Are moms to blame for Mattel’s stagnant Hot Wheels sales?

[Paul E Ester]

Mattel has a problem. Sales of its three toy car lines—Hot Wheels, Matchbox, and Tyco R/C—have remained stagnant for the past three years. The toy maker is still pulling in $1 billion a year but that number isn’t going up.

Why?

Mattel thinks moms are the problem. Women don’t understand cars the way they do a Star Wars figurine, which is essentially a doll, or blocks, which are obviously meant for building. But pushing cars around on the floor and making them crash into each other as explosive sounds spew from your mouth—moms don’t get that, Mattel speculates.

And why don’t moms get Hot Wheels? Simple. Mom “has never played with them,” Matt Petersen, a Mattel vice president who runs its North American boys’ toys and games division, told Business Week.

“She doesn’t get why cars, engines, and all the shapes and crashing and smashing are so cool,” he added.

http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2013/03/13/are-moms-to-blame-for-mattels-stagnant-hot-wheels-sales/

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Somebody at Mattel is writing comedy.

Perhaps...mebbe, I don't know it s marketing? Legos has contracts to get lines of toys with tie ins to yes...star wars...Mattel does not.

[jehop61]

5. I have an idea

Make hot wheels that Barbie can ride in.

[KittyWampus]

34. or put wheels on Barbie

[grasswire]

57. I was looking for a pink hot wheels car the other day.

A four-year-old girl in my family wants one really bad. Her big brother has about 300 cars, and she has none. She wants one. Pink.

No such thing, that I could find. I settled for a green Porsche, but I know that was a poor substitute.

[Brickbat]

2. Could be that mom is tired of stepping on those fuckers.

Not as bad as Legos or green army men, but pretty bad.

[Kookaburra]

52. Exactly!!!!

So much has been said about stepping on Legos, but I'm here to tell you that stepping on a hot wheels in the middle of the night in bare feet is torture! Possibly even worse than the Legos.

[Arcanetrance]

54. My nine year old nephew visited for a weekend and I think I stepped on his hit wheels

once every 2 minutes. I swear they would move on their own

[hedgehog]

3. Has Mattel taken note of the number of children being raised in poverty by single mothers?

Not to mention - the general quality is lousy.

[LeftyMom]

9. I'm not sure that's an issue, they cost around $2.

[hedgehog]

17. $2 can be a lot when you're trying to make the rent.

The real question is what is going on with toy sales in general? Is there a difference between high end ( American girl dolls) and low end (Barbie dolls)?

[Nye Bevan]

4. So why doesn't Dad go out and buy it? (nt)

[HappyMe]

6. I don't think so.

Mattel made a ton of money from me & my sons. I tended to buy them Hot Wheels, Legos and bigger fire trucks. They weren't interested in Star Wars. Believe me, this mom was involved in may a car race, crash, fire and the raising of a town. We had fun.

[LeftyMom]

7. I took a temp job at a toy store a few years back. Most of our Hot Wheels sales were to grown men.

They knew what day we got our shipment, and they'd show up that morning with a checklist and dig through searching for cars they didn't have yet.

I had no idea that was even a thing.

[Drale]

15. I worked at Toys-R-Us a few years back over the holiday season

and I witnessed the same thing with Barbie's. It was pretty crazy sometimes when a new shipment came in.

[Blue_Tires]

22. Yeah, I re-discovered the "fever" a couple years back and buy one at the supermarket occasionally...

[Throd]

8. Why would now be different? My mom bought me tons of toy cars, tanks, planes etc.

My daughters love to play Hot Wheels with me. I'll miss it when they outgrow it.

[Paul E Ester]

12. I believe Americas relationship with the car has changed

Cars used to represent freedom and listening to boomers tell it, the cars of the 70's were rolling no-tell motels.

People could hop in the cars and hit the road cheaply.

Cars today, expensive, hit the road, traffic, they represent an expense and not an asset as they did in the past.

Today a trip to lovers lane will get you arrested by the morality police, assuming you could get comfortable in todays cars.

Millennials Would Rather Ditch Car Than Smartphone Or Computer: Zipcar Survey

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/01/millennials-car-ownership_n_2789454.html

[ismnotwasm]

55. I think you're on to something there

Blaming 'Moms' who presumably have been buying hot wheels for their sons in Christmases and birthdays gone by, makes no sense at all

[Arkansas Granny]

10. Sorry, Mattel. I don't think you're on the right track. This mom has bought and played with

Hot Wheels cars over the years with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of both sexes. I don't know why sales would be flat, but I don't believe it's because Mom doesn't "get it".

[riverbendviewgal]

11. I don't agree

These cars were a favorite of my sons, my younger one especially.
They also grew up with Star Wars and GI Joe and Tonka toys.

They both kept their little cars as they grew up.

Don't blame Mom.

Mom usually buys what their kids like.

Perhaps blame the peers and advertising influences.

[Drale]

13. If I had kids, I would buy them Hotwheels because I played with them when I was a kid

but I would buy more Lego's and Star Wars action figures because well hell then I could play with them too lol

[The Second Stone]

14. Plenty of women love cars

more than men. $2 billion a year in toy cars that last forever is a pretty good market. Particularly during rough economic times.

[Lugnut]

16. My son didn't like them.

He was into bigger toys back then. He liked Tonka toys and he still has an impressive collection of them.

[October]

18. Wow. Unfair.

THIS mom has always loved HotWheels and Matchbox cars, and bought TONS! We had HotWheel birthday parties, cakes, etc. over the years. I even have special frames hanging in my son's room - with wood-divided sections for each individual car for display!

I think they ought to blame video games and such.

Blaming "Moms"? Really?

[randome]

19. Sounds like a VP prepping for a lackluster earnings report.

[PowerToThePeople]

20. how many toys do kids need?

My 3 year old has more toys at his age than the sum of all toys I had growing up. This includes well over 100 hotwheels and matchbox cars. He needs less toys not more.

Permanent growth is a fallacy. It can not exist. Capitalism as practiced in the USA is doomed for failure.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

23. We've bought a few new ones for the grandson

but most of the ones he has came from his Dad and Uncle's old toybox. No way he needs any more.

[Skinner]

21. As a dad with young boys, here's my beef with Hot Wheels.

I had Hot Wheels when I was a kid, and I played with them a lot. Back then, a typical hot wheels set consisted of:

-- A car.
-- A number of lengths of track.
-- Some connectors to put the track together.
-- A "loop" so your car can do an upside-down loop.
-- A take-off ramp and a landing ramp, so your car could do a jump.
-- A clamp to hook the top of your long length of track to the top of the stairs or the top of a dresser.

In other words: It was a building toy. You could use your imagination and make a cool track. The car was propelled by gravity as it went down the track. When it got to the bottom of the track, you picked up your car and ran to the top of the track and sent it down again. And when you got bored with it, you'd take it apart and build a new track. You could use it over and over again, and each time it was something new. Tons of possibilities, and lots of re-play value.

These days, a typical hot wheels set is quite different. My boys have one, and they do take it out and play with it from time-to-time. This set consists of:

-- A car.
-- Some very specialized pieces of track that can only be put together in one way.
-- A very specialized stunt piece that can only be used in one way.
-- A motorized contraption that propels the car.

There is only one way to put this set together. The car is propelled by the motor, and the entire setup is a continuous loop so once you put the car on the track it keeps going and going and going without any need for human intervention. To be fair: It looks much cooler than my old Hot Wheels track. But it is much more limited.

In short: Hot Wheels has changed from a an interactive, imaginative building toy into something kinda like TV: You turn it on and watch it do it's thing.

[angstlessk]

31. I'm with you..I was pre-Hot Wheels, but I used to get a tickle in my tummy

building roads in the dirt that banked and had neat stuff to make overpasses and underpasses, and that was the thrill of playing with cars..not just zooming and making noises...Of course I was a girl..well I still am, but I guess now I'd be called a woman

[JHB]

38. I think this is it, or the biggest part

If you want kids to play with your toys, you have to let them play with your toys. Let them mess around with them and make them their own.

[SidDithers]

42. And the batteries in the motor give you about 3 days worth of sporadic use...

before they're no longer strong enough to power the car around the track.

Sid

[HughBeaumont]

43. Most Lego kits nowadays are the same way.

Nothing but models now. Back in the 70s, they had sets with just normal, non-specialized bricks so you could build stuff to compliment their models. You want one color parts for your own larger models now, you have to go to a Lego store . . . and their selection of those kind of bricks is very limited. Not many flat pieces for the detail needed.

[FSogol]

56. Perfect analysis. I had the same clamp/ramp fixture. Awesome fun. Of course you forgot the best

use for the hot wheel track: spanking your sister when Mom wasn't around.

[Puzzledtraveller]

24. I don't know, but one day while waiting for prescriptions

I saw a "Back to The Future" Delorean Hot Wheels car, in a 10 for $10 bin at Kroger. It now sits on my desk

[Fat Bastard]

32. Heh. My son has one too...

buried about 20,000 cars we now own

[jmowreader]

25. Cars aren't cool anymore

A car used to symbolize sex. Now it's an appliance. Little boys don't play with toy refrigerators either.

A set of blocks is different. You can make anything your mind can see. It can be a castle one day, a truck the next and a spaceship on Wednesday. A car will always be a car.

[gollygee]

26. Oh, it's our fault (imagine my eyes rolling)

I played with Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars when I was a kid, and I had quite a collection. Of course back then toys weren't quite so heavily marketed toward BOYS or GIRLS individually. Maybe they're only selling to half their market.

[Still Blue in PDX]

27. That is just plain wrong.

I played with cars when I was a little girl. I played cars with my children. I play cars with my grandchildren.

We're everywhere.

[OregonBlue]

28. I'm raising my two grandsons ages 8 and 10. I take them to the store to spend their

allowances. They don't want toy cars. They want action figures and Pokeman cards, and legos, and video games. If they wanted cars they would buy them so, sorry Mattel, it's not us mom's (or grandmom's) making these decisions, it's the kids.

[JDPriestly]

29. I know a mom who gets bored playing with trucks and is teaching

her very young son to play with them like dolls. I think it is great. The boy is naturally mechanical, and that is great, but now he is also learning to think in terms of social interaction and learning social skills. Social interaction skills are important for both boys and girls.

[Fat Bastard]

30. We must have poured about 10k on those cars and tracks alone in the past two years..

Guess it's not helping....

My son is CRAZY about those cars...

[get the red out]

33. Kids had "Moms" when they were popular

Didn't they? Moms aren't some new invention created to destroy popular toys.

I'm thinking toy cars don't hold up to computer games. Just my guess. They are certainly a lot more recent than motherhood.

[LittleBlue]

35. Hot Wheels were outdated when I was a boy

Nowadays, boys can play video games that make cars look realistic, and race them around realistically.

Who wants a toy car when you can simulate real cars and real driving? $60 will buy a racing game with hundreds of cars.

Don't blame the moms, it's the kids who influence these things. If the kids want a certain toy, parents half the time barely look at the toys they're buying because the alternative is not pleasant.

[Paul E Ester]

39. Thats too bad

While video games are very cool, in play they are different from toys.

With toys the object serves as a trigger for the child imagination. Through this totem the child creates a virtual world they inhabit that is limitless and completely free.

A video game is the creation of an adults imagination/marketing. It imprints the adults reality in a limited world restricted by the parameters of the game. Typical gameplay, doesn't allow for imagination, as the mind is reacting to the outside rather than the outside world reacting to the childs mind.

Kids are being robbed, society will be poorer.

[LittleBlue]

47. Agreed

Imagination suffers with 3d environments that look photorealistic. No need for an imagination when nothing is left to it.

[Paul E Ester]

48. Your left with an imprint

Same as watching tv.

[RedCappedBandit]

50. Typically, but look at games like Minecraft

There is hope!

[mikeytherat]

36. Mrs. Rat has a Lotus Elise Matchbox car she bought recently on her desk.

It joins her London Taxi and BMW Z4 Hot Wheels.

mikey_the_rat

[Evoman]

37. Probably video games at fault. Noticed with my nephew and niece that ALL toys

take a backseat to video games on the wii, DS, or IPAD. If my sister didn't regulate them, they would be gaming every minute of their lives. Funny enough, many of the games they play ARE virtual replicas of toys and games we used to play. Why push a little toy car around when you can get inside it and really drive it around a track?

The only toys that seem to be able to compete with video games in their household and the households of various friends of mine is Lego, Polly Pockets, and Big Tonka trucks.

[hunter]

46. I think you've got the answer.

It's the video games.

My kids had boxes full of Legos and little cars, but there was only one computer in the house and mom or dad was always writing on it. Video games were not part of their playtime, except the very limited times they got to use the computer.

Their first video game was a Nintendo Gameboy Color, and they had to share that.

[liberal_at_heart]

51. I think video games get a bad rap

My son would rather watch tv or play on the computer or his DS than play with action figures or hot wheels, but video games are not as bad as some people think they are. They help hand, eye coordination. Believe it or not some games actually help kids learn critical thinking skills, patience, and determination. They teach them that just because you lost this game doesn't mean you have to give up. You try again and maybe this time you do something different and after you've practiced, you get better and eventually you win the game. And video games and tv don't kill imagination. My son has just as an active imagination as any kid who plays with hot wheels. In fact my son often starts with a plot line he sees on tv and expands on it. He uses his imagination to keep the story going. One of my son's favorite things to do is to make extra characters like on Ben 10. He created his own aliens and even drew pictures of them and made stories about what they would do.

[Broken_Hero]

40. My son liked hot wheels a lot

what frustrated him the most was the tracks could only be built one "set" way, the use of batteries(this was my biggest gripe about the track sets), and that the cars almost all looked the same to him. When it came to hotwheels he didn't go after the sets created soley for Hot Wheels, he gravitated towards the ones that were Transformers/Power Rangers sets.

And Mom's are not to blame for lagging sales, come up with something better, market better and don't push lousy cars, and sets. And for the love of god, why the hell do those sets need flippin D sized batteries.

[Initech]

41. Got to make them billions!!!

But our target demographic isn't buying our products and we go out and insult them! What are we doing wrong?

[liberal_at_heart]

44. Why would I buy my kid hot wheels when he in not interested in them?

I buy things my kids are interested in and ask for. I might buy my son a book on cosmology because he is interested in cosmology. My daughter is not interested in cosmology so why would I buy her a book on cosmology? My daughter is an artist so I buy her art supplies and art tools. My son is no interested in art so why would I buy him art supplies? If the kid is not interested in hot wheels, guess what? No one is going to buy them hot wheels. Blaming moms is extremely inaccurate and very sexist. To say we understand Star Wars figurines because they are dolls is also extremely inaccurate and sexist as well.

[Sheldon Cooper]

45. That's so goddamn stupid. We don't like or understand cars?

Or we'll buy Star Wars figurines because we understand dolls?

Moms who can afford to buy toys buy what their kids want. Period. I had two girls, they wanted Barbies, I got them Barbies. If they'd been boys, and wanted Hot Wheels, I'd have bought them Hot Wheels.

[SoCalDem]

49. This Mom never played with cars, but our house was awash with Tonka, Matchbox and others

Our now grown sons still have their some of their cars..

Toy cars need space & time to be played with.. They require time to imagine..

Time & space is a commodity these days.

Many young boys are raised in someone else's home or in an official daycare center where personal toys (especially easily lost small toys) are not used much these days..

My boys had lots of time to "play cars", and the whole house was their "racetrack"..as was the deck & yard.. (We probably lost lots of cars to "the yard&quot .

Kids are schlepped to activity to activity , where their time is planned down to the minute, and then it's back in the car.

Unplanned/unstructured playtime is when boys "play cars"..and they usually need playmates to do that.

With a gazillion toys to choose from, it's not surprising that other toys have taken their place alongside cars..

Our boys liked both (we still have Masters of the Universe stuff in storage for our 33 yr old , but they preferred bike riding and playing outdoors more..

[fadedrose]

53. KIds want computers and games

The kind that are handheld, and I see kids probably around 7 years old walking around the grocery store with their thumbs and fingers doin' stuff.

Don't blame it on mothers.

Someday when they don't have batteries and have no electritciy, they'll put out the cars...

My grandson annoys everyone when he plays on the coffee table and crashes them so they fly off in all directions... and the tracks take hours to set up, and one car never goes as fast as the others, causing frustration for mothers and the kids...

[MadrasT]

58. Right. Sure. Suddenly moms don't "get" cars.

But 4 years ago when sales were good they did?



Oh those poor clueless wimminz who just don't understand male things.



The stupid burns.