Mattel Catastrophe in China Essay

The first Barbie was created in March 1959 by the American business women Ruth Handler and was manufactured by the toy company Mattel Inc. The creator of the famous Barbie dolls, Ruth Handler, got her inspiration for the dolls from a German doll called Bild Lilli. She named the new doll she created after her daughter, Barbara. Since the release, Mattel has sold over one billion Barbie dolls. Barbie has since changed her body size to match what was desirable or to help different shaped girls to accept themselves, clothing, hair and makeup styles depending on what was popular at the time of her release and various additional features have been added and removed along the way.

In 2007, Mattel a California based toy company shockingly recalled 19 million toys that had been manufactured in China. Mattel was founded in 1944, and has produced iconic toys such as Barbie and Hot Wheels. The company had a long established trust with their consumers that had been forged from decades of reliability. However, when the company recalled 19 million toys due to health and safety violations, consumer confusion and outrage soared. The public wanted to know how such an established company’s safety regulations could fail, how Mattel was addressing the issue, and whether consumers could trust Mattel to produce reliable toys in the future.

Some costs are expensive: freight cost from China, inventory (lead-time increase because of shipping), and quality control (testing shipped products from China in the US require some cost; time and money)

An alternative strategy is for Mattel to expand into the technology market and add-on/re-innovate their existing product lines. Mattel has made many of the same products since it was established, with the exception of picture frames and doll furniture, which were short lived products. Barbie has changed a little bit, but other than that, the products have remained unaltered. In order to have a competitive advantage, Mattel needs to grow with the market. As of

The biggest environment force affected Mattel recently has been legal and regulatory with the high levels of lead paint found in their die-cast toys in 2007. This issue created a voluntary recall from Mattel for over 2 million toys and created doubt in customers to the quality of their Mattel toys. Mattel responded by immediately implementing a check system to accept paint only from certified suppliers, tightened controls throughout the production process and testing every production run to ensure compliance. Mattel said that it is working in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and other regulatory agencies worldwide. Mattel is also working with retailers worldwide to identify and remove affected products from retail shelves.

Mattel is starting to take a step in the right direction, according to Renae Merle from The Washington Post, “Mattel said it was strengthening its process for preventing the use of lead based paint, it will only permit paint from certified suppliers and require every batch to be tested, company officials said” (Merle 1). 80% of toys in the United States are imported from China, according to Renae Merle, and 65% of those toys are created by Mattel. Although that is a step in the right direction, that still leaves 15% of the toys in the United States at a higher risk of having high traces of lead on them, going undetected. Stores like Toys ‘R’ Us that sell toys sold by companies other than Mattel, should be required to post the percentage of how much lead is in each toy directly next to or near the toy so that parents can be aware of this problem. If parents are not made aware of this problem, it is going to cause more concerns health wise. Michelle Albert, a stay at home mom of two children states that “I feel our country should be more careful about the things we import” (Albert 1). She fears that her children may have been exposed to these toys and has no way of knowing until it may be too late.

Mattel is a global toy company that has been around since 1949. They are the company that introduced Barbie and Hot Wheels to the world as well as many others toys. Mattel has license agreements with Walt Disney and Nickelodeon. In

Barbie was introduced to the public in 1959 by Mattel, and swiftly established the place in thousands of households. Barbie generated huge sales, dominating the place in the market. Within one year of her founding, Mattel had sold 300, 000 dolls and with the sales now reaching up to 3 Barbie dolls being sold every second worldwide. The creator, Ruth Handler came up with the idea when she saw her daughter abandoning her baby dolls and playing with a paper cut out adult doll instead. So she created Barbie based on what the kids appealed to at the time. Ruth discovered that little girls were interested in growing up, hence they preferred playing with adult-figured dolls rather than baby dolls. So in 1959, barbie adopted the look of a typical blonde

The main reason that Barbie gained so much popularity and is still popular today was because her main purpose and her conception were to fill the void of having a role-playing toy. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the girls had only baby dolls and paper dolls to role-play with. With the new age of television in many households, Mattel’s aggressive marketing on television, contributed to making Barbie a household name. Some other reasons for Barbie’s success, was because Barbie was marketed with different careers, clothes, accessories and companions over the years. In 1998, Happy Holiday’s Barbie Doll was one of the first dolls to be sold as a collector doll. Mattel has new holiday dolls that come out each year. Now Barbie has evolved into a way for mother’s and daughter’s to bond, by the passing down of older dolls and being able to collect them. Barbie has become

4. As I mentioned above Mattel needs to determine if they want to have their products produced by producers in China or producers in the United States. They need to investigate into this problem and see which producer has the lowest recall rate and which producers seem to produce the highest quality products. They should re-evaluate the design of their product to see if there are any flaws involved with the overall design that are causing products to be harmful to children. Mattel should also do some research about international countries’ economies, unemployment rates, and how high the demand for toys is before selling their products internationally.

Barbie was created in 1959, in the USA. Her first ever look, outfit was a black and white swim suit, ever since then she has had many changes over the years, like different hairstyles, different styles and different beliefs. She became a fad in 1959 when she was created. Barbie had different career interests, like being a doctor and being a space barbie.

a. Girls, this is a question for you. How many of you have had Barbie dolls growing up? (Have time to answer)

According to the executive vice president for Mattel International, the dangerous levels of lead paint came from the subcontractor of a vendor that did not use certified paint. The subcontractor has been associated with this company for 20 years. Eckert said Mattel has changed the way it attaches magnets to its toys to make them safer. These recent statements mark the latest in a series of recalls of defective products made in China, which is the second-largest trading partner of the United States after Canada. Incidentally, China produces 80 percent of the world 's toys. To prevent these problems from recurring, Nord said the Chinese manufacturers are coming to Washington, D.C. this fall for product safety training sessions (CNN, 2007).

In 2007, the international toy manufacturer, Mattel, Inc. issued several recalls for millions of their products. These recalls were for safety reasons in that testing at the manufacturing sites and special test laboratories showed that millions of their toys were coated with dangerous amounts of lead in the paint. This lead based paint contains a potent neurotoxin that if ingested can cause serious harm to children. Mattel assured the public that the problem would be solved, the recalled products would be collected and replaced, and that the company would never let this type of incident happen again.

For opportunities, Barbie is a worldwide brand. So there is an opportunity for the company to use that reputation to increase its market share.