Speaker 1: Hi Barbie, Hi Ken.
Speaker 2: His Barbie, Hi Barbie, Hi Barbie, Hi Barbie, Hi Barbie
Speaker 2: with the radio.
Speaker 1: Hey, did you hear there's a Barbie movie coming out
Speaker 1: this summer? Did you bring your roll the Blates?
Speaker 3: I literally go nowhere without them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would explain the hot pink invasion of the
Speaker 1: Internet for weeks now. And Barbie's got all the makings
Speaker 1: of a summer blockbuster, big name stars. Margot Robbie plays Barbie,
Speaker 1: Ryan Gosling is Ken, and a viral marketing campaign that
Speaker 1: has everyone talking. It's also got something else going for it,
Speaker 1: a potentially massive, multi generational audience of people who have
Speaker 1: many memories and strong feelings about this sixty four year
Speaker 1: old dull, including the producers on the Big Take podcast team.
Speaker 2: I do remember one year for my birthday, someone gave
Speaker 2: me this Barbie that had hair that changed when I
Speaker 2: got wet, so you could dip her hair into the
Speaker 2: sink and it would turn blue and pink, and I
Speaker 2: thought that.
Speaker 4: Was really cool.
Speaker 2: I am extremely excited for the movie.
Speaker 5: I had the best of both worlds with Mattel Toys.
Speaker 5: My parents bought me both hot wheels with the orange
Speaker 5: racetrack and a boatload of barbiees. Sometimes I played with
Speaker 5: them together, other times, depending on how I was feeling,
Speaker 5: you know, I would just play with one or the other.
Speaker 5: Most times, though, my heart's desire drove me to those
Speaker 5: orange race tracks.
Speaker 6: I loved Barbie as a kid. I particularly loved dressing
Speaker 6: her up. My friend had the Barbie dream House, and
Speaker 6: I loved to fill up the pool when I was
Speaker 6: at my friend's house and we'd have them go swimming.
Speaker 6: I did have fun as I got older cutting her hair,
Speaker 6: and then I realiz it didn't grow back.
Speaker 7: I never really liked Barbie's when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: One birthday someone gave me a Barbie Weed roller.
Speaker 7: Place and I was like, eh, okay, but it seemed expensive,
Speaker 7: so I was like.
Speaker 8: Okay, nice.
Speaker 9: I think after a rough couple of years, you know,
Speaker 9: with the pandemic and everything, it's really nice to just
Speaker 9: have a movie where you can go in and think
Speaker 9: about nothing. It's fun, it's flirty, it's colorful, and overall
Speaker 9: it's Barbie Like. That's the best kind of summer movie
Speaker 9: that you could ask for.
Speaker 1: But Barbie's maker, Mattel, isn't just hoping for a hit
Speaker 1: in theaters. Barbie sales have fluctuated over the years, the
Speaker 1: companies struggled to make this all important but aging product
Speaker 1: line relevant today, and for a lot of parents, that
Speaker 1: original Barbie esthetic, the permanent high heels, the pink convertible,
Speaker 1: the dream house is the opposite of what they want
Speaker 1: their kids to emulate and aspire to be. Bloomberg's Kelly
Speaker 1: Gilblum writes in BusinessWeek that one aim of the movie
Speaker 1: is to get those skeptics to see matel reimagine Barbie
Speaker 1: in a new light, and hopefully turn them into customers,
Speaker 1: all while not doing anything to disappoint Barbie's intensely loyal fans.
Speaker 7: It was always pretty risky to try to put a
Speaker 7: movie out about the doll, because it's so personal and
Speaker 7: the emotions are so heightened around her that it was
Speaker 7: got to backfire.
Speaker 1: I'm Wescasova today on the big take Barbie's high Stake
Speaker 1: debut on the Pink Carpet. Kelly, I think if you
Speaker 1: have an Internet connection, it's been pretty impossible to avoid
Speaker 1: Barbie movie hype. And I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: and I'm one of them, thought, oh, this will be
Speaker 1: a fun summer movie. But you and our colleague Thomas
Speaker 1: Buckley Wright in this story that this movie is really
Speaker 1: important and there's a lot at stake. Why is this
Speaker 1: such a big important moment for Mattel.
Speaker 7: When you think about how the company is structured, Their
Speaker 7: biggest brand and their biggest source of revenue is Barbie.
Speaker 7: This is a brand they invented in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 7: has been the best selling doll of all time. It's
Speaker 7: completely iconic, and it's kind of the way Barbie goes
Speaker 7: the way Mattel goes in terms of how the company fares.
Speaker 7: But Barbie's sort of interesting in that the way she
Speaker 7: was invented was to have an incredibly personal connection to
Speaker 7: the little girls that play with her, and that they're
Speaker 7: supposed to envision themselves as adults in playing with Barbie's.
Speaker 7: With this reputation of the doll at stake, they really
Speaker 7: have to get it right. They really have to show
Speaker 7: that they can connect with that customer again, that they
Speaker 7: can be something like a role model.
Speaker 1: Kelly, you said that Mattel's biggest is the Barbie doll
Speaker 1: and has been for a really long time. How much
Speaker 1: money is Barbie worth to Mattel?
Speaker 7: Barbie is worth about a third of its overall revenue.
Speaker 7: At its peak, it was close to two billion a year.
Speaker 7: It's gone all the way down to nine hundred million
Speaker 7: in recent years, but it is the biggest sales driver
Speaker 7: of the company and probably the most profitable item that
Speaker 7: they sell.
Speaker 1: And as you say, it's kind of come down, and
Speaker 1: some of that has to do, I guess with the
Speaker 1: pandemic when toy sales were just gangbusters for everything over the.
Speaker 7: Past few years, Barbie's head ups and downs. They did
Speaker 7: a big makeover the doll in twenty sixteen. Sales went up,
Speaker 7: So when the pandemic happened and there was an overall
Speaker 7: boom in toy sales, they were well positioned for that
Speaker 7: and sales skyrocketed. But then in recent years there's been inflation,
Speaker 7: there's been economic malaise, and things have kind of fallen
Speaker 7: back down and normalized again.
Speaker 1: Kelly, you mentioned that the company had reimagined Barbie. Why
Speaker 1: did they feel like they needed to reinvent her or
Speaker 1: change the way she was?
Speaker 7: So the way Barbie has traditionally been, you know, has
Speaker 7: been very close to the roots of her invention in
Speaker 7: the nineteen fifties, and it was based on a gold
Speaker 7: digging comic strip character, and she was kind of like
Speaker 7: this archetype of a bombshell blonde, Marilyn Monroe type of figure,
Speaker 7: and they pretty much stayed close to that for most
Speaker 7: of her history. You know, there were some studies that said, like,
Speaker 7: you know, if you put Barbie into a real life
Speaker 7: human forms, you wouldn't have enough space in her midsection
Speaker 7: to fit her intestines. She wouldn't be able to lift
Speaker 7: her head up. It was just very preposterous the kind
Speaker 7: of anatomy that she had, and so the reimagining of
Speaker 7: it was to make it more realistic and also appealing
Speaker 7: to a broader group of young girls. If the doll
Speaker 7: is meant to be a projection of their future selves,
Speaker 7: you just cannot imagine playing adult with a doll that
Speaker 7: just will never be you.
Speaker 1: And Kelly, one of the things in the story that
Speaker 1: you write about is that as Barbie seemed no longer
Speaker 1: kind of relevant and girls no longer saw themselves in Barbie,
Speaker 1: other doll makers moved in to clean that cultural relevance.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they really kind of lost their way, the Mattel
Speaker 7: executives did, I would say starting in the early two thousands.
Speaker 7: That's when the real crisis for Barbie began. It started
Speaker 7: because they had a disastrous acquisition that costs a lot
Speaker 7: of money, and a CEO is a great steward of
Speaker 7: Barbie left the company as a result of that acquisition
Speaker 7: going sour, and so they had the people come in
Speaker 7: and they just weren't as good at connecting. They've done
Speaker 7: well under male leadership before, but it was hard, I guess,
Speaker 7: for those particular men that were CEOs at the time
Speaker 7: to connect with that young girl mindset. For some reason,
Speaker 7: as these years were going on, they had competitors come in,
Speaker 7: which wasn't like the first time that had ever happened,
Speaker 7: but they weren't able to respond to it in a
Speaker 7: good way. The first was an actual MATEL designer who
Speaker 7: worked on Barbie created a new design for some dolls
Speaker 7: called Brats.
Speaker 4: Passions.
Speaker 7: They were more diverse, they were cool.
Speaker 1: I remember those dolls when my daughters were young. They
Speaker 1: were just everywhere. Brats were the doll.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, they were huge. They got to a billion
Speaker 7: dollars in sales pretty quickly, which took Barbie forty years.
Speaker 7: Mattel just got involved in lawsuits and that I got
Speaker 7: totally mired and arguing over that rather than trying to
Speaker 7: address their own product and putting their attention there. And
Speaker 7: at the same time, you know, they also had this license.
Speaker 7: They've had a long term partnership with Disney to create
Speaker 7: toys based on their intellectual property Disney you know, franchises,
Speaker 7: and one of them was Disney Princesses. So they were
Speaker 7: making these Disney Princesses dolls also making Barbies, and they
Speaker 7: were kind of competing against each other within the company
Speaker 7: even and the Disney Princess dolls were doing extremely well,
Speaker 7: the Princess movies were doing extremely well, and I think
Speaker 7: it just caused further atrophying of their focus on Barbie. Eventually,
Speaker 7: what happened was Disney wasn't super happy Hasbro, their you know,
Speaker 7: a long time rival for many many decades, was doing
Speaker 7: also well by making really big movies based on their toys,
Speaker 7: mostly Transformers was the first one, and so they argued
Speaker 7: to Disney they should get the Disney Princess license taken away,
Speaker 7: and that just showed how badly Barbie was performing. Once
Speaker 7: they didn't have those doll sales figures to compensate for
Speaker 7: the Barbie losses anymore. So it was just a lot
Speaker 7: of things that were going on at the same time,
Speaker 7: and they were really they really lost the way because
Speaker 7: they were trying to follow their competitors, and then under
Speaker 7: this era, they were just trying to copy Disney princesses.
Speaker 7: They were trying to copy brats instead of trying to
Speaker 7: do their own thing and stay in tune with what
Speaker 7: girls actually cared and talked about. What partly spurred on
Speaker 7: the body makeover of Barbie in twenty sixteen was market
Speaker 7: research that Mattel did, internal research that showed moms hated Barbie's.
Speaker 7: They would not buy them for their daughters. They just
Speaker 7: wouldn't do it. That partly has eased as they have
Speaker 7: done a lot to improve their image. I wouldn't say
Speaker 7: they have one hundred percent fixed this issue. So there's
Speaker 7: still some research out there that's showing people are still
Speaker 7: associating it the old way, no matter how you know
Speaker 7: much they've done with the actual new toys.
Speaker 1: How does the Barbie of today look different from that
Speaker 1: original Barbie?
Speaker 7: So the Barbie of today comes in many different body types,
Speaker 7: many different skin tones, many different hair color, hair type,
Speaker 7: eye color, as possible you can be with the limits
Speaker 7: of manufacturing. They're broadening it out to include various types
Speaker 7: of physical abilities that people have. They have Barbies in
Speaker 7: a wheelchair, they have Barbies with hearing aids, they have
Speaker 7: Barbies who have limb differences. They have all sorts of
Speaker 7: different types of Barbies, and they will probably continue to
Speaker 7: widen that.
Speaker 1: And has that sparked a Barbie revival in sales that
Speaker 1: all kinds of different girls can see themselves, see their
Speaker 1: future selves in Barbie in a way that they couldn't before.
Speaker 7: Yes, it's definitely sparked reverval and sales. I wouldn't say
Speaker 7: they're at their past glory again. The peak sales was
Speaker 7: in nineteen ninety seven when they had the perfect eighties
Speaker 7: working girls or nineties you know, big hair Barbie that
Speaker 7: was really appealing to little girls. So they've not quite
Speaker 7: got to that level again, but it definitely has improved things.
Speaker 7: And also with the different body types of Barbie's, you
Speaker 7: have to keep in mind that a big portion of
Speaker 7: sales of Barbie is the accessories. So the clothes, the house,
Speaker 7: the car, those were all designed for the old Barbie
Speaker 7: body type. So the new Barbie you kind of have
Speaker 7: to get new stuff to go along with that. So
Speaker 7: it's kind of had an additional boost of their ability
Speaker 7: to sell a new car that the Kirby Barbie can
Speaker 7: fit into and the new clothes that she can wear.
Speaker 1: Since Barbie sales haven't rebounded enough, they're hoping that this
Speaker 1: movie is going to re kindle America's love of Barbie
Speaker 1: and start selling lots more of them.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly. If you look at the history of Barbie,
Speaker 7: the times when the sales have been really good and
Speaker 7: everything's been going really well for the company at large
Speaker 7: is when they've created something that they kind of call
Speaker 7: a cultural moment. When the Space Race was on, they
Speaker 7: made Barbie like an astronaut and she was one of
Speaker 7: the first women, you know, to go to space.
Speaker 4: And body, I think that.
Speaker 7: Body and just kind of keeping up with like these
Speaker 7: things that create a huge conversation and everybody's talking about
Speaker 7: the doll. That buzz is usually enough to keep people interested,
Speaker 7: even if it's sometimes criticism or negativity, And that's exactly
Speaker 7: what they're trying to do with this movie and why
Speaker 7: you see the marketing of it is insane. They are
Speaker 7: trying to make this doll just a subject of conversation
Speaker 7: again and create this kind of cultural moment that make
Speaker 7: girls feel like this is it, this is now, this
Speaker 7: is the cool thing.
Speaker 1: After the break. How the Barbie movie came together.
Speaker 10: I remember I had about three huge boxes for Barbies
Speaker 10: that were gifted to me, and I was not particularly
Speaker 10: interested in them. I remember the funniest part was each
Speaker 10: Barbie will be used about once to have their hair
Speaker 10: chopped off and then forgotten for the rest of time.
Speaker 8: My first memory of a Barbie is Bacomi, Columbia, when
Speaker 8: I used to steal my cousins Barbies so I can
Speaker 8: use Barbie as a get away driver and use her
Speaker 8: car for my Batman figurines.
Speaker 4: So I never played with Barbie's at all. I was
Speaker 4: more interested in Star Wars, action figures and Transformers.
Speaker 5: But this didn't.
Speaker 4: Stop my mother, who so desperately wanted to have a
Speaker 4: girly daughter, from purchasing the special holiday edition Barbie every
Speaker 4: single year.
Speaker 3: I never really played with Barbie as a kid. I
Speaker 3: mostly remember, just like the intense amount of parity that
Speaker 3: existed in like media, she was more often like as
Speaker 3: a brand, a butt of jokes than actually like the
Speaker 3: main character Kelly.
Speaker 1: So now Mattau has decided to make this movie, which
Speaker 1: they think is going to revive Barbie, and they know
Speaker 1: that they've got to get it right. And you tell
Speaker 1: in this story how they went about creating this kind
Speaker 1: of make or break movie.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was a fascinating process because you know, I
Speaker 7: don't even know how many Barbie scripts have been written
Speaker 7: over the years, but this was an idea that was
Speaker 7: long running around Hollywood, running around the company. When it
Speaker 7: really got off the ground was in twenty eighteen Inonchrist
Speaker 7: who is from the entertainment world, has never worked in toys.
Speaker 7: Came from a place called Maker Studios, and he also
Speaker 7: worked at Fox Kids Europe, and so he knows a
Speaker 7: lot about actually creating television content. That's his focus. And
Speaker 7: he said, we need to be an intellectual property company.
Speaker 7: We need to be in the business of managing franchises.
Speaker 11: And the opportunity was to continue to succeed in the
Speaker 11: toy business, fix that area. That that is our foundation.
Speaker 11: This is what we build, an emotional relationship with our fans.
Speaker 11: And from there, once you have that in a good place,
Speaker 11: you can extend the business and grow into other verticals.
Speaker 1: That's Mittel CEO and non Cries and a little plug
Speaker 1: for the home team here. It's from an interview on
Speaker 1: an upcoming episode of the Bloomberg original series called The
Speaker 1: Circuit with Emily Chang.
Speaker 7: So enon Christ He took the lay of the land
Speaker 7: and he saw, you know, there's this script going around
Speaker 7: for Barbie. They had all sorts of different ideas for it.
Speaker 7: One had Amy Schumer attached, and she was gonna be
Speaker 7: you know, it's kind of like this parody and she
Speaker 7: was kicked out of a perfect Barbie world and she
Speaker 7: goes on these zany adventures. Nobody really liked it. He
Speaker 7: didn't like it. It was making fun of the doll. It
Speaker 7: kind of made the doll the butt of the joke.
Speaker 1: He kind of replicated the whole criticism of Barbie, which
Speaker 1: is that she was always kind of not really competent
Speaker 1: and depended on men.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I also think the company didn't exactly know how to
Speaker 7: do this. They never had a blockbuster. They've had one
Speaker 7: like feature film now totally bombed and it horribly called
Speaker 7: Max Deal. Then sowing On said, look, I'm going to
Speaker 7: take charge of this. I'm gonna start my own movie division.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna have my own person run it, who's like
Speaker 7: a very serious Hollywood player, and we're going to do
Speaker 7: it differently in the sense that we're not even going
Speaker 7: to bother these filmmakers. We're going to just let them
Speaker 7: do what they do. Even if we don't like every
Speaker 7: single thing that they say, and maybe they make us
Speaker 7: look a little goofy, it's worth it to make great
Speaker 7: content because that has to be the goal.
Speaker 1: I guess one of the reasons that they had the
Speaker 1: confidence to do that, to go let them do their thing,
Speaker 1: is they attracted some top Hollywood talent to work on
Speaker 1: this movie.
Speaker 7: Yeah, getting the right person to run the movie division
Speaker 7: that was a big key to getting the right talent.
Speaker 7: Yon speaks frequently with Richard love It. He's a co
Speaker 7: chairman at Creative Artists Agencies, very powerful Hollywood agency, and
Speaker 7: he helped get all these people in line for Mattel.
Speaker 7: One of his first orders of businesses he wanted to
Speaker 7: meet Margo when he became the CEO, and within six
Speaker 7: weeks of getting to that position, he was at the
Speaker 7: Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel with Margot Robbie
Speaker 7: because he saw her as a barbie.
Speaker 1: Why why did he see her as a barbie? Other
Speaker 1: than the obvious which is she looks like a Barbie.
Speaker 7: She's very consistently successful. She's a successful producer. She's got
Speaker 7: her own company, Lucky Chap Entertainment, Oscar nominated, done a
Speaker 7: wide variety of film and also a lot of women
Speaker 7: focus filmmaking. She's just very wide appeal to the sort
Speaker 7: of people that they want to speak to.
Speaker 1: So Mattel landed this superstar to play Barbie really important.
Speaker 1: But then there were also the other people working on
Speaker 1: the film to actually write it and make it.
Speaker 7: That's right along the way. He also got Robbie Brenner
Speaker 7: to run the whole Mattel Film division, and she's a
Speaker 7: very powerful Hollywood producer, probably best known for now Spyers Club.
Speaker 12: We wanted to make sure that we were telling a
Speaker 12: story that felt very universal and very global, and it
Speaker 12: wasn't just for girls or women, but it also appealed
Speaker 12: to men as well, and we just wanted to do
Speaker 12: something that sort of could embrace everybody.
Speaker 7: And then as Robbie Brenner and Margot Robbie were in
Speaker 7: conversations and working on the movie together, it was Margot
Speaker 7: Robbie that actually suggested you should get Greta Gerwig to
Speaker 7: do the screenplay, and she's really dominant in a ton
Speaker 7: of this female coming of age genre, probably best known
Speaker 7: for Ladybird, which is somewhat autobiographical movie of her growing
Speaker 7: up in Sacramento, and then Little Women, which is the
Speaker 7: classic retelling the novel of you know, women trying to
Speaker 7: make it in this man's world. Greta by her was
Speaker 7: said yes pretty much right away and got her partner,
Speaker 7: Noah Bambach to sign on too, and they wrote the screw.
Speaker 7: They did it pretty much without interference, and then they
Speaker 7: got very attached to the script and Greta ended up
Speaker 7: becoming the director as well.
Speaker 1: And you write that the script they came up with
Speaker 1: was unlike anything they probably would have imagined that they
Speaker 1: would have come up with for a Barbie movie.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the script was interesting, you know in Nana said
Speaker 7: he didn't want something conventional, and she certainly didn't deliver
Speaker 7: something conventional. She decided, instead of making Barbie the butt
Speaker 7: of the joke, make the Mattel executives the butt of
Speaker 7: the joke and makes fun of the way they kind
Speaker 7: of managed this brand and all the circumstances that Barbie
Speaker 7: and female and Little Girls all the face in real life.
Speaker 1: So since this movie is in one way supposed to
Speaker 1: operate as an ad for Barbie, how did Mattel executives
Speaker 1: react when they saw this script that was kind of
Speaker 1: poking fun at them.
Speaker 7: They say, they laughed really hard, and they thought it
Speaker 7: was hilarious, and they, you know, we're totally in on
Speaker 7: the joke. I imagine there was a little bit of humility
Speaker 7: that they had to accept with this, but they did.
Speaker 1: When we come back Mattel Goo's full tilt with Barbie merchandise.
Speaker 4: When I was a kid, it was kind of a
Speaker 4: house divided. My sister loved the Barbies and I loved
Speaker 4: the hot Wheels, so there was conflict for a while
Speaker 4: until eventually we just decided that the hot wheels and
Speaker 4: Barbiees were friends, and the hot wheels were sentient and
Speaker 4: they could all talk to each other, and then that
Speaker 4: was just like a weird car Barbie commune. I remember
Speaker 4: playing with Barbie's growing up, especially with my older sisters
Speaker 4: and now my nieces play with those Barbies.
Speaker 9: Barbie means so much to me because it was one
Speaker 9: of the first toys that I ever felt represented in.
Speaker 9: You always think of Barbie as this really tall woman
Speaker 9: with blonde hair and high heat and blue eyes. But actually,
Speaker 9: when I went to India for the first time as
Speaker 9: a kid, I remember picking out two Barbies that looked
Speaker 9: just like me. You know, they had hair down to
Speaker 9: their hips and they were wearing traditional Indian langas.
Speaker 1: So Kelly, they delivered this script and now they've made
Speaker 1: the movie, and it's really interesting because the movie itself
Speaker 1: operates on a lot of levels in a way that
Speaker 1: maybe you wouldn't think a silly summer movie would like.
Speaker 1: Barbie herself is kind of a complicated character.
Speaker 7: Yeah, she really is, and you know, this movie kind
Speaker 7: of portrays her as living in this perfect Barbie world
Speaker 7: and there's snow insecurities for women.
Speaker 6: It is the best day I've ever So was yesterday,
Speaker 6: and so is tomorrow and every day from there forever.
Speaker 7: And you know, it's not just Margot Robbie that plays Barbie.
Speaker 7: The whole world is full of Barbie's there, and they're
Speaker 7: all different races and types of people doing different types
Speaker 7: of jobs. Issa Ray is a president Barbie. Douah lipas
Speaker 7: a mermaid Barbie. They have all these different types of people.
Speaker 7: But then she has this existential crisis. We don't really
Speaker 7: know what causes it. But her feet get flat, you know,
Speaker 7: unlike Barbie's classic perfectly arched feet, which are permanently in
Speaker 7: that position. And she thinks about Dan, you think about ninety.
Speaker 7: So she kind of goes into this journey into the
Speaker 7: real world.
Speaker 1: And Margot Robbie as Barbie also has to contend with
Speaker 1: a Kendall who is really still frozen in the past
Speaker 1: version of Ken.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, so Ken, who's played by Ryan Gosling, has
Speaker 7: an interesting journey because in the classic real experience of Ken,
Speaker 7: he was just meant to be an accessory to Barbie.
Speaker 7: He doesn't have a story. There's a joke in the movie,
Speaker 7: the CEO of Mattel, who's played by Will ferrells as
Speaker 7: we never think about Ken. Ever, he kind of tags
Speaker 7: along with her, and I think his story is a
Speaker 7: bit of a mystery. But he body some of these
Speaker 7: old cultural hang ups that have plagued Barbie. They're going
Speaker 7: into a hospital and he asked to perform an app
Speaker 7: in deck to me, just one because he's a man.
Speaker 7: I won't let you do just one app and deck
Speaker 7: to me. But I'm a man, but not a doctor.
Speaker 3: Can I talk to a doctor?
Speaker 7: You are talking to a doctor there he is doctor.
Speaker 1: How many good security so Kelly. Obviously a lot of
Speaker 1: attention to the movie, a lot of hype around the trailer,
Speaker 1: anticipation of the movie coming, but also the merchandise is
Speaker 1: just everywhere.
Speaker 7: Yes, the marketing of the Barbie movie is on another level.
Speaker 7: It's unbelievable. I don't even know how much would have
Speaker 7: been spent on the overall marketing, probably as much as
Speaker 7: one hundred million dollar budget of the actual movie. Not
Speaker 7: all of that by Mattel, a lot of that by
Speaker 7: Warner Brothers. I mean, Mattel has over one hundred merchandise
Speaker 7: partners that are just doing Barbie branded things like Barbie sweatshirts,
Speaker 7: Barbie dog hats, Barbie cocktail glasses, Barbie Ruggs. But also
Speaker 7: just so much stunt marketing that's been a part of this.
Speaker 7: I mean they have this Airbnb Barbie Dreamhouse, so many
Speaker 7: Barbie events, and they've got a real World of Barbie
Speaker 7: exhibit in LA and you can go take your picture
Speaker 7: in a plastic Barbie case. So when we're talking about
Speaker 7: Mattel needs to create cultural moments, I would say the
Speaker 7: marketing of it is almost as important as the movie itself.
Speaker 1: And what's really interesting, as you described this, is that
Speaker 1: it's trying to bring in adults into this world because
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff is not for kids.
Speaker 7: Yeah, most of the things that I've seen in terms
Speaker 7: of the marketing aren't for kids. Very few things are
Speaker 7: for kids. There are actual dolls that are based on
Speaker 7: the Barbie characters, like there's a Margo Robbie Barbie doll,
Speaker 7: so that would be for their traditional three to eight demo,
Speaker 7: But so much of this is for adults, appealing to
Speaker 7: that older group that is still associating Barbie with the
Speaker 7: old image. So this movie is a big opportunity to
Speaker 7: correct those perceptions, you know, from Mettel's point of view.
Speaker 1: And I guess rehabilitate these adults view of Barbie to
Speaker 1: kind of make Barbie safe for their own kids.
Speaker 7: Yes. I mean, if you're a mother and you thought
Speaker 7: about how bad Barbie made you feel, I'm not going
Speaker 7: to make my daughter feel bad by giving her some
Speaker 7: perfect body that she will never attain and just making
Speaker 7: her look at it. So that's what they're trying to
Speaker 7: do is to show no, no, that's not what Barbie
Speaker 7: is anymore. Barbie's going to make your daughter feel good,
Speaker 7: and so they're trying to convince the mothers. So that's
Speaker 7: who they have to rehabilitate the image for. But also
Speaker 7: this is about creating new revenue streams for the company.
Speaker 1: And that's a really important point because it's not just
Speaker 1: this movie that Mattel is hoping we'll turn its around.
Speaker 1: It's the beginning of a huge chain of other movies
Speaker 1: that they hope can build on its success.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they're hoping that this movie serves as the blueprint
Speaker 7: for a bigger business model shift at the company. So
Speaker 7: they feel like they're already very successful at just making
Speaker 7: marketing toys. And if you think about what success for
Speaker 7: one single Barbie movie could be, it would be to
Speaker 7: turn it into a franchise. So then you get the
Speaker 7: Ken spinoff movie, you get the Skipper TV show, you
Speaker 7: get the Barbie theme park. They already have fourteen other
Speaker 7: films on different Mettel brands that they have in the works,
Speaker 7: and so they want to keep replicating.
Speaker 1: Fourteen other movies just announced.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but I mean dozens more that they're developing or
Speaker 7: working to get announced.
Speaker 1: That aren't about Barbie but are based on other Metel toys.
Speaker 7: Yes, Bine large based on other Mettel toys. For the
Speaker 7: most part, it's hot Wheels, it's Matchbox cars, it's Barney
Speaker 7: the Dinosaur, Polly Pocket, American Girl Dolls. They're going into
Speaker 7: the toy chest to try to create new franchises.
Speaker 1: How much money does Mattel hope to make off of
Speaker 1: this Barbie Juggernaut.
Speaker 7: Mattel didn't put any money into the production or only
Speaker 7: maybe a phenomenal amount into the production of the film,
Speaker 7: so they don't get box office returns, they don't get
Speaker 7: ticket sales. All of their money that they make is
Speaker 7: going to be in increasing the value of the company,
Speaker 7: increasing sales overall. It's hard to put a number on
Speaker 7: that because I think they would probably see it as limitless.
Speaker 7: The very highest early estimate I've seen for the domestic
Speaker 7: opening weekend, the three day opening weekend in the US
Speaker 7: and Canada is eighty million dollars. That would make it
Speaker 7: one of the biggest movies of the year, better than
Speaker 7: The Flash, better than Indiana Jones. It would be huge.
Speaker 7: It's supposed to beat Oppenheimer, which is a movie that
Speaker 7: comes up the exact same day, and I would say
Speaker 7: overall it'll be in the hundreds of millions worldwide.
Speaker 1: So at the beginning of our conversation, we're talking about
Speaker 1: how this is really big bet. Do you think that
Speaker 1: it pays off for Mattel?
Speaker 7: I think based on what I've seen, yes, it probably
Speaker 7: will pay off. They do seem to have hit the
Speaker 7: right notes with everything going viral and there being this
Speaker 7: big Barbie craze. That is what they wanted. You know,
Speaker 7: Even if toy sales stay flat this year, I'd say
Speaker 7: in the coming years they could go up just based
Speaker 7: on building off the momentum of this. And even if
Speaker 7: nobody sees the movie, they've already gotten all that attention.
Speaker 1: Kelly, Are you going to see the movie?
Speaker 7: Of course, I'm going to see the movie. I can't wait.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 7: Thank you for having me, Thanks.
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