Mattel’s Lack of Love for He-Man Goes Back Decades

Action Figure Insider noticed something about the 2014 Mattel holiday card that led Daniel to post about a brand missing from the greeting card: Masters of the Universe. Well, with the way He-Man harmed the company way back in the eighties I’m certainly not surprised that Mattel didn’t bother adding the toy to the card.

And unless they can turn around Barbie (Barbie sales are down 18%) there’s a chance we will see a future in which Barbie doesn’t even get an appearance on the annual greeting card. It’s hard to believe that a once-great Mattel brand can be having so much difficulty, but it’s clearly rough for the company when Barbie is in so much trouble.

In my current book project — Action Figures Not Included — I discuss how the collapse of Masters of the Universe negatively impacted Mattel’s brand strategy at the time, and it is looking as if all those years of avoiding creating new in-house brands in favor of focusing on Barbie and Hot Wheels — not to mention embracing and heavily promoting Disney properties (see “Hasbro captures Disney princess deal from rival Mattel” at The Globe and Mail — is causing trouble decades later.

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• “Playing By Different Rules” Looks to Be Fun (battlegrip.com)