JAMIE CARR: Recycle the plastic, doll
Mattel is in the pink thanks to the success of the ‘Barbie’ movie
Mattel was launched in a garage in Los Angeles when Robert Oppenheimer was still tinkering at Los Alamos, wondering whether the Manhattan Project was going to work. The toymaker introduced the Barbie doll in 1959, and ever since it has countered claims that it was tormenting generations of young girls with unrealistic body images by promoting the idea that Barbie could be president, an astronaut or a CEO, that you might be living in a bright pink dream house but you didn’t have to worry about a glass ceiling.
The company hit a major speed wobble in 2017 when Toys “R” Us went bust, and it racked up cumulative net losses of $1.8bn between 2017 and 2019. Ynon Kreiz was brought in as CEO in 2018, and launched a major shake-up of the company with a focus on extracting value from its intellectual property. The biggest gamble was handing creative control of the Barbie movie to producers Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, allowing them to satirise the product while spending $145m o...
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