Mattel Partners With Amazon to Bring “Fireman Sam” to Children

In a New York Times article posted yesterday, journalist Brooks Barnes speaks of a new coordinated effort by Mattel and Amazon to bring a European animated series to the US, complete with a “content hub” where the program will be aired right alongside product.

The NYT article calls this:

” . . . a potentially controversial experiment that, if successful, could create a new model for marrying television shows with related merchandise.”

Well, Mattel is no stranger to television shows and animation driving toy sales. Thirty years ago, as many of us know, Mattel (and Hasbro and others) used cartoons to sell toys. Those cartoons showed kids the various toys in action, and the televised adventures drove a hell of a lot of toy sales.

“Helping to push sales through the stratosphere was the number-one Nielsen-rated daily 30-minute syndicated TV children’s show, naturally called Masters of the Universe, with a kid audience in the millions, which aired on some 160 stations in the United States, and in some four-dozen other countries and in languages such as Swahili, Arabic, and Zulu.”

–Jerry Oppenheimer, Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel*

What makes the plan described in the NYT article different from what happened three decades ago, though, is the fact that the sales will happen in the exact same place where the show is broadcast. The internet continues to change the world, especially commerce, and I see this less as a controversial move and more as very smart marketing and promotion work.