Mattel

I was 8 years old when I first met Barbie, and I wanted a life just like hers. She had a boyfriend, Ken; a best friend, Midge; and a lot of clothes. From Barbie, I learned a sartorial approach to existence: You need only to have the right outfit, and the life to go with it will appear. Buy a poofy dress and you get a date for the prom; plan a trousseau and marriage will follow; buy the right suit and a career would materialize. But today, Barbie turns 50, and I don't think she's prepared.

LOS ANGELES -- The California attorney general and the Los Angeles city attorney filed a lawsuit yesterday against Mattel Inc., Toys R Us Inc. and 18 other companies, accusing them of making or selling products that contain "unlawful quantities of lead." The move follows major recalls of toys, lunch boxes, children's jewelry and other goods during the past year by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in Washington. The suit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court under California's Proposition 65 law, would force manufacturers and retailers to adopt procedures for inspecting products to make sure they are safe.

At the age of 8, I was invited to my first BYOB party -- Bring Your Own Barbie.My girlfriends, armed with their favorite Barbie dolls and clothes, would spend the night trading outfits and creating stories about the beloved dolls. There was one stipulation: If you don't have a Barbie, don't bother showing up.My mother (far from a radical feminist) refused to let me go. Although I was unaware of the logic at the time, Mom knew that two of the girls in my class didn't have a Barbie doll. She wasn't going to let them be the only ones left out.As the world's most famous doll turns 40 tomorrow, I can't help feeling left out again.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Mattel Inc., the world's largest toy maker, warned yesterday that third-quarter profit will miss forecasts by as much as 55 percent because of slow software sales, sending its shares down 30 percent.The company had been expected to earn 67 cents a share, the average estimate of nine analysts polled by First Call Corp., but now expects to come in under the 39 cents that it posted for the third quarter a year earlier.Mattel blamed returned software, higher promotional spending and a canceled licensing pact at the Learning Co. unit acquired in May.Shares of the maker of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars fell $5 to $11.875.

NEW YORK -- U.S. stocks fell yesterday, led by Mattel Inc. and computer companies, as the economy slows and hundreds of companies are warning that earnings will not meet expectations.Mattel tumbled $8.125, to $22, its biggest decline in 16 years, after it became the latest in a string of companies to warn of a profit shortfall. The drop shaved $2.5 billion from Mattel's market value. The world's biggest toy maker was the most active stock in U.S. trading, and the biggest loser in the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

Little girls can now take part in Barbie creator Ruth Handler's dream for just $39.99, plus shipping and handling.Starting this week, Web users can log on to Mattel Inc.'s Barbie Web site (www.barbie.com) and customize their own Barbie-like doll with the ethnicity, hair, eye color and outfits of their choice."We wanted to personalize it so that little girls will feel that it's special, that it belongs to them." said Nancie S. Martin, the director of online content for Barbie. There are roughly 15,000 different combinations of the doll, dubbed "My Design," that can be conceived, Martin said.

"Toy Wars: The Epic Struggle Between G.I. Joe, Barbie, and the Companies that Make Them," by G. Wayne Miller. Times Books. 348 pages. $25.Backstage at the toy industry is no place for children. It is filled with greedy brutes who have zero respect for under-age consumers. In "Toy Wars," G. Wayne Miller, a novelist and reporter for the Providence Journal, paints an unflinching portrait of this unsavory terrain.Permitted behind the scenes by executives of Hasbro, which makes G.I. Joe, Miller has constructed a swiftly moving narrative with all the elements of a mini series: a hero, Hasbro CEO Alan Hassenfeld; an antagonist, Mattel CEO John Ammerman; a climactic battle, Mattel's hostile bid to annex Hasbro, and a resolution, from which the hero emerges transformed.

Federal antitrust regulators are taking a closer look at the proposed $755 merger of Tyco Toys Inc. of Mount Laurel, N.J., and Mattel Inc., the nation's largest toy company.The two companies said yesterday that the Federal Trade Commission has asked for additional information about the merger. When it was announced in November, analysts said they did not expect antitrust problems.Mattel, based in El Segundo, Calif., had 1995 sales of $3.6 billion. Tyco, the country's third-largest toymaker, had 1995 sales of $709 million.

Arthur S. Spear, 75, former president and chairman of Mattel Inc., died Sunday in Los Angeles after a series of strokes. Under his leadership, the Barbie-doll maker increased net sales from $281 million in 1973, when he was named president, to $1 billion in 1986, when he retired as chairman.Paul Lipson, 82, a Broadway entertainer who appeared as Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof" more times than any other actor, died Wednesday in New York. The original 1964 Broadway production of the musical starred Zero Mostel as Tevye, the play's protagonist, and Lipson as Avram, the bookseller.

Mattel Inc. yesterday withdrew a $5.2 billion offer to merge with rival toy maker Hasbro Inc., saying Hasbro's "unbending stance" against the deal had made it impossible to complete the transaction in a timely and friendly manner.In a third letter sent in the last week to Alan Hassenfeld, Hasbro's chairman and chief executive, John Amerman, Mattel's chairman and chief executive, said the "scorched earth" campaign Hasbro has waged since Jan. 23, when Mattel publicly disclosed that its offer had been spurned, "has created an intolerable climate."

I was 8 years old when I first met Barbie, and I wanted a life just like hers. She had a boyfriend, Ken; a best friend, Midge; and a lot of clothes. From Barbie, I learned a sartorial approach to existence: You need only to have the right outfit, and the life to go with it will appear. Buy a poofy dress and you get a date for the prom; plan a trousseau and marriage will follow; buy the right suit and a career would materialize. But today, Barbie turns 50, and I don't think she's prepared.

Columbia-based Celsion has deal with Japan firm Columbia-based drug maker Celsion Corp. said yesterday that Japanese pharmaceutical firm Yakult Honsha Co. Ltd has agreed to pay up to $20.5 million in licensing fees for the rights to market Celsion's liver cancer treatment, ThermoDox, to the Japanese market. ThermoDox is in a phase 3 clinical trial in the U.S. for liver cancer as well as a phase 2 trial for recurrent chest wall breast cancer. Yakult will pay Celsion $2.5 million, followed by $18 million once ThermoDox gains approval from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare to treat primary liver cancer.

Jail health provider purchases CMHS Hanover-based Conmed Healthcare Management, Inc., which provides health care services to county detention centers, said yesterday it had acquired Maryland-based Correctional Mental Health Services LLC for $2.2 million. CMHS provides behavioral health services to 13 counties in Maryland. The deal includes $1.8 million in cash, about 81,000 shares and assumption of certain liabilities and expenses. The transaction closed Tuesday. Andrea K. Walker Mortgage rates drop to average 6.2 percent WASHINGTON : Mortgage rates dropped this week, providing a dose of welcome news to prospective homebuyers.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings announced yesterday that he has asked Mattel Inc. to stop using lead in its toys. Speaking at a news conference at the Union Baptist Head Start Center on Druid Hill Avenue, the Baltimore Democrat accused the company of not doing enough to keep children safe. He focused on the Fisher Price Medical Kit, which according to research by Consumer Reports, contained pieces with lead concentration five times the federal standard. Fisher Price is a subsidiary of Mattel.

LOS ANGELES -- The California attorney general and the Los Angeles city attorney filed a lawsuit yesterday against Mattel Inc., Toys R Us Inc. and 18 other companies, accusing them of making or selling products that contain "unlawful quantities of lead." The move follows major recalls of toys, lunch boxes, children's jewelry and other goods during the past year by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in Washington. The suit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court under California's Proposition 65 law, would force manufacturers and retailers to adopt procedures for inspecting products to make sure they are safe.

WASHINGTON -- Mattel Chief Executive Robert Eckert said yesterday that the toy company has upgraded its methods to keep toys safe from excess lead, and he pointed to overseas contractors as the source of recent problems that have prompted it to announce three recalls affecting more than 20 million toys. "We were let down, and we let you down," Eckert said in testimony to a Senate subcommittee. "We are doing everything we can to prevent this from happening again." Eckert appeared at a hearing in which the head of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said Chinese regulators had agreed to stop U.S. exports of all toys containing lead.

Mattel's recent recall of lead-tainted toys made in China reminded me of my childhood. As a Chinese-American girl growing up in the 1970s, I was fascinated by Barbie's rear end. Not only was it plump and round, like her prominent breasts, but my doll carried this inscription: "Made in Hong Kong." In the 1960s, long before outsourcing became rampant in other industries, Mattel and other toy manufacturers opened factories in Asia, employing thousands of poor, single women. My mother was one of them.

Shopping at Barstons Child's Play in North Baltimore yesterday, Elizabeth Carhuapoma had safety on her mind as she heard news of the latest toy recall by Mattel. "Certain brands I trust more, so it's disappointing when Mattel and Fisher-Price drop the ball," said Carhuapoma, 34, of Baltimore, who bought a Webkinz doll for her 6-year-old son Ethan. "So we got into more specialty stores to get higher-quality toys even though we pay more." While big toy retailers and discounters scrambled yesterday to pull millions of toys from stores across the country, independent shops like Child's Play say a wave of recalls of Chinese imports is bringing in customers worried about lead paint and other hazards.

They're small, fast and made for racing. But they are also pink or purple and sparkly, and come with a tiny doll. Girls are getting their own line of $3 toy race cars this year from the maker of Matchbox - half a century after that brand, now owned by Mattel Inc., introduced its classic die-cast toy for boys. Long after the women's movement prompted equality in playthings, with sewing sets for boys and tool kits for girls, no major toy company had endeavored to create an entire line of miniature die-cast racers just for girls.

Los Angeles -- If Barbie were a song, what would she sound like? The question sat in Tena Clark's mind as she drove through downtown Los Angeles last fall. The answer was no small matter. With Barbie's sales sagging, toy maker Mattel Inc. had turned to Clark, a pioneer in the emerging field of "sonic branding," to give the icon of American beauty a marketing face-lift. Recent scientific research had suggested that distinct combinations of a few musical notes - known in the advertising world as a "sonic brand" - could have more influence on consumers than the longer, frequently changing jingles Mattel had used for years.