Oct 1, 2008

Mattel, Hasbro Say Most Holiday Toys to Be Under $20By Heather BurkeBloomberg.com

Mattel Inc. and Hasbro Inc. said most of their toys will cost less than $20 this holiday-shopping season as cash-strapped parents temper impulse purchases amid the U.S. economic slowdown.

Mattel, the world’s largest toymaker and seller of Barbie dolls, will offer High School Musical 3 dolls for $14.99 each and its Color Me Gemz Jewelry Box for $19.99. Spin Master Ltd.’s Bakugan collectible figures, named as one of the “most wanted” toys by the Time to Play Web site, start at $4.99 apiece.

Retailers face a slowdown in consumer spending as people pay more for gasoline and food, while seeing the value of their homes decline and U.S. job losses mount. Sales during the holiday season may fall 3 percent, a BMO Capital Markets analyst said today. Traditionally toymakers get at least a third of their annual revenue in the fourth quarter.

“The sales we’re going to lose are those incremental sales, that impulse sale,” Chris Byrne, an industry expert known as the Toy Guy, said today in an interview at a conference in New York. He declined to predict holiday toy sales, saying he was “optimistic.”

Byrne, who’s covered the toy industry for 30 years, and Jim Silver, editor-in-chief at ANb Media Inc. and former editor-in- chief and co-publisher of Toy Wishes, introduced http://www.TimetoPlayMag.com, a Web site featuring toy reviews, recommendations and recall information, today at the conference. Previously they picked top holiday products at Toy Wishes magazine for nine years, Byrne said.

“Whenever there’s a tough economic situation, obviously it is a concern for all industries,” Mattel Brands President Neil Friedman said in an interview. The company’s products “are priced well enough that the consumer can afford to buy their child enough things so that they don’t feel the same stress in this economy that the parents do.”

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