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What's under the tree this Christmas season? 'Made in USA' toys

"All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth" ...and toys made in America.

An article in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription still required) describes how domestic toy makers now have a possible leg up on the competition as consumers head into the holiday buying season. The few remaining domestic toy manufacturers are reportedly launching marketing campaigns aimed at showing consumers their all-American, all-safe wares.

Seems "Made in America" is once again a selling point, especially to parents looking to avoid toxic levels of lead paint that have prompted four major toy recalls in recent months. All of the toys recalled have come from China, manufactured for major toy companies such as Mattel Inc. (NYSE: MAT).

Continue reading What's under the tree this Christmas season? 'Made in USA' toys

Mattel fighting dirty to survive this holiday season

girl with barbieBarbie is inviolate. Girls since the beginning of time (let's be clear: time didn't start, toywise, until the Barbie) have begged for Barbies, and no more time more loudly and earnestly than at Christmas. Even my four-year-old, mud-puddle-jumping, super-hero-adoring son wants a Barbie.

That was. Until Bratz came along. For the past few years Mattel, Inc. (NYSE:MAT) has been fighting tooth and nail to keep up with the overly-madeup, hiphop bad girls with the big heads. Where Barbie is too curvaceous, Bratz are too too -- too street, too saucy. If Barbie represents the unrealistic dimensions of a Vogue model, Bratz represent the unwanted idealization of a girl who hangs out at a strip mall when she should be in government class, spends her allowance on collagen lip injections, and dates a rapper twice her age.

Barbie sales have been falling in the past several years thanks to the formidably mispelled bad girls of the fashion doll world. They attempted to combat closely-held MGA Entertainment, Inc., who manufactures the Bratz dolls, in the marketplace by positioning its My Scene dolls to compete directly (although MGA sued Mattel last year, claiming that Mattel had changed the My Scene dolls to imitate Bratz too closely). When that didn't work so well, they brought out the big guns: an IP lawsuit.

Continue reading Mattel fighting dirty to survive this holiday season

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Last updated: November 27, 2009: 08:30 AM

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