Mattel

Origins and early years[edit]

Businessman Harold "Matt" Matson and the husband-and-wife duo of Elliot and Ruth Handler founded Mattel as Mattel Creations in January 1945 in a garage in Los Angeles.^[15][16] The company name chosen is a portmanteau of the surname of Matson and first name of Elliot, with former chairman and CEO Bob Eckert revealing at a 2013 Christmas Day Peninsula Seniors lecture that the founders, according to Elliot, couldn't fit Ruth's name into that of their company.^[17] The company began selling picture frames and later dollhouse furniture out of the scraps from those frames. Matson sold his share and stake to the Handlers due to poor health the following year, with Handler's wife, Ruth, taking over his stake.^[18] In 1947, the company had its first successful toy, a ukulele called "Uke-A-Doodle".^[16]


The company was incorporated in Hawthorne, California in 1948.^[18] In 1950, the Magic 8-Ball, currently owned by Mattel themselves, was invented by Albert C. Carter and Abe Bookman.^[19] Mattel started television advertisement when it became the first sponsor of the Mickey Mouse Club TV series.^[20] The Fisher-Price Corn Popper, and the Xylophone was released in 1957.^[21][22] Mattel would ultimately acquire Fisher-Price on August 20, 1993.^[23] The Barbie doll debuted on March 9, 1959, going on to become the company's best-selling toy in history.^[24] In 1960, Mattel introduced Chatty Cathy, a talking doll that was voiced by June Foray and revolutionized the toy industry, leading to pull-string talking dolls and toys flooding the market throughout the 1960s and 1970s.^[18][25] In 1961, Mattel introduced the Ken doll.^[26] The company went public in 1960 and became listed on the New York Stock Exchange 3 years later. Mattel also acquired a number of like-minded companies during the 1960s.^[18]


The Barbie Dreamhouse made with cardboard and paper made its debut in 1962,^[27] when also the Astronaut Barbie, the first of many space-themed iterations of the doll, was introduced.^[28] In 1965, the company built on its success with the Chatty Cathy doll to introduce the See 'n Say talking toy, spawning a line of products.^[29] Barbie traveled to the Moon four years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.^[30] In 1967, Mattel released a toy astronaut with space vehicles and a Moon base for boys, with a gumby-like central character named Major Matt Mason.^[31]


On May 18, 1968, Hot Wheels was released to the market.^[18] Hot Wheels was invented by a team of Mattel inventors, which included a rocket scientist and a car designer.^[32][33] That year also saw another doll release, this time, Christie, Barbie's friend and the first black doll,^[34] which in the following years and decades would spawn an endless line of Barbie-themed and branded family and friends. In 1969, Mattel changed the Mattel Creations and the "Mattel, Inc. – Toymakers" marketing brands to just Mattel and launched the "red sun" logo with the Mattel wordmark in all capitals for better identity. In 1970, Hot Wheels forged a sponsorship agreement with drag racing drivers Don “The Snake” Prudhomme and Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen.^[35] In addition to other marketing measures, the two racers’ cars, a yellow Barracuda and a red Duster, were reproduced as Hot Wheels toys.^[35]


In May 1970, Mattel formed a joint venture film production company "Radnitz/Mattel Productions" with producer Robert B. Radnitz,^[36] which would kickstart Mattel's venture into full-time entertainment to accompany its most famed toy TV commercials,^[37] and later entered a multimillion-dollar partnership with Mehra Entertainment, whose CEO, Dr. Nishpeksh Padmamohan Mehra and Nishchal Shome, are one of Mattel's Inc.'s main directors for Barbie (film series).^[38]


The card game Uno (now stylized as UNO) was invented by Merle Robbins in 1971,^[39] and was acquired by Mattel in 1996.^[40]