Mattel is dead for all practical purposes. All the designers are being laid off in waves. and the company is being reduced to nothing, while the fat cats up top accrue ridiculous bonuses for doing their jobs poorly, with zero accountability. For the rest of us, Mattel is just a paycheck, and a good one while it lasts, but don't mistake your Mattel job for a career. Don't expect security, civility, appreciation, or common sense from anyone anywhere. The culture is toxic and dysfunctional. There is neither reason nor incentive to be proactive or do any more than you are told. Motivation comes from fear, not hope. Soon-to-be CEO Dick Dickson and the Board of Directors don't look past next quarter's results and their only priority is keeping inve$tor$ happy by maintaining the dividend at any cost. Happy employees, along with creativity & innovative products are pretty far down their list, so don't expect any TOTYs or "Best 100 Companies to Work For" awards in the next decade or so. On a great day, Mattel's level of competence and relevance might rise briefly to mediocre.
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bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha! We all laugh at the dirty knee twin and how he curries favor with JS when he's in town. Pathetic.
a circle jerk? more like a big gay daisy chain and we all know who the participants are going to be. I'm sure the office twink in NYC is trying to figure out how many VP's he has to blow to be included.
Adler will be paid more than the rest of the FP designers combined. He is doing this as a part time job. More like a hobby while he still runs his own business. It isn't about making product that will fly off the shelves. It is a circle jerk situation for the Capo di Tutti Capi of the Velvet Mafia.
So get get what you pay for so I guess Jonathan Adler's new awesome designs are going quadruple FP's profits because they sure are paying him a ton of money correct?
Remember, Tricky Dickie said he was one the nations top designer in the Q1 update but I think he said the same thing about Quirky the Turkey when he first arrived back @ MattHell but that deal kinda went over like a fart in church.
You get what you pay for
ALL the jobs at Mattel can be shipped to China. Americans are paid to much according to the top dogs. Cheap labor rules.
Last 3 comments are absolutely correct so let the dump sink, who cares? That's why I left when I did, the place smelled.........now it smells even worse as I still know people there who are hating life, but clinging to their paychecks as they await the next whackings.
The only old peeps who survive are the Directors, VPs, SVPs & EVP who will all get their golden parachutes while the people who actually did the work will just get a quick kick in the ass don't let the door hit you on the way out. The stone cold bums rush......nice.
Yes but what are the profits going to be now that disney princess is gone??
I hate to burst all of your close to or over 40 idealistic bubbles of how a company should run; actually I could give a rats assabout your collective fee fee's: find me a company that doesn't push out over the hill employees earning top dollar (for their level) for younger dumber counterparts at a 1/4 of the salary and I'll show you my 2 foot pe--s. guess what? neither exist. every company does it. especially when they're in a slump. dump the older folk who are disgruntled by the current state of affairs and bring in young doe eyed kiddies who think the company craps rainbows abd a fraction of the salary. they'll work harder (new guy enthusiasm), longer, and will be blind to
the BS that goes on around them. what's the moral of all this? shut up. work hard. put on a happy face abd play the game. when you run out of lives the game is over. move on.
I know the Toy Design Majors first hand as I mentored many a MattHell summer intern there. Some are talented, many are not but they are stone cold cheap and will follow any orders given by our upper mismanagement, no question as they know no better.
Otis, FIT, China, ...........all cheap labor going forward.
Real talent, knowledge, & experience means absolutely nothing to Sinclair or Dickson as they wouldn't know these virtues if they ran it over them in the parking lot.
It's really very simple, fire the more expensive talented, tenured designers and just hire fresh recruits for 1/4 of the price of one with tenure.
This is why MattHell is in the sewer, they have brainstorms with so called designers who can't even draw up a rough sketch of the concept at a brainstorm.
No worries, I'll just explain and talk my lame assconcept at the brainstorm because I couldn't even draw it.
Great, just great.
Mattel is not dead. We had a profit of more than $400MM last year.
The only thing that will kill the company is if breaking it up becomes more valuable to the shareholders than keeping it intact.
In the meantime it will remain a horrible place to work for anyone dreaming of doing great work.
The Halcyon Days? Was it really ever that great? When? When the Queen Bee ruled supreme? Hardly think so. That was a MattHell of it's own sort. The cyclical layoffs have been going on for years. The culling of the herd is, and always has been, ongoing. Relentless. Life in the corporate world. Usually it's the older, experienced talent that gets whacked for nothing more than being well compensated for their years of tenure and experience. We're all expendable, no matter how "unique and talented" our egos have us think we are. Hire two replacements for the price of one, or replace one at a fraction of the cost. Back in the day there were no toy majors at colleges. Now fledgling, degreed toy designers are being cranked out by the dozens. Far more than needed, no doubt. Plenty of fresh recruits anxiously vying for whatever positions they can get, making cost cutting replacements that much easier to bring in when and if things start turning around a bit. And so it goes.
I wouldn't say the company is dead. It's certainly not a good company for an employee that is not in management but it generates a lot of money. Like it or not, Mattel has a doll in Barbie that still has a great presence on toy shelves, has great distribution and factories to produce it. There are other brands that have great value as well. The current management seems to be making bad decisions but it looks like the plan is to reduce head count to be the most profitable company that can be. Creativity will surely suffer but I don't think people such as Dickson and Sinclair really care. It makes senses for the direction of the company when you think about the current CEO and his past as head of Pepsi. Toys to people like this are a consumable and not something that needs to be dreamed up and fostered. They think they have the goose that lays golden eggs and maybe they're right. And even if they're wrong, they get paid
You're right, nobody cares anymore and it shows. All the long timers in EA are just waiting for the tap on the shoulder to leave with a package, as paltry as they have become. People are doing the minimum to just finish the shift and get the hell out.