this way,
but allowed it. Yeah. I mean, as bad as it sounds,
you're right, they were kind of ahead of their time
and going, well, my wife is smart, she's capable, she
can handle the business side. Yeah. And I mean, look,
(24:22):
this is before women could have a bank account without
their husband's signing for it, right, Um, And I don't
remember exactly what years women weren't allowed to own property
and all these other things. So the husband's really had
to allow this um And so in any case, I
just thought it was worth noting that she was really
instrumental in what they were doing at the time, and
honestly throughout the entire life of the company, very very instrumental.
(24:45):
So in any case, here we are UM, They're they've
got this business going. It's the late nineteen thirties, we're
moving into the nineteen forties. And in ninety one, um
As Elliott gets into designing now some costume jewelry pieces,
and some of them are becoming really popular. They form
a new partnership. They go to a well known Los
(25:07):
Angeles jeweler by the name of Zachary Zembie, who they
met after he literally just came into their shop and
saw one of these designs that Elliott had made, which
was called Handler's Hands. It was a pin that was
in the shape of a hand. It held a little
vase and you could put a flower in it, and
it became really well known. Anyway, Zachary Zambie and Elliott
(25:29):
form a partnership called El Zach. Basically they took their
two names Elliott and Zachary. El Zack and they started
a company that same year. Ruth kind of steps away
from the business a little bit because she had a baby. Yeah,
a little baby girl, Barbara. Wink wink, nudge, nudge. Keep
that one in the back pocket, but there you go.
(25:51):
Barbara was born that year. So el Zac, this new company,
actually is you know, starting to become a real player
in the business world making jewelry. And they're doing well.
They've they're in Hollywood right there in l A So
they get Hollywood starlets to wear their jewelry. By ninety three,
(26:11):
l Zac is a national brand, so they're doing well. Yeah,
And referral back to another of the companies we've covered before,
and we talked about them before Sears. They're highlighted in
the Sears catalog. That's how national and big this el
Zac is. Most people have never heard of it, Yeah,
but it was huge. Yeah. By nineteen forty three, they're
doing large scale production of their pieces, of their el
(26:33):
Zack jewelry pieces. Elliott again being the creative, he's focused
on coming up with new designs and they bring in
a guy named Matt Mattson to oversee manufacturing operations. Matt M. A. T. T. Mattson,
put that one in your back pocket to uh, they're
moving along. And of course now we're starting to get
(26:55):
into wartime in the world, right, because now it's nineteen
forty three, nineteen forty four are and the company is
doing well, but it is coming into wartime. Things are
changing um in the world, and things are changing at
their company, yes they are. Things are definitely changing in fact,
because like we said, el Zack's huge at this point,
national brand, and because of that you need some more capital.
(27:17):
So Zachary, the zach part of el Zack, brings in
some more investors into the company. But unfortunately, with more
investors means more voices and more opinions. Things start getting
kind of hectic, to the point where Matt Mattson quits
straight up up and leaves el Zack. And when he
leaves el Zack, mind you, Ruth still at home with
(27:38):
her babies at this point too, because the Barbara's younger
brother Ken is now born at this point I'm sorry
what Barbara's younger brother, Kim was born at this point
another name to put in your back packet, right, And
so this kind of reawakens the business in Ruth. She's
been on the backs in the back seat for a
couple of years, and she cracks her knuckles and says
(27:59):
it's time to get back to work, not leaving sparks
that Yeah Ruthie wants back in. Yeah. Absolutely. So it's
nineteen forty four and uh, Ruth convinces Elliott that they
should go visit Matt. Uh. So they do. They go
out to see Matt and he is working in his garage.
It's got tons of equipment, uh and all of that.
(28:21):
And Elliott decides to allow Matt to use some of
his designs that he had made for picture frames. And
Ruth says, yeah, let's do that. Matt. You make the
picture frames and I'll sell them. Because meanwhile, you remember,
Elliott is still tied to el Zack. He can't just
go running off if he's doing jewelry. He's doing jewelry.
So they make these picture frames. They start doing well
(28:42):
with the picture frames. There's some material changes they have
to make because of the war. They can't use blue sight,
they can't use the high quality woods, so they find
a really inexpensive way to make good looking picture frames.
And again, because materials are so hard to find, the
customers are excited to have them, you know, the stores
that want to sell picture frames, and so they are
to be successful, and they get their first three thousand
(29:03):
dollar order in for this new venture that at this
point doesn't have a name. Correct, it's just Ruth and
Matt kind of making things happen while Elliot's working over
at el Zac and supporting them emotionally, right exactly. But
that soon also comes stumbling down the Elliott part of
(29:23):
el Zack because he too starts to get frustrated with
the investors. He too gets sick and tired of it
and says, you know what, I'm ready to branch out
into new stuff. So when the partners that he didn't
agree with offered to buy out Elliot's share of el
Zack for what was really crummy at the time, only
ten grand, he and Ruth said, you know what, this
(29:45):
is our opportunity to get into something we want to
do again. They took the money and ran. They took
that ten thousand dollars and went to go sit down
with Matt, which was kind of brilliant because it turns
out el Zack was in bankruptcy within I think the
next year, yeah, like eighteen forty eight, el Zac ceases
to exist a couple of years. Yeah, so they made
a smart move to take their ten k and get
(30:06):
the heck out of there. So yeah, so they go
back to matt and, in their very creative way of
naming companies, just the way they did el Zack, they
took once again the two first names matt and Elliott
and combined them together matt El, Mattel and Mattel is born. Yes. Yeah,
so this is now nineteen four as they are starting
(30:31):
to kick off Mattel. But remember they're making picture frames, yeah,
which is not what they do, right, So how did
they get into toys? Well, that all happens because Elliott,
being the inventor, creative type, realizes that while they're making
these picture frames once again as we talked about in
the garage workshop, and since there's a bunch of scrap
stuff just kind of laying everywhere, and he decides, listen,
(30:54):
this is our business, we're running it. We need to
do something with this other than just throw it in
the trash. So he starts using the scraps to make
dollhouse furniture, what like little chairs and tables for dollhouses,
which is popular in the forties. But lo and behold
that takes off. They're making way more money in just
a year or two on the dollhouse furniture than they
(31:14):
are the picture frame business. And what's crazy is it
seemed like everything was going well, but for whatever reason,
Matt Matson decided to sell out that same year. Um
he moved on, and really we don't know much else
about him after that. Um, so the Matt in Mittel
kind of ceased to be in the story after the
first year. Yeah, and trust me, I did a lot
(31:36):
of digging. You really can't find anything else about him
after he leaves Mattel he lived a very quiet life
and that was it. Yeah. I wonder if he had
any regrets. In our very first episode, I think it
was we talked about Sears and Roebuck and how Roebuck
kind of bowed out, and I wonder if and Roebuck
never had any regrets because Sears, as it turned out,
(31:57):
died young. So Roebuck was like, yeah, I'm good, he
lived a long life. I wonder if Matt Matson ever
had any regrets, because, as we know, Mattel quite successful. Now.
In any case, I think the whole move into dollhouse
furniture gave them the idea to do toys in general,
and so in seven they branch out to their next toy,
(32:20):
and it is the you could Doodle, which did do
you know what a yukua doodle is? Well, it's kind
of in the name, right, you a doodle. It's a
ukule but it's a ukulele and a music box all
in one. This was apparently wildly popular back in the forties.
So you could play your little ukulele as a kid
and if you realize, you know your parents got tired
(32:41):
of the they're awful stringing. You could spin the little
knob on the side and it was a music box.
Totally creative first time. So was that a good thing
for the parents or was this like the first toy
that really annoyed parents? That's the question, probably both. So
can we blame annoying noisemaking toys on Ruth and lat?
I mean, okay, well, we have to find We usually
(33:02):
try to find one bad thing about each story. This
will be the bad thing. The loud beeping noises from
the toys, the random stuff that goes beep boop at
two am in the night. That's because of Mattel. That's
all they found, all right. In any case, the you
Can Doodle comes along in Mattel incorporates with their headquarters
in l a By, and then they start making toy
(33:25):
after hit toy after hit toy. So we'll get into
some of those toys, how they came to be, uh,
and how they moved the company along right after this.
So it's the late forties, early fifties, Mattel's incorporated, and
(33:46):
they're making some toys. There's not a lot of um,
you know, historical evidence left of what all toys they
had in those years. I'm sure some Mattel aficionado somewhere knows, um.
But what we could really find is just that they
were making toys. Between nine and sales were going well.
(34:07):
By five sales were up to five million, which is
not bad. And then uh, they introduced their next hit.
Of course, first we had the you Could Doodle, yes, uh,
and there and I'm sure they sold many of those,
but probably some other toys as well, as we said,
But their next big hit was the burp gun. Yeah,
(34:27):
that makes me think of indigestion, but that's not what
it was. It wasn't a prank toy No, it was
actually like a toy gun called a burp gun, and
it was super super popular. But of note, a burp
gun is actually two things. One the toy gun made
by Mattel and to a nickname for the pps H
forty one. Is that how you say that a Soviet
(34:48):
submachine gun that made a unique noise. I guess that
sounded like a burb while it was firings World War
two was a submachine gun and it yet it sounds
very peculiar to say the least. Yeah, very burp uh.
In any case, the toy gun version, the fully automatic
cap gun as it were, was quite popular. And also
in that same year, another brilliant move by Mattel, they
(35:13):
partner with another famous company, another famous company known as Disney,
The Mickey mouse Club. The Mickey mouse Club. Yes remember
the theme song? Yeah, I actually haven't right here. I
(35:41):
loved that show growing up. Total side note. In preparation
for this episode, we were googling around a little bit
and if you just need something to kill some time later,
google Ryan Gosslang justin Timberlake, Mickey mouse Club and watch
some of the videos. Crazy Crazy, So Tiny, not actually
part of our episode so we didn't think it made
sense to bring it in here. But worth a Google
(36:03):
for sure. Uh. In any case, a brilliant move by
Mattel to your partner with the very popular, brand new
Mickey Mouse Club by Disney, and again like sort of
one of the early you know, brand partnerships like that.
I mean they were advertising. You know, commercials existed, so
they weren't the first to do commercials, but partnering with
a company like that, there they are a toy company
(36:25):
engaging with you know, a kids show like that that
was super popular. Smart So all was going well. And
as we alluded, this is the era when famous toys
start coming out of Mattel on the regular. It's nine
nine when Mattel introduces the Barbie doll, Boby, Beautiful Bobby.
(36:49):
I'll make believe that Motel and a lot of little
girls did, in fact pretend they were Barbie. Barbie eventually
became the best selling toy ever ever. Uh. Interesting to
note that the original Barbie was inspired by a German
(37:10):
doll called the Build Lily Doll, which Ruth purchased for
her own daughter, Barbara A. K. Barbie in ninety six,
and the Bill Lily doll wasn't originally designed for kids.
It was designed for adults. Weird, um. But it was
based on a comic strip strip about a provocative woman
and it just like German kids got ahold of it
(37:31):
even though it wasn't really meant for them, and were
dressing her up and playing with her or whatever, and
so Ruth thought this would be a great idea. There's
another whole side story about Ruth and the invention of
Barbie is just that, Um, her daughter was playing with
paper dolls and dressing them up, and you know, she
watched how frustrating that was because the clothes wouldn't stay
(37:52):
on the paper dolls. Um. And she had this whole
back and forth with Elliott about whether or not a
womanly shaped doll was appropriate, right. That was That's the
interesting part is that was the big argument at first
was not what it sell? Could we make it? It
was is it appropriate? Right? And she was all for
it because she knew that the girls were sort of
(38:12):
playing grown up in a sense, um. But Elliott wasn't
so sure. So it wasn't until she brought this German
version of what she wanted to do home that he
agreed and they moved forward, and I will say though
he he was even still a little spectical, skeptical about
it being able to sell until they took it to
one of those like toy convention show things and apparently
(38:33):
they sold all of them. They had billions of orders
or whatever. And he went, okay, all right, Ruth, you
were right, and she said, yes, I know, yeah, I'm
always right. Any other questions, uh? In one Barbie finally
gets her boyfriend, the Ken dog. Ken also named after
their son, which is a little weird, but okay, sure.
(38:57):
I mean, for most of America there is no thought
of the after the names were from a brother and sister, right,
of course not. It's in a neat way for them
to have their kids namesake kind of forever forever and um.
And the fact that they were brother and sister, and
that most people who play with those alls have them
make out with each other. Neither here nor They're totally fine,
whatever you want to do, it's all good. Okay, We're
(39:19):
gonna stop that line of discussion right now. The next
big blackbuster toy for Mitchel came out in nine and
that was They're at car You've ever seen? And because
(39:39):
of that, Nick Bean has changed. I mean, if there
weren't hot wheels, you'd be a different man. I would
not be the same person I am today. I was
the cool kid with the I told it at the
beginning of the show. I was a cool kid with
the tire thing with all the hot wheels cars in it.
It was great. I think everybody, boys and girls alike
played with hot wheels. Everyone like hot wheels were and
(40:00):
the track especially I like, Yeah, the Tractic school, all right,
So that takes us up to the early nineteen seventies
and nineteen seventy one. Mattel made another interesting decision. It
wasn't a partnership so much as a purchase, but along
the same lines of partnering with Disney, they purchased I
don't think people know this, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum
and Bailey's Circus. Yeah, they owned the circus for a while,
(40:23):
which I guess thinking about it, kind of makes sense, right.
The circus is fun and whimsical and kid friendly, and
Mattel wants to be all about that. But yeah, I
never knew they owned them. Well, the Feld family, who
started the circus um stayed involved even though Mattel bought them.
They left the family in charge, and I think most
people who know anything about the history of Barnam and
Bailey just have heard about the Feld family and that's
(40:45):
kind of it. Um. But also in the early nineteen
seventies we kind of get to a little bit of
the darker side of the story and and almost like
not the end because of course, as we know Mattel
as we started the episode by saying, it's going strong
to this day, but sort of the beginning of the
end for the original founding family. And so I think
(41:05):
even though we're sort of at nineteen seventy one, we
have to backtrack a year because in nineteen seventy Ruth
Handler was diagnosed with breast cancer and she had a
modified radical mossectomy, which was the most common treatment at
the time, and um, that sort of put her a
little bit out of commission from a work perspective, and
so they brought in a and they had listened. By
(41:26):
this point, it's a huge company. They've got a whole
executive team and all of that. Well, one of the
guys on the executive team was Seymour Rosenberg. He was
the executive vice president at the time, and in nineteen
seventy one, and really through nineteen seventy three, Mattel was
issuing false and misleading financial statements. Yeah, it all sort
(41:49):
of came to a head in nineteen seventy three when
the company reported a thirty two million dollar loss, just
three weeks after stockholder has been had been assured that
the company was in good shape. Yeah, not good. Yeah,
so the stock plummets. That causes the SEC to investigate,
and it's not good. And like I said, it's sort
of unclear at this point how much Ruth was involved
(42:10):
in the day to day. Also interesting that Elliott's name
isn't really anywhere on this drama, so he must have
sort of stayed on the creative side. Uh. And she
was more money and operations definitely, And so uh do
we blame it all on on Rosenberg? Um? I mean
the SEC didn't know. Ultimately, I think it was five
(42:32):
years later when they finally the SEC brought charges and
Ruth Handler and Seymour Rosenberg were charged with a bunch
of different indictments. They were fined fifty seven thousand dollars
each and they both got forty one year prison sentences.
But don't worry Ruth didn't go to jail. Uh. Those
sentences were suspended on the condition that they each do
(42:55):
five hours of community service essentially each year for five
years years total, very good total night years. It's just
still a very good trade off for both of them
though jail. It would have been the rest of their
lives in jail. And that's pretty much your right. That's
kind of where the handlers get kicked out in a
(43:15):
sense of Mattel because shortly after they sell off the
last of what they own in the company. I think,
so the timeline is all this goes down in seventy three.
By seventy four they're kicked out of the company. Elliott
and Ruth are kicked out of the company. Um, the
indictments come down I think in seventy eight, and in reason,
(43:35):
Elliott just cash out all of their matel stock and
they're done. A side note on this is, you know,
Ruth was a powerhouse and after going through breast cancer herself,
she started a whole other company making prosthetics for breast
cancer survivors who had gone through mass ectomies, companies called
Nearly Me and it still exists to this day. Yeah,
it's very very cool, very cool that she got involved
(43:58):
in something like that. Yeah. So in any case, that
was sort of the downfall of the Handlers as it
related to Mattel. Um, it's really unclear whose fault it
really was. Ruth does say, um, you know, and when
interviewed about this, I act like she's still around. She's
she's gone now. But when she was interviewed about this
after the fact, she said it was the breast cancer.
(44:19):
She wasn't paying attention, she wasn't really around, and it
sort of happened by accident. From her perspective, she was
very I think she said, quote unfocused on the business
while she was dealing with that. So right, which is understandable.
So maybe it's all this guy Rosenberg. Maybe not. We'll
never really know because we weren't there. But at the
end of the day, that was sort of the end
of the family involvement. Um. In any case, three things
(44:43):
were not looking good from Mattel. They were on the
verge of bankruptcy. They had a million dollar loss after
they tried to get into video games. Yeah. We talked
about this in our Atari episode, didn't we The nineteen
eight three gaming bust where everybody just lost tons of money.
But hell was wrapped up in the they sure where
they were part of that crash of the video games industry.
(45:05):
Uh yeah, and so it hurt them pretty badly, so
much so that they almost you know, didn't survive. It's
a pretty bad series of events within a decade, pretty bad.
Ultimately seven they get a new chairman and he starts
really cutting into the finances, making sure that they can survive.
He does that though by closing a lot of plants,
(45:26):
cutting salaries, curbing marketing, and they try to sort of
tighten the belt, if you will, and come back. They
figure out a way to do it, and that is
by recollaborating, if you will. Is that a new word?
Collaborating with Disney? Um. And think about all of what
Disney was doing in the eighties and nineties, um, with
all the new movies and all the toys that came
(45:49):
from each of those movies. Um. They go on to
then make deals with a whole bunch of other companies, Yeah,
like Hannah, Barbera and Turner. So all those cartoons, you know,
flint Stones and all that stuff. They got a whole
bunch of toys, um from all of like Tom and
Jerry I think was another one too, so that that
really helps revive the brand and bring them from the
doldrums of here bankruptcy that they were in for quite
(46:12):
a little while. Yeah, and basically brought them back to
reasonable shape and from there, essentially from the early nineties
through today, the Mattel Company has continued to sort of
um cement its place in history. They you know, Barbies
were hugely hot again in the nineties and um and
(46:33):
they still are, but they really had they flourished again
in the nineties. I think it was the thirtieth anniversary
of Barbie her birthday, her thirtieth birthday, she was on
the cover of the Smithsonian magazine. Um. They've created all
kinds of famous Barbies that were after famous people, and
you know, special editions and collections and collectible versions, and
(46:53):
there are conferences and as we said at the beginning
of the episode, movies and all kinds of Some of
the research I did said that their collection of Barbies
alone and collections of hot wheels alone, but just the
Mattel toys that are worth over a million dollars of
people who have all that collected together, So it's it's
a cultural icon. For sure. Right, there have been single
Barbie dolls that have sold at auction for thousands of
(47:16):
dollars and yeah, so um, they're iconic for sure. But
just to be a hundred percent sure that they stay iconic,
they bought up basically every other toy company you've ever
heard of. They've got Tycho toys that belongs to them.
They've got the Pleasant Company, you know, the ones that
make the American girl dolls. Oh yeah, that's Mattel now
to yep uh. And then they had the Learning Company,
(47:37):
which was famous but also a big part of their
video game debaccle. Yeah. And then in that same kind
of span in the nineties when they bought all those up,
that's when I think they probably made one of their
biggest acquisitions ever in the history of the company. They
got Fisher Price. Yeah. Wow, that is a huge chunk
of their business to this day, because I mean, didn't
we all kind of play with Fisher Price stuff as
(47:59):
a kid and they were like approved happy toys, like
those are the ones like my mom would buy me. Yeah,
that's the stuff that you see the one year olds
bombing on with their gums all the way up to
five year old Still playing the xylophones in the room, right,
it's it's just their classic classic toys, and yeah, it's
really interest. I didn't know that Mattel was Fisher Price.
That's part of one of the most fascinating parts of
this episode is that they're that ingrained in so much
(48:21):
of our lives, all the way from our youngest age too. Now.
I mean, I'll be honest with you, Dana, I didn't
realize this till just the other day while we were researching.
I actually still have some of my old hot wheels
from when I was a kid. Okay, that's adorable. So
there's still a part of my life. I think, I
when I when my daughter was little. I do not
have my original Barbies, though I did have the Barbie
Camper back in the day. But my daughter had Barbies
(48:43):
and I would buy an extra one in the box
and not like I'd play with one and I'd keep
playing the box and I finally, I think I got
rid of them, like I sold them all finally after
I moved for like ten the tenth time or whatever. Um.
But yeah, I mean they are part of of history
for sure, and not going away. Like we started the
episode by saying, look, this is a hugely successful company
(49:04):
to this day, and they are still innovating. They are
adding digital, you know, aspects to what they're doing with
the toys. They now have a line of gender neutral dolls,
and they've got a you know, real life action Barbie
movie coming out with one of the biggest stars of
all time. So yeah, I think when it comes down
to it, this is the kind of company that even
(49:27):
if it were to start to seriously fall apart, someone
somewhere is not gonna let it die, right. I agree
with that. I think this is a company that is
more than just a company. Yes, it's a company. Yes
there are shareholders, Yes people care about that, but it's
a beloved toy company. And who didn't play with one
of those brands of toys. Somebody, you know, everybody played
(49:50):
with one of those toys somewhere along the way. Yeah,
and so I agree with you. I think it's a
company that's going to go on and on and on.
So we do like to make predictions sometimes as we
wrap the episode and I say to tell is here
to stay on that note. We are done for the
episode and for the season. I hope you enjoyed season
one of Photiography. If you missed any of the episodes,
be sure to check them out and we'll see you
(50:11):
back here for season two. Photography is a production of
I Heart Radio and dB Media. I'm your host Dana Barrett.
My co host is Nick Bean, our producer is Tory Harrison,
and our executive producer is Jonathan Strickland. Have questions I
want to give us feedback or have a company you'd
like us to cover. Email us at info at Phisiography
(50:32):
dot Show, or contact us on social. I'm at d
Danta Barrett on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or just search
for me on LinkedIn. Thanks for your support.
I think it's safe to say that almost every American
and many people across the globe have some kind of warm,
fuzzy memory tied to a toy or a game or
a doll made by Mattel or one of their famous subsidiaries.
But is digital taking the place of old fashioned toys?
And is Mattel keeping up or on the way out?
(00:27):
This is Physiography, the show where we dive into the
strange but true stories of iconic companies. Whether they're a
current bright star, in the midst of a massive dumpster fire,
or settling into the dust heap of history, they all
have a past worth knowing. I'm Dana Barrett. I'm a
former Barbie owner, a tech executive, entrepreneur, and a TV
and radio host. And over the course of my career,
(00:49):
I've had I think to Barbie dolls, and I've interviewed
thousands of business leaders and reported on the bright beginnings
and massive flame outs of the brands we know and love.
Some of their stories are inspiring, summer full of highs
and lows, and some just make you go ah. Phisiography
is a production of I Heart Radio and dB Media,
and its co hosted as always by my producer and
(01:11):
Hot Wheels guy Nick mean, yeah, hot Wheels. I had
the fancy wheel right that you could store them all in.
I had dozens of hot Wheel cars. And I think
I think everybody has something they remember playing within the
floor of the living room or something that Mattel mate Yeah,
And I think even kids sort of knew the Matel
(01:32):
name because the logo was on things and you sort
of knew. And um, they did also have a lot
of famous subsidiaries, which we are going to get to. They,
you know, like a lot of the companies we've talked
about on this season of photography, they ultimately ended up
sort of buying up some other very well known brands
and intersecting with some well known brands across the years.
So we're gonna get to all of that. But I
(01:53):
think the question, um for this episode is, you know,
our toys are traditional toys kind of at the end
of their usefulness. Is it all going to be digital
and video games? Are people you know, sort of sick
of the old fashioned toys And is Mattel going to
(02:14):
die out because of that if it's even true, or
are they keeping up? And that's a really good point
you make because we all go into the department store
of your choice or or general store of your choice,
and the toy ai'll is very different now than it
was even ten years ago. They've got the big digital
section with like the kids tablets and stuff. It's interesting. Yeah, um,
(02:36):
I think, you know, this is just from my own
sort of anecdotal evidence, but it seems to me that
there are plenty of you know, real life, you know,
plastic toys and games that are still being played. I
was at an event this past weekend, UM where you know,
people were sitting outside on the lawn and there were
multiple kids running around with Barbie dolls. So I feel
(02:58):
like from that first active First of all, I think
the parents have some nostalgia so they bring their kids
to the same toys they had, um. But I also
think the kids are still enjoying those kinds of toys,
So I don't actually think toys are over in that way.
Toys are us maybe over, but toys themselves I think
are going to be around for a while. Right. There's
something about that physical playtime that you just can't replace
(03:19):
with the device. That's right. But I also think to
your point about the toy aisle, there are a lot
of now sort of connections between the physical toys and
some kind of digital something, Right, So whether it's an
app that you can do something with, or some buttons
on the toys that deep and whatever, right to annoy parents, right,
But I mean I think a lot more of the
(03:41):
toys have some crossover into the digital world. There's a
game also that you can play on the device, you know,
on a tablet that goes with the toy, score keeping,
social media NG I mean, there's a lot of that too.
I think there's a ton of integration. And as a
as a person who has kids in the house, it
is kind of interesting to see some of the same
kind of toys I played with as a kid that
(04:03):
now my four year old plays with and then he
takes his tablet and scans the code on the bottom
of his toy and it goes into his app. It's
it's fascinating to me. Yeah, yeah, right, So I think
there's a crossover. And so the question of whether or
not Mattel is going to stay relevant. I mean, I
think we can just sort of look at some of
their numbers. I mean, first of all, who knew that
(04:26):
Barbie had a YouTube channel? Barbie's YouTube channel has seven
point five million subscribers. Wow, that's a lot. Yeah, how
does hot Whales? Comes the competition here? A Barbie girl? So,
how does hot Whales compare? Hot Wheels is not quite
as hot as the Barbie YouTube channel, but it still
has over two million subscribers to the channel. Yeah, and
(04:47):
even just the company's channel, the Mattel channel. Yeah, that's
not bad. That's not bad at all. Yeah. Wait wait, wait, Danna,
did you just call yourself a Barbie girl? Yeah? I
think I did. Wasn't there a song about that? But
(05:09):
we digress as usual. Barbie also has a Twitter handle.
She does. I don't think hers is quite as popular
as let's say, you know, the presidents as an example,
but she has two hundred and seventy thousand followers on Twitter. Yeah.
And Hot Wheels again lower, but it's about that's not
(05:29):
too bad for a right, I mean, and in fairness
to the Hot Wheels in this scenario, like it's a car. Yeah, valid,
Barbie at least is like sort of a humanoid, right. Um. Also,
you know, Barbie has really tried to stay up with
I'm talking about Barbie like she's a person. But the
company has really tried to keep Barbie up to date
in terms of the jobs that they give her. The
(05:51):
you know, the clothes um and the and the styles
and all of that. They've tried different things to make
her multicultural and all of that. In fact, this year
they announced the newest Barbie and she is a judge,
which is super cool. Right, But I wanted to interject
for just half a second, Like you just said, you're
talking about Barbie like she's a real person. That's part
(06:12):
of what I think Mattel has done that's made them
that successful, right, is the personalization of toys. It's my car.
It's a hot wheels, little metal toy that was what
nine cents at the store, But it's my car. It's
that it's that attachment that it's able to build for
some reason. So that's why with the judge, how many
how many young girls now have seen Ruth bader Ginsburg
(06:33):
even as little bitty girls, and now they see they
can have their own Ruth bader Ginsburg and it doesn't
have to be her, it can be me. Yeah in
that judge. That's really cool. Yeah, exactly. And I think also,
you know, they've to your point. I think humanize the
toy because first of all, we do say, like we
call Barbie Barbie by her name, like we don't call
we don't say my doll Barbie, like we just say
(06:55):
my Barbie. Yeah, I don't. I don't think I've ever said,
go you with Nieces, where's your Barbie doll? It's Barbie? Right.
And then on top of all of that, um, they've
made tons and tons of movies cartoons essentially with Barbie
um in them. And then they're really staying current now
because also in nineteen this year Mattel not really Barbie
(07:19):
so much, but another doll line. They're actually releasing their
first ever line of gender neutral dolls. Really, so that
is really staying modern. Yeah, definitely keeping with the times. Yeah,
it's a collection called Creatable World, and you can sort
of dress these dolls however you want and they can
be whatever gender you want them to be. Yeah, very cool.
And speaking of the digital movies, there is actually a
(07:42):
live action Barbie movie in the works, a live like
real because I know that most of the Barbie movies
have been like you know, the digital animated stuff, live action,
real people moving. Yeah, it made me think about one
a few years back with Tyra Banks. But what that
one wasn't I thought it was Barbie, but I researched it,
and I guess Mattel never approved of it, So that
one was like Barbie esque. That wasn't actually Barbie, but
(08:02):
Tyra Banks played a Barbie like doll. She was an
Eva doll. But there's a real Mattel's sanctioned live action
Barbie movie that is going to start may have already
started filming. There's not a lot of detail out about
it already, but it's supposed to come out in Wait
for it, starring Margot Robbie. That's probably a really good choice.
She's one of the biggest stars out there right now,
(08:26):
and she does look a lot like a Barbie. Yea
valid point, so totally perfect. I have to say, though,
if you're somebody who's been listening to our show because
you love business and you don't really care that much
about toys, that Mattel is the number one global toy
company today, so I'm not worried about them. They had
(08:46):
over five billion in total sales worldwide. Five billion. Yeah.
I think we just debunked our argument earlier of the
digital toys taking over. I don't five billions and that's
just the in company Mattel, right, Well, it's the parent company,
right and they, like we said, they own a lot
of subsidiaries now and that includes all of their subsidiaries
(09:07):
and that's a worldwide number. But still it's a lot.
I think they're Okay, I'm not super worried. You know,
it's not a super high dollar stock, um, But I
also think it's probably Listen, do not take financial advice
from me, But I would just say I think to
some extent, it's probably one of those stocks that you
could buy and hold um and not really worry about
it going away. Yeah, it's not like the kind of
(09:29):
you know, if you invest in you know, impossible burghers
or something, you never know what's going to happen trend
wise next year. But I think you with a company
like Mattel, you know, or a Coca Cola companies like that,
you sort of know they're kind of they're here. It's
definitely not a fat does not appear to be a fat.
Now it's been around a while, but listen, it is
a company that's been around a while. It started really
(09:49):
in the forties and fifties and nineties, and fifties. And
the story really starts, though, with a love story. So
we're gonna get to that right after this. Who doesn't
love a good love story, I mean, especially when it
has to do with the start of a toy company.
(10:09):
It feels like very Mr. And Mrs claws to me, Oh,
I didn't think about that. Good point. You know, they
were the first, you know, toymakers who had a company
that you know, global, yes, and really had the best
supply chain of all times, you know, if we're if
we're being honest, um, But look, I mean, the story
(10:29):
of Mattel really does start with a love story. It
was the story of the relationship and eventual marriage of
Ruth Moscow and Isaac Elliott Handler, who in his younger
years was known as Izzy, which was short for Isaac.
They were both they were the same age. I think
when I was doing the research, it looked like they
were both born in nineteen sixteen. Ruth was born to
(10:51):
older Jewish immigrant parents in Denver, Colorado. She was actually
raised by an older sister and her sister's husband who
were pretty successful and so they lived in a pretty
good part of town in in the Denver area. And
again that same year, nineteen sixteen. Elliott is born in
Denver also, but his parents aren't quite as successful as
(11:14):
Ruth's older sister, and so they live in kind of
like the bad Boy neighborhood, like the Rougher neighborhood is
kind of West side story is you saw where I
was going with that and it and so the story
starts really in the nineteen thirties when now they're teenagers.
So ninety two, age sixteen, Uh, Ruth gets her first
car and she's because you know, they were she was
(11:35):
in a good family. They could afford that. So she
had this convertible and she's driving down the street in
Denver and she catches sight of this good looking bad boy,
you know, and gets a crush and turns out that that,
of course that bad boy was Izzy Elliott Handler, but
he also apparently had seen a picture of her at
a friend's house coincidentally and had a crush on her.
(11:58):
That's so crazy. So they ended up meeting shortly after that,
I think at a school dance. And remember he didn't
have money, and so the way those dances were set up.
I love this story, by the way, the way I
just love a love story. The way the dances were
at the time, you had to pay a nickel for
each dance. It was must have been a fundraiser for
something or whatever, and he had a nickel. So he
(12:20):
took his single nickel and he asked Ruth to dance,
and he was like enamored right from the start. He's like,
this is the girl for me. In fact, apparently he
said this is the girl for me just from seeing
her picture. That's how destined these two were. And so
then he had to go back to all his friends
and borrow nickels so he could keep dancing with her.
You know, that's that's a lot better than trying to
get the quarters from your buddies at the arcade for
(12:41):
the for the next game, Right, okay, you go, okay,
co get the girl the better cause yeah, yeah, absolutely,
So essentially, you know, he's the bad boy from the
bad you know, he's not that bad of a bad boy,
but you know, he comes across as a bad boy.
He's not a bad person, he's not in crime, but
he's you know, he's got that what the rebel. Yeah
a little bit, we're making this up a little bit now,
(13:03):
but I just picture him with like the leather jacket.
What I mean, like the James Dean sort of like
you know, apparently he had a sick head of black
pearls that really made Ruth just smelt you know. Um.
In any case, they were, you know, at the end
of their high school years and were sixteen years old,
did another year or two of high school and Ruth,
(13:23):
you know, for the time. I mean, this is the
mid nineteen thirties and this is pre World War Two. Um,
women you know worked. It's not like women didn't work
at all, but they you know, it wasn't it wasn't mandatory. Certainly,
it really just depended on the family and you know,
the amount of money you had or needed or whatever.
But she always wanted to work. This was part of
who she was. And the two of them really were
(13:45):
pretty bold because Ruth actually went on a vacation with
a friend in nineteen thirty five to l A. And
she ended up getting a job out there, Um, in
l A at Paramount Studios. What who was on fake
Aitian and gets a job? Yeah, she was hired on
the spot to work in the steno pool at Paramount Studios.
(14:07):
Do you even know what that is? I have no idea.
I mean, I don't even really remember the details anymore
of what the Steno graphic pool is stanopool, but basically
it's admin work. Okay, Yeah, so um, we will we
will have to google that. We'll leave everybody with some googling,
perhaps in this episode, but in any case, Um, they
were dating by this point Izzy and Um and Ruth
(14:29):
and so um he followed her out there. Wow, so
she got a job and he's like, all right, pack
it up, leaving Denver, moving out to Big l A. Yeah.
And by the way, at this point, neither one of
them had dreams of being toymakers. It wasn't like they
were like, you know what, we're going to start a business.
We're gonna be Mr and Mrs Claus and we're gonna
make toys like that. That was not in the plan.
(14:49):
In fact, is he was Um an artist and he
really wanted to go to art school. That was his dream. Yeah. Yeah.
And Ruth I think just always sort of knew she
wanted to do something um with herself as a career.
She didn't just want to be a wife. She wanted
to work. It was part of who she was. UM.
But in any case, ultimately they sort of found themselves
(15:10):
in business, like many of the entrepreneurs we've discussed this season,
almost a little bit by accident. Yeah, they kind of
stumbled into the opportunity. Yeah, like they had moxie for sure, right,
Like they were, you know, trying to do some make
money and support themselves on the side and um, but
they weren't like, Okay, we're going to start a company
(15:30):
and here's how we're gonna do it. That wasn't the story,
not at all. So the story, in part was had
a lot to do with the fact that they moved
from a shabby place in l A to a slightly
better place, right, yeah, right, exactly. They moved from a
basically the roach motel into a much nicer place that
was slightly more expensive. But the biggest part of the
(15:51):
nicer place they moved into is that the new apartment
had half of a two car garage. So now they
had kind of a non in the house space to use. Yeah.
Now I have to say, I I we brushed over
this because I just I'm assuming everybody understood that they
got married. This was the nineteen thirties. They didn't live together. Um, first,
(16:12):
they lived separately. They had roommates and whatever in l A.
Before they actually moved in together, they got married first,
just to be clear, it was all above board it, yes,
but yeah, they started out after their marriage. Um, I
think they actually went home to Denver to get married,
and then they went back to l A because they
loved it there and Izzie was going to art school
and uh, they just had a dump for a place
(16:35):
first until they found the place with the garage, which,
by the way, they could barely afford it was it
was ten dollars a month more than they had been paying.
Mind you, again, is the nineteen thirties. Ten bucks is
a big deal back then, so it was definitely a
stretch on their budget. But for whatever reason they decided,
we're going to make it happen. Well, you know what
a happy wife, happy life. She saw the place, she
was like, I don't like the bugs in the other place.
(16:56):
I want this one, honey, And he was like, okay, yes,
we're going to make that work. Meanwhile, remember he's still
in school. So this is now around and Elliott is
taking an industrial design class that was focused on designing
consumer items from a new plastic at the time called
loose sight. Yeah, and he sort of put aside his
(17:20):
love of artistry and got fascinated with creating new designs
out of materials like loose sight. And so he started
designing loose sight lamps and picture frames and hand mirrors
and candle labras. And he's doing this in their apartment.
So he's making stuff for them personally to use. So Ruth,
(17:44):
who again always had this kind of business mind, was
super impressed by the quality of what her husband was
doing and she decided that she could sell them. Now
keep in mind, yeah, so they bought some equipment from
another one of our bhisiography companies, Sears Bucks on credit
(18:11):
on credit, spent got two hundred dollars worth of equipment,
and they started to produce these items, these loose sight
items in their half of what was a shared garage
with their neighbors, and they were pretty successful at it.
She went out and decided she could figure out how
(18:31):
to sell these items. That said, their neighbor who shared
the garage was not digging it. Yeah, I gotta say
I would not be a huge fan of my neighbor
having a workshop in our shared space. Yeah, I mean
there were wood shavings and lee site shavings and you know,
dust and schmutz everywhere, and they were not digging it.
(18:53):
But this whole enterprise did not take them long to
get started because they moved there, they start tinkering. Nine
Ruth makes her first sales call and she is I mean,
that's pretty bold. I'm still just impressed with the time
period and the fact that she just went and did this.
She went to a company called Zacho Imports, and UM
(19:14):
showed the designs and Zacho said yes and placed their
first order for five worth of goods and no mind you,
it is nineteen nine bucks. Is a really big order
back in the day, literally to the point to where
when he goes the owner of Zacho goes, okay, I'll
get five dollars. Elliot's like shaking so bad he can't
(19:34):
find a piece of paper in a pin to take
down the order, but finally got his wits about him
and did it, and apparently later when he met up
with his wife there literally jumping up and down, shouting
and celebrating their first sale, which is just yeah, that
love story again, that this partnership between the two is
is is so integral to the whole story. Well, and
(19:56):
I think too, Like everybody who's ever sold anything knows
what that moment feels like. You you sell that first
box of Girl Scout cookies and you're like, who you know?
I think everybody can relate to that. And also I
think it's important to point out we've been using the
name Iszy and Elliott sort of interchangeably, but by this
point he's Elliott. And the reason I want to point
this out is because if you were not clear on
(20:18):
the relationship between Ruth and now Elliott, she was the boss.
She ran the show. So they got married in Denver, right,
and as they're driving back to l A, everyone's still
calling him Izzy. They're in the car and she there's
not a lot of details here. She convinces him to
start going by Elliott. That's all we've really found. But
(20:40):
she made him change his name. Why she once she
had the ring on it. She was like, dude, I
don't like Izzy. We're going by Elliott. And he was like, yes, ma'am, okay,
whatever you say, dear. You know, she was like, I
want the one with the garage. He was like, yes, dear,
whatever you say. But it just goes to prove just
how important she really is. To the story. I mean,
(21:02):
Elliott's name is in the company the l of Mattel,
but really Ruth kind of she was, she was in charge, right,
So essentially at this point in their story, they aren't
making toys. They're making household items essentially out of new materials.
He is the tinkerer, the inventor, the artist, the creative,
and she is the sales She is the business she
(21:26):
is she is essentially the money side. There are a
lot of other partnerships in modern history that we could
compare that too, but this was We'll get into some
of those comparisons right after this. So we are making
our way through this love stories slash business partnership slash
(21:50):
marriage of Ruth and Elliott Handler, and they're making their
way towards toys and towards Mattel. But I was saying
right before we took a break that Elliott was the creative.
He was not the businessman, at least not at that point.
He was the guy who was making the beautiful lamps
(22:11):
out of loose sight and the picture frames and um
the creative, kitchy new items. And Ruth was the one
who was going door to door selling, not door to
door in the neighborhoods, but like to other businesses knocking
on doors trying to get orders, she was the saleswoman
um And so I thought that was so noteworthy for
the time. And I think it really is interesting looking
(22:33):
back on a lot of our photography episodes where we're
talking about women and their influence on businesses, before women
were really allowed to be influencers, does that makes sense?
Before women were executives or ceo s um or presidents
or really any of that, they were the wives in
many cases of these men, and they were half of
(22:55):
the business. Without them, the businesses wouldn't have existed. And
I was saying before the break that it reminds me
of some of the modern partnerships that we have heard about.
So in particular, it made me think about Steve Jobs
and Steve Wozniak, not that they were married and romantically involved,
but Steve Wozniak was the brains behind Apple. He was
(23:17):
the creator, the inventor of the brains. Steve Jobs, not
that he wasn't brilliant, but he was the salesman. He
was He wasn't the tinkerer. He was the salesman and
he knew what it should look like, and how to
package it and how to sell it. Inarguably, Steve Jobs
was the far more famous of the two, which means
if you look at the Ruth and Elliott partnership, really
(23:39):
Ruth should be the more famous one of the two
because she was the one who was making sure people
got the products. Yeah, for the for the the clients
they sold their stuff too. She was the face of
the company. She was and so but just times were different.
So I just thought that was really interesting. Um. I mean,
I'm glad that it all turned out the way it did.
(24:00):
And and by the way, the reason that she was
able to do all of the what she was able
to do, and the same thing with a lot of
these other women we discussed is because their husbands respected
them and their husbands, I hate to say it this way,
but allowed it. Yeah. I mean, as bad as it sounds,
you're right, they were kind of ahead of their time
and going, well, my wife is smart, she's capable, she
can handle the business side. Yeah. And I mean, look,
(24:22):
this is before women could have a bank account without
their husband's signing for it, right, Um, And I don't
remember exactly what years women weren't allowed to own property
and all these other things. So the husband's really had
to allow this um And so in any case, I
just thought it was worth noting that she was really
instrumental in what they were doing at the time, and
honestly throughout the entire life of the company, very very instrumental.
(24:45):
So in any case, here we are UM, They're they've
got this business going. It's the late nineteen thirties, we're
moving into the nineteen forties. And in ninety one, um
As Elliott gets into designing now some costume jewelry pieces,
and some of them are becoming really popular. They form
a new partnership. They go to a well known Los
(25:07):
Angeles jeweler by the name of Zachary Zembie, who they
met after he literally just came into their shop and
saw one of these designs that Elliott had made, which
was called Handler's Hands. It was a pin that was
in the shape of a hand. It held a little
vase and you could put a flower in it, and
it became really well known. Anyway, Zachary Zambie and Elliott
(25:29):
form a partnership called El Zach. Basically they took their
two names Elliott and Zachary. El Zack and they started
a company that same year. Ruth kind of steps away
from the business a little bit because she had a baby. Yeah,
a little baby girl, Barbara. Wink wink, nudge, nudge. Keep
that one in the back pocket, but there you go.
(25:51):
Barbara was born that year. So el Zac, this new company,
actually is you know, starting to become a real player
in the business world making jewelry. And they're doing well.
They've they're in Hollywood right there in l A So
they get Hollywood starlets to wear their jewelry. By ninety three,
(26:11):
l Zac is a national brand, so they're doing well. Yeah,
And referral back to another of the companies we've covered before,
and we talked about them before Sears. They're highlighted in
the Sears catalog. That's how national and big this el
Zac is. Most people have never heard of it, Yeah,
but it was huge. Yeah. By nineteen forty three, they're
doing large scale production of their pieces, of their el
(26:33):
Zack jewelry pieces. Elliott again being the creative, he's focused
on coming up with new designs and they bring in
a guy named Matt Mattson to oversee manufacturing operations. Matt M. A. T. T. Mattson,
put that one in your back pocket to uh, they're
moving along. And of course now we're starting to get
(26:55):
into wartime in the world, right, because now it's nineteen
forty three, nineteen forty four are and the company is
doing well, but it is coming into wartime. Things are
changing um in the world, and things are changing at
their company, yes they are. Things are definitely changing in fact,
because like we said, el Zack's huge at this point,
national brand, and because of that you need some more capital.
(27:17):
So Zachary, the zach part of el Zack, brings in
some more investors into the company. But unfortunately, with more
investors means more voices and more opinions. Things start getting
kind of hectic, to the point where Matt Mattson quits
straight up up and leaves el Zack. And when he
leaves el Zack, mind you, Ruth still at home with
(27:38):
her babies at this point too, because the Barbara's younger
brother Ken is now born at this point I'm sorry
what Barbara's younger brother, Kim was born at this point
another name to put in your back packet, right, And
so this kind of reawakens the business in Ruth. She's
been on the backs in the back seat for a
couple of years, and she cracks her knuckles and says
(27:59):
it's time to get back to work, not leaving sparks
that Yeah Ruthie wants back in. Yeah. Absolutely. So it's
nineteen forty four and uh, Ruth convinces Elliott that they
should go visit Matt. Uh. So they do. They go
out to see Matt and he is working in his garage.
It's got tons of equipment, uh and all of that.
(28:21):
And Elliott decides to allow Matt to use some of
his designs that he had made for picture frames. And
Ruth says, yeah, let's do that. Matt. You make the
picture frames and I'll sell them. Because meanwhile, you remember,
Elliott is still tied to el Zack. He can't just
go running off if he's doing jewelry. He's doing jewelry.
So they make these picture frames. They start doing well
(28:42):
with the picture frames. There's some material changes they have
to make because of the war. They can't use blue sight,
they can't use the high quality woods, so they find
a really inexpensive way to make good looking picture frames.
And again, because materials are so hard to find, the
customers are excited to have them, you know, the stores
that want to sell picture frames, and so they are
to be successful, and they get their first three thousand
(29:03):
dollar order in for this new venture that at this
point doesn't have a name. Correct, it's just Ruth and
Matt kind of making things happen while Elliot's working over
at el Zac and supporting them emotionally, right exactly. But
that soon also comes stumbling down the Elliott part of
(29:23):
el Zack because he too starts to get frustrated with
the investors. He too gets sick and tired of it
and says, you know what, I'm ready to branch out
into new stuff. So when the partners that he didn't
agree with offered to buy out Elliot's share of el
Zack for what was really crummy at the time, only
ten grand, he and Ruth said, you know what, this
(29:45):
is our opportunity to get into something we want to
do again. They took the money and ran. They took
that ten thousand dollars and went to go sit down
with Matt, which was kind of brilliant because it turns
out el Zack was in bankruptcy within I think the
next year, yeah, like eighteen forty eight, el Zac ceases
to exist a couple of years. Yeah, so they made
a smart move to take their ten k and get
(30:06):
the heck out of there. So yeah, so they go
back to matt and, in their very creative way of
naming companies, just the way they did el Zack, they
took once again the two first names matt and Elliott
and combined them together matt El, Mattel and Mattel is born. Yes. Yeah,
so this is now nineteen four as they are starting
(30:31):
to kick off Mattel. But remember they're making picture frames, yeah,
which is not what they do, right, So how did
they get into toys? Well, that all happens because Elliott,
being the inventor, creative type, realizes that while they're making
these picture frames once again as we talked about in
the garage workshop, and since there's a bunch of scrap
stuff just kind of laying everywhere, and he decides, listen,
(30:54):
this is our business, we're running it. We need to
do something with this other than just throw it in
the trash. So he starts using the scraps to make
dollhouse furniture, what like little chairs and tables for dollhouses,
which is popular in the forties. But lo and behold
that takes off. They're making way more money in just
a year or two on the dollhouse furniture than they
(31:14):
are the picture frame business. And what's crazy is it
seemed like everything was going well, but for whatever reason,
Matt Matson decided to sell out that same year. Um
he moved on, and really we don't know much else
about him after that. Um, so the Matt in Mittel
kind of ceased to be in the story after the
first year. Yeah, and trust me, I did a lot
(31:36):
of digging. You really can't find anything else about him
after he leaves Mattel he lived a very quiet life
and that was it. Yeah. I wonder if he had
any regrets. In our very first episode, I think it
was we talked about Sears and Roebuck and how Roebuck
kind of bowed out, and I wonder if and Roebuck
never had any regrets because Sears, as it turned out,
(31:57):
died young. So Roebuck was like, yeah, I'm good, he
lived a long life. I wonder if Matt Matson ever
had any regrets, because, as we know, Mattel quite successful. Now.
In any case, I think the whole move into dollhouse
furniture gave them the idea to do toys in general,
and so in seven they branch out to their next toy,
(32:20):
and it is the you could Doodle, which did do
you know what a yukua doodle is? Well, it's kind
of in the name, right, you a doodle. It's a
ukule but it's a ukulele and a music box all
in one. This was apparently wildly popular back in the forties.
So you could play your little ukulele as a kid
and if you realize, you know your parents got tired
(32:41):
of the they're awful stringing. You could spin the little
knob on the side and it was a music box.
Totally creative first time. So was that a good thing
for the parents or was this like the first toy
that really annoyed parents? That's the question, probably both. So
can we blame annoying noisemaking toys on Ruth and lat?
I mean, okay, well, we have to find We usually
(33:02):
try to find one bad thing about each story. This
will be the bad thing. The loud beeping noises from
the toys, the random stuff that goes beep boop at
two am in the night. That's because of Mattel. That's
all they found, all right. In any case, the you
Can Doodle comes along in Mattel incorporates with their headquarters
in l a By, and then they start making toy
(33:25):
after hit toy after hit toy. So we'll get into
some of those toys, how they came to be, uh,
and how they moved the company along right after this.
So it's the late forties, early fifties, Mattel's incorporated, and
(33:46):
they're making some toys. There's not a lot of um,
you know, historical evidence left of what all toys they
had in those years. I'm sure some Mattel aficionado somewhere knows, um.
But what we could really find is just that they
were making toys. Between nine and sales were going well.
(34:07):
By five sales were up to five million, which is
not bad. And then uh, they introduced their next hit.
Of course, first we had the you Could Doodle, yes, uh,
and there and I'm sure they sold many of those,
but probably some other toys as well, as we said,
But their next big hit was the burp gun. Yeah,
(34:27):
that makes me think of indigestion, but that's not what
it was. It wasn't a prank toy No, it was
actually like a toy gun called a burp gun, and
it was super super popular. But of note, a burp
gun is actually two things. One the toy gun made
by Mattel and to a nickname for the pps H
forty one. Is that how you say that a Soviet
(34:48):
submachine gun that made a unique noise. I guess that
sounded like a burb while it was firings World War
two was a submachine gun and it yet it sounds
very peculiar to say the least. Yeah, very burp uh.
In any case, the toy gun version, the fully automatic
cap gun as it were, was quite popular. And also
in that same year, another brilliant move by Mattel, they
(35:13):
partner with another famous company, another famous company known as Disney,
The Mickey mouse Club. The Mickey mouse Club. Yes remember
the theme song? Yeah, I actually haven't right here. I
(35:41):
loved that show growing up. Total side note. In preparation
for this episode, we were googling around a little bit
and if you just need something to kill some time later,
google Ryan Gosslang justin Timberlake, Mickey mouse Club and watch
some of the videos. Crazy Crazy, So Tiny, not actually
part of our episode so we didn't think it made
sense to bring it in here. But worth a Google
(36:03):
for sure. Uh. In any case, a brilliant move by
Mattel to your partner with the very popular, brand new
Mickey Mouse Club by Disney, and again like sort of
one of the early you know, brand partnerships like that.
I mean they were advertising. You know, commercials existed, so
they weren't the first to do commercials, but partnering with
a company like that, there they are a toy company
(36:25):
engaging with you know, a kids show like that that
was super popular. Smart So all was going well. And
as we alluded, this is the era when famous toys
start coming out of Mattel on the regular. It's nine
nine when Mattel introduces the Barbie doll, Boby, Beautiful Bobby.
(36:49):
I'll make believe that Motel and a lot of little
girls did, in fact pretend they were Barbie. Barbie eventually
became the best selling toy ever ever. Uh. Interesting to
note that the original Barbie was inspired by a German
(37:10):
doll called the Build Lily Doll, which Ruth purchased for
her own daughter, Barbara A. K. Barbie in ninety six,
and the Bill Lily doll wasn't originally designed for kids.
It was designed for adults. Weird, um. But it was
based on a comic strip strip about a provocative woman
and it just like German kids got ahold of it
(37:31):
even though it wasn't really meant for them, and were
dressing her up and playing with her or whatever, and
so Ruth thought this would be a great idea. There's
another whole side story about Ruth and the invention of
Barbie is just that, Um, her daughter was playing with
paper dolls and dressing them up, and you know, she
watched how frustrating that was because the clothes wouldn't stay
(37:52):
on the paper dolls. Um. And she had this whole
back and forth with Elliott about whether or not a
womanly shaped doll was appropriate, right. That was That's the
interesting part is that was the big argument at first
was not what it sell? Could we make it? It
was is it appropriate? Right? And she was all for
it because she knew that the girls were sort of
(38:12):
playing grown up in a sense, um. But Elliott wasn't
so sure. So it wasn't until she brought this German
version of what she wanted to do home that he
agreed and they moved forward, and I will say though
he he was even still a little spectical, skeptical about
it being able to sell until they took it to
one of those like toy convention show things and apparently
(38:33):
they sold all of them. They had billions of orders
or whatever. And he went, okay, all right, Ruth, you
were right, and she said, yes, I know, yeah, I'm
always right. Any other questions, uh? In one Barbie finally
gets her boyfriend, the Ken dog. Ken also named after
their son, which is a little weird, but okay, sure.
(38:57):
I mean, for most of America there is no thought
of the after the names were from a brother and sister, right,
of course not. It's in a neat way for them
to have their kids namesake kind of forever forever and um.
And the fact that they were brother and sister, and
that most people who play with those alls have them
make out with each other. Neither here nor They're totally fine,
whatever you want to do, it's all good. Okay, We're
(39:19):
gonna stop that line of discussion right now. The next
big blackbuster toy for Mitchel came out in nine and
that was They're at car You've ever seen? And because
(39:39):
of that, Nick Bean has changed. I mean, if there
weren't hot wheels, you'd be a different man. I would
not be the same person I am today. I was
the cool kid with the I told it at the
beginning of the show. I was a cool kid with
the tire thing with all the hot wheels cars in it.
It was great. I think everybody, boys and girls alike
played with hot wheels. Everyone like hot wheels were and
(40:00):
the track especially I like, Yeah, the Tractic school, all right,
So that takes us up to the early nineteen seventies
and nineteen seventy one. Mattel made another interesting decision. It
wasn't a partnership so much as a purchase, but along
the same lines of partnering with Disney, they purchased I
don't think people know this, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum
and Bailey's Circus. Yeah, they owned the circus for a while,
(40:23):
which I guess thinking about it, kind of makes sense, right.
The circus is fun and whimsical and kid friendly, and
Mattel wants to be all about that. But yeah, I
never knew they owned them. Well, the Feld family, who
started the circus um stayed involved even though Mattel bought them.
They left the family in charge, and I think most
people who know anything about the history of Barnam and
Bailey just have heard about the Feld family and that's
(40:45):
kind of it. Um. But also in the early nineteen
seventies we kind of get to a little bit of
the darker side of the story and and almost like
not the end because of course, as we know Mattel
as we started the episode by saying, it's going strong
to this day, but sort of the beginning of the
end for the original founding family. And so I think
(41:05):
even though we're sort of at nineteen seventy one, we
have to backtrack a year because in nineteen seventy Ruth
Handler was diagnosed with breast cancer and she had a
modified radical mossectomy, which was the most common treatment at
the time, and um, that sort of put her a
little bit out of commission from a work perspective, and
so they brought in a and they had listened. By
(41:26):
this point, it's a huge company. They've got a whole
executive team and all of that. Well, one of the
guys on the executive team was Seymour Rosenberg. He was
the executive vice president at the time, and in nineteen
seventy one, and really through nineteen seventy three, Mattel was
issuing false and misleading financial statements. Yeah, it all sort
(41:49):
of came to a head in nineteen seventy three when
the company reported a thirty two million dollar loss, just
three weeks after stockholder has been had been assured that
the company was in good shape. Yeah, not good. Yeah,
so the stock plummets. That causes the SEC to investigate,
and it's not good. And like I said, it's sort
of unclear at this point how much Ruth was involved
(42:10):
in the day to day. Also interesting that Elliott's name
isn't really anywhere on this drama, so he must have
sort of stayed on the creative side. Uh. And she
was more money and operations definitely, And so uh do
we blame it all on on Rosenberg? Um? I mean
the SEC didn't know. Ultimately, I think it was five
(42:32):
years later when they finally the SEC brought charges and
Ruth Handler and Seymour Rosenberg were charged with a bunch
of different indictments. They were fined fifty seven thousand dollars
each and they both got forty one year prison sentences.
But don't worry Ruth didn't go to jail. Uh. Those
sentences were suspended on the condition that they each do
(42:55):
five hours of community service essentially each year for five
years years total, very good total night years. It's just
still a very good trade off for both of them
though jail. It would have been the rest of their
lives in jail. And that's pretty much your right. That's
kind of where the handlers get kicked out in a
(43:15):
sense of Mattel because shortly after they sell off the
last of what they own in the company. I think,
so the timeline is all this goes down in seventy three.
By seventy four they're kicked out of the company. Elliott
and Ruth are kicked out of the company. Um, the
indictments come down I think in seventy eight, and in reason,
(43:35):
Elliott just cash out all of their matel stock and
they're done. A side note on this is, you know,
Ruth was a powerhouse and after going through breast cancer herself,
she started a whole other company making prosthetics for breast
cancer survivors who had gone through mass ectomies, companies called
Nearly Me and it still exists to this day. Yeah,
it's very very cool, very cool that she got involved
(43:58):
in something like that. Yeah. So in any case, that
was sort of the downfall of the Handlers as it
related to Mattel. Um, it's really unclear whose fault it
really was. Ruth does say, um, you know, and when
interviewed about this, I act like she's still around. She's
she's gone now. But when she was interviewed about this
after the fact, she said it was the breast cancer.
(44:19):
She wasn't paying attention, she wasn't really around, and it
sort of happened by accident. From her perspective, she was
very I think she said, quote unfocused on the business
while she was dealing with that. So right, which is understandable.
So maybe it's all this guy Rosenberg. Maybe not. We'll
never really know because we weren't there. But at the
end of the day, that was sort of the end
of the family involvement. Um. In any case, three things
(44:43):
were not looking good from Mattel. They were on the
verge of bankruptcy. They had a million dollar loss after
they tried to get into video games. Yeah. We talked
about this in our Atari episode, didn't we The nineteen
eight three gaming bust where everybody just lost tons of money.
But hell was wrapped up in the they sure where
they were part of that crash of the video games industry.
(45:05):
Uh yeah, and so it hurt them pretty badly, so
much so that they almost you know, didn't survive. It's
a pretty bad series of events within a decade, pretty bad.
Ultimately seven they get a new chairman and he starts
really cutting into the finances, making sure that they can survive.
He does that though by closing a lot of plants,
(45:26):
cutting salaries, curbing marketing, and they try to sort of
tighten the belt, if you will, and come back. They
figure out a way to do it, and that is
by recollaborating, if you will. Is that a new word?
Collaborating with Disney? Um. And think about all of what
Disney was doing in the eighties and nineties, um, with
all the new movies and all the toys that came
(45:49):
from each of those movies. Um. They go on to
then make deals with a whole bunch of other companies, Yeah,
like Hannah, Barbera and Turner. So all those cartoons, you know,
flint Stones and all that stuff. They got a whole
bunch of toys, um from all of like Tom and
Jerry I think was another one too, so that that
really helps revive the brand and bring them from the
doldrums of here bankruptcy that they were in for quite
(46:12):
a little while. Yeah, and basically brought them back to
reasonable shape and from there, essentially from the early nineties
through today, the Mattel Company has continued to sort of
um cement its place in history. They you know, Barbies
were hugely hot again in the nineties and um and
(46:33):
they still are, but they really had they flourished again
in the nineties. I think it was the thirtieth anniversary
of Barbie her birthday, her thirtieth birthday, she was on
the cover of the Smithsonian magazine. Um. They've created all
kinds of famous Barbies that were after famous people, and
you know, special editions and collections and collectible versions, and
(46:53):
there are conferences and as we said at the beginning
of the episode, movies and all kinds of Some of
the research I did said that their collection of Barbies
alone and collections of hot wheels alone, but just the
Mattel toys that are worth over a million dollars of
people who have all that collected together, So it's it's
a cultural icon. For sure. Right, there have been single
Barbie dolls that have sold at auction for thousands of
(47:16):
dollars and yeah, so um, they're iconic for sure. But
just to be a hundred percent sure that they stay iconic,
they bought up basically every other toy company you've ever
heard of. They've got Tycho toys that belongs to them.
They've got the Pleasant Company, you know, the ones that
make the American girl dolls. Oh yeah, that's Mattel now
to yep uh. And then they had the Learning Company,
(47:37):
which was famous but also a big part of their
video game debaccle. Yeah. And then in that same kind
of span in the nineties when they bought all those up,
that's when I think they probably made one of their
biggest acquisitions ever in the history of the company. They
got Fisher Price. Yeah. Wow, that is a huge chunk
of their business to this day, because I mean, didn't
we all kind of play with Fisher Price stuff as
(47:59):
a kid and they were like approved happy toys, like
those are the ones like my mom would buy me. Yeah,
that's the stuff that you see the one year olds
bombing on with their gums all the way up to
five year old Still playing the xylophones in the room, right,
it's it's just their classic classic toys, and yeah, it's
really interest. I didn't know that Mattel was Fisher Price.
That's part of one of the most fascinating parts of
this episode is that they're that ingrained in so much
(48:21):
of our lives, all the way from our youngest age too. Now.
I mean, I'll be honest with you, Dana, I didn't
realize this till just the other day while we were researching.
I actually still have some of my old hot wheels
from when I was a kid. Okay, that's adorable. So
there's still a part of my life. I think, I
when I when my daughter was little. I do not
have my original Barbies, though I did have the Barbie
Camper back in the day. But my daughter had Barbies
(48:43):
and I would buy an extra one in the box
and not like I'd play with one and I'd keep
playing the box and I finally, I think I got
rid of them, like I sold them all finally after
I moved for like ten the tenth time or whatever. Um.
But yeah, I mean they are part of of history
for sure, and not going away. Like we started the
episode by saying, look, this is a hugely successful company
(49:04):
to this day, and they are still innovating. They are
adding digital, you know, aspects to what they're doing with
the toys. They now have a line of gender neutral dolls,
and they've got a you know, real life action Barbie
movie coming out with one of the biggest stars of
all time. So yeah, I think when it comes down
to it, this is the kind of company that even
(49:27):
if it were to start to seriously fall apart, someone
somewhere is not gonna let it die, right. I agree
with that. I think this is a company that is
more than just a company. Yes, it's a company. Yes
there are shareholders, Yes people care about that, but it's
a beloved toy company. And who didn't play with one
of those brands of toys. Somebody, you know, everybody played
(49:50):
with one of those toys somewhere along the way. Yeah,
and so I agree with you. I think it's a
company that's going to go on and on and on.
So we do like to make predictions sometimes as we
wrap the episode and I say to tell is here
to stay on that note. We are done for the
episode and for the season. I hope you enjoyed season
one of Photiography. If you missed any of the episodes,
be sure to check them out and we'll see you
(50:11):
back here for season two. Photography is a production of
I Heart Radio and dB Media. I'm your host Dana Barrett.
My co host is Nick Bean, our producer is Tory Harrison,
and our executive producer is Jonathan Strickland. Have questions I
want to give us feedback or have a company you'd
like us to cover. Email us at info at Phisiography
(50:32):
dot Show, or contact us on social. I'm at d
Danta Barrett on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or just search
for me on LinkedIn. Thanks for your support.
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