Intellivisionaries Episode 48 is up! (feedback thread)

[StephenJ01]

On 10/22/2023 at 9:36 PM, StephenJ01 said:

Hey guys,
Another excellent show!

Couple comments:
- I think I prefer the non-live interview format. I like how the guest has more time to think about the questions...maybe resulting in more thorough answers...rather than responding off-the-cuff. 
- Rick, great ending topic! Thanks to you, I just bought a DSi XL off eBay. Nintellivision here I come!

Thanks Rick and Chris for your efforts,
Stephen

------------------------------------------------------------------------

FWIW: I have been a member, contributor and customer of AA for several years. Recently, somehow my account got messed-up and I could not log into AA.
Al was able to fix the problem, but now, when I post new topics, it says that I've only posted a few topics and I joined in August 2023.
Hopefully, this will get corrected soon.

  

 

  

Just a follow-up,
Rick...as you described in episode 48, I was able to mod my new (old) DSi XL, have it boot right to the Twighlight menu, and run Nintellivision...very cool!
I also downloaded the available overlays. Works great.
I'm looking forward to any further coverage, on this excellent software, you may choose to include in further episodes.

 

Thanks again Rick, Chris...and of course llabnip
Stephen

 

BTW,
Do you think it would be a good idea to start a thread here on AA for the Nintellivision overlays?...to post the ones that are currently available as well as new ones created by Users?

Just a thought 

[+fdr4prez]

2 hours ago, StephenJ01 said:

Do you think it would be a good idea to start a thread here on AA for the Nintellivision overlays?...to post the ones that are currently available as well as new ones created by Users?

Just a thought

You are welcome to start any thread that you desire. 

 

Right now the overlays are discussed here:

 

 

 

 

[+wavemotion]

13 hours ago, StephenJ01 said:

BTW,
Do you think it would be a good idea to start a thread here on AA for the Nintellivision overlays?...to post the ones that are currently available as well as new ones created by Users?

Just a thought 

I know @ts-x has a nice set of alternate overlays for his personal use... I believe he shared a draft set over on the Nintellivision thread I started some while back over at gbatemp.

[ts-x]

5 hours ago, llabnip said:

I know @ts-x has a nice set of alternate overlays for his personal use... I believe he shared a draft set over on the Nintellivision thread I started some while back over at gbatemp.

Rather than hijack this thread 😁, please see my post in @llabnip’s thread referenced above for more info about these. 

Edited November 5, 2023 by ts-x

[Davidvision]

I will miss the snarky comments from Paul's wife.

When I catch up  I'm currently on episode 16 and working my way forward.

 

 

[+nurmix]

On 11/9/2023 at 5:34 PM, Davidvision said:

I will miss the snarky comments from Paul's wife.

When I catch up  I'm currently on episode 16 and working my way forward.

 

 

I still get them at home most days!

[+fdr4prez]

On 11/2/2023 at 12:40 PM, gavvv said:

I definitely chuckle each time Rick tries to pronounce your screen name

I think we all did.

On 11/3/2023 at 8:54 AM, wavemotion said:

With the extra emphasis on the initial 'L', I do feel like Rick is lovingly whispering my screen name into my good ear. 

Well, now Rick had better not screw up your new screen name.

 

too bad you didn't use "noitomevaw" for your new name  

[Walter Ives]

On 10/11/2023 at 3:20 PM, Rick Reynolds said:

We also have an interview with ... Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman

A fascinating interview.

WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 10/11/2023 at 3:20 PM, Rick Reynolds said:

[From the podcast:] When we interviewed Josh out in Palm Springs, we went to his house and interviewed him, Josh Denham was the president of Mattel Electronics for the majority, he was the third of four, but he was the president for the most, largest time in the most important period, and we were talking about this kind of branding crossover toy kind of thing, and I actually mentioned to Josh, Auto Race was one of the first Intellivision games, I played it so much as a kid, why didn't you do a Hot Wheels, you know, Auto Race? And he turned to me and said, Tom, if you had brought that up I would have given you a promotion.

Denham was surely speaking ironically; had he actually followed that policy at the time he would have had to give out hundreds of sets of wings. Mattel had thousands of employees and even more customer purchasing agents; such an obvious connection did not escape even the Odbodys among them. The idea had come up repeatedly for the handheld Auto Racing game in 1976 and was dismissed as soon as uttered, as the branding didn't really fit. It didn't really fit the Auto Race cartridge either. However, screens were developed for both a Wheels adaptation and a slot car game that might have been better fits.

WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 10/11/2023 at 3:20 PM, Rick Reynolds said:

[From the podcast:] But back then, the very much—part of this time Ruth Handler is either still there or very recently stepped down.

Nope. The Handlers were the not-entirely-hapless victims of giving MBA geniuses sufficient power to conduct an earlier run at bankrupting Barbie and were caught red-handed trying to cover up the ensuing carnage. They didn't exactly step down—Art Spear engineered their removal and banishment, and that of their little dogs, too. Starting in 1973 their fingernails were unceremoniously pried from Mattel, one-by-one, until the final ties were cut in October 1975. The new emperor scrubbed Mattel of their memory; all that remained were tiny, flickering flames hiding the bosoms of the likes of Denham and Wagner.

WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 10/11/2023 at 3:20 PM, Rick Reynolds said:

[From the podcast:] The one thing that was surprising to me was when we first came to Intellivision I thought it was the system that competed against Atari and that Mattel decided to do a video game system to get into the market and compete against Atari. One thing we discovered was that wasn't actually the case...

I find the whole Intellivision story fascinating—there is a whole lot that wasn't quite as it seems. I'm continually surprised by the way people make wrong inferences and how those wrong inferences take over the narrative. The particular inference to which you refer was authoritatively and emphatically spread by no other Keith Robinson himself. Inferences become hard facts as they promulgate from secondary source to secondary source—it makes me wonder about how much we "know" about our past from historians and archaeologists is materially wrong. Maybe Boellstorf and Soderman could use the Intellivision as a case study on that.

WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 10/11/2023 at 3:20 PM, Rick Reynolds said:

[From the podcast:] They went with the handhelds because they were more toy-like and they were simpler to produce and they were familiar to the toy company because they'd be kind of like toy size, like a pocket radio, they could handle the technology a little bit better, and so the programmable game system was put on the back burner.

Here's an example. While B&S's statement seems reasonable on its face, it is inferring a linearization that just didn't exist in reality. Mattel was an environment in which thousands of ideas briefly popped into existence like virtual quantum fluctuations, only to subside and vanish back into the froth.* The vestiges of these ideas may or may not pop up later somewhere else and in different form. Only occasionally did an idea materialize from the background with sufficient traction to be followed up on. That happened for handheld Auto Race in early 1976; it didn't happen for Intellivision until 1977. Mattel didn't "go with the handhelds" first because "they were more toy-like and they were simpler to produce and they were familiar to the toy company because they'd be kind of like toy size," it was driven to execute when it did because the whole concept suddenly gelled. Spear and Wagner were not adverse to doing something bold if the stars were properly aligned, and they just didn't see them as being so for a video game in 1976. The "programmable game system" was not "put on the back burner," it wasn't seen as promising enough to merit any burner at all.

WJI

* Mattel is hardly unique in this; one can find the same across the breadth of the human intellectual experience, from farming to war planning.

[Walter Ives]

On 10/11/2023 at 3:20 PM, Rick Reynolds said:

[From the podcast:] That was a real discovery because actually the handhelds were released first, but they weren't conceived first. What became Intellivision, the programmable video game system, was actually the earlier idea and people like Larry Sims played a crucial role in coming up with that idea before the handhelds. But it was produced in the reverse order for the reasons Braxton mentioned.

Crediting Sims with "coming up with that idea" (of what? making a video game?) is a bit of a stretch—Ralph Baer thinks the idea was his and spent much of his life telling people so, but Russell and Higinbotham both have far better claims. Both the Magnavox Odyssey and the arcade Pong game were introduced in 1972 and the cocktail table Tank game pervaded restaurant waiting areas everywhere: there were few at Mattel who hadn't encountered one. Nor was Sims the only person with the idea that Mattel should get into video games—there was a veritable throng of outsiders angling for appointments that upper management had to beat away. Spear and Wagner's thinking was actually ahead of them all: they had expressly decided in 1974, even before Spear took total control of the company, that Mattel would NOT be getting into video games. Thanks to their prescience, Mattel did not fall victim to the first video game crash.

Even though Spear and Wagner were clear, Richard Chang, as director of the Preliminary Design group responsible for developing electronic toys, would surely have been derelict of duty had he not continued to monitor developments. Sims was one of Chang's minions. Since Sims was personally into that scene, he enthusiastically took on much of the legwork these investigations entailed. However, it was Chang, not Sims, who played the crucial role.

WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 10/11/2023 at 3:20 PM, Rick Reynolds said:

Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman authors of the upcoming book "Intellivision: How a video game system battled Atari and almost Bankrupted Barbie".

Having commented on the contents of the interview, I'm still chuckling over the title of the book. Adding those last four words was absolutely brilliant. I say without exaggeration that they will increase interest in this book a hundred-fold.

Of course, they're pure clickbait. But that's the nature of the press: titles, headlines and cover art have served as clickbait for centuries before that term was invented.

The truth is that Barbie was never in any danger whatsoever. Let me lay out the case for that by marshalling some facts which are generally known by the long-term participants in this forum.

1.  By 1966 Elliot and Ruth Handler had created a very successful toy company and were looking to expand their empire beyond toys and become moguls. To accomplish that they hired Seymour Rosenberg of Litton Industries to help them turn Mattel into a behemoth. Under Rosenberg's guidance they leveraged Mattel Toys success to buy other companies and start other ventures, in the process creating a conglomerate in which Mattel Inc. became the parent company to not only Mattel Toys but also to Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey (circus), Monogram (plastic model kits), Metaframe (pet supplies), Audio Magnetics (cassette players), Turco (playground equipment) and Optigan (electronic organs). Each of these other companies was a separate corporation.

2.  The conglomerate's financial plan depended on its stock price continuously increasing. When the inevitable downturn occurred the company's management resorted to some extremely creative accounting to keep the stock price up. This caught up with them when sales didn't magically turn back around. In 1973 Mattel Inc. imploded and began selling off its ancillary businesses. The Handlers and Rosenberg were targeted by the government for fraud.

3.  Art Spear, who had come to Mattel from Revlon and risen to executive vice-president, managed to keep himself untainted. He obtained financing from an investment banker named John Vogelstein and manipulated his control of their personal relationship to engineer a coup that eliminated the Handlers and installed himself as president of Mattel Inc.

4.  Although bruised, the Mattel Toys subsidiary, which included Barbie, was on its own still a viable business. Ray Wagner, vice-president for marketing and also untainted by the scandal, became president. Josh Denham became vice-president operations. Richard Chang, who had had a close personal relationship with Elliot Handler in starting the Optigan electronic organ division, became a director of Preliminary Design in the toy company in charge of the group developing new electronic toys.

5.  But Spear had greater ambitions: he wanted to be a mogul himself. As Mattel recovered, he returned Mattel to the strategy of getting into new businesses, either by buying them or by developing them internally. Among other things Spear hired Ed Krakauer, who had been "consulting" after losing his position at Hunt-Wesson, to develop new businesses. Krakauer, a bit out of his element in the toy world, found an acolyte in Jeff Rochlis at Aurora. As a seed, the two were given Chang's handheld auto race and football games to market. This became the nucleus of Mattel Electronics. It helped that there wasn't a turf war: Wagner didn't particularly want the electronic games business for Mattel Toys. Tom Kalinske was somewhat interested, but he got a plum position running Mattel International instead.

6.  In 1979 Spear became chairman of Mattel Inc. and a Reynolds Tobacco executive named Robert Anderson was hired to become its president.

7.  Spear and Anderson wanted to resume conglomerating and oversaw a huge spending splurge. By the start of the 1983 crash, Mattel Inc.'s holdings had grown to include

  Mattel Toys, under the direction of Ray Wagner
  Mattel International, under the direction of Tom Kalinske
  Mattel Electronics, under the direction of Josh Denham
  Western Publishing (Golden Books)
  Holiday on Ice
  Circus World
  Solid State Scientific

8.  In 1983 the video game business crashed and Mattel Electronics imploded. The parent company Mattel Inc. was on the hook for many of Mattel Electronics' obligations and was so in big trouble. But that didn't materially affect either Mattel Toys or Mattel International: both of those companies remained viable and profitable. They were separate corporations insulated from Mattel Electronics and in no real danger from its collapse.

9.  The Toy company did have one problem: at the beginning of 1983 a few large retailers who were customers of both Mattel Toys and Mattel Electronics wanted to return unsold video game inventory to Electronics for credit and threatened to dump Barbie if the combined company didn't agree to do so. Toys "R" Us was particularly exposed as a result of the market crash and therefore particularly aggressive out of desperation. (Big surprise: it was not just the manufacturers whose viability was threatened by the crash.) It was, of course, a big game of chicken, for any retailer who refused to carry Mattel's popular toys out of spite would be putting itself at a competitive disadvantage with respect to those who chose to move forward. Toys "R" Us was helped by the fact that the Toy company executive's bonuses were contingent upon meeting projections, which motivated them to put their personal interests ahead of what was in the best interest of Mattel Inc. as a whole. That is to say, Toy company executives, who had always harbored a poorly hidden resentment of the upstart Electronics division, argued for Electronics to take back Toys "R" Us overstock so that Toys "R" Us wouldn't stop selling Toy company product and their own performance bonuses wouldn't be impacted. But that was a transitory problem that worked itself out in a few months.

10.  By July 1983 everybody of note in the corporate financing world knew of Mattel's problems. By everybody I mean capital firms like Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts, E.M. Warburg, Pincus & Co., Drexel Burnham Lambert, Carl Icahn, etc. They could all see that Electronics was toast and that Toys was a plum waiting to be plucked. There was ZERO danger of the toy division going under—one of the vulture funds was going to snap it up. Barbie was an ongoing success and there was NO WAY she was going to be bankrupted. Wagner had done well with the Toy division, so his own job was secure too.

11.  Not only was Barbie well protected by corporate structure, but by November it was clear that the toy business was booming and that Mattel Toys was going to experience a record year.

12.  The only real question was, could Spear and Anderson manage the situation in such a manner that (a) Mattel Inc.'s existing shareholders ended up with something and (b) the two of them kept their jobs.

13.  The answer was, yup. They could and they did. Spear went back to his old buddy John Vogelstein. In an absolute masterful piece of sleight-of-hand, the two people most responsible for being asleep at the wheel, Spear and Anderson, not only managed to escape blame, they actually got credit in the press for rescuing the company. Spear was even credited with rescuing the company twice. ("Arthur S. Spear, who as chairman of Mattel Inc. led the company, widely known for its line of Barbie dolls, through two crises, died on Sunday at the U.C.L.A. Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 75." New York Times.) Talk about having a good publicist.

So did the Intellivision really almost kill off Barbie? I think not.

Clickbait.

WJI

[Crash7]

1 hour ago, Walter Ives said:

 

Having commented on the contents of the interview, I'm still chuckling over the title of the book. Adding those last four words was absolutely brilliant. I say without exaggeration that they will increase interest in this book a hundred-fold.

Of course, they're pure clickbait. But that's the nature of the press: titles, headlines and cover art have served as clickbait for centuries before that term was invented.

The truth is that Barbie was never in any danger whatsoever. Let me lay out the case for that by marshalling some facts which are generally known by the long-term participants in this forum.

1.  By 1966 Elliot and Ruth Handler had created a very successful toy company and were looking to expand their empire beyond toys and become moguls. To accomplish that they hired Seymour Rosenberg of Litton Industries to help them turn Mattel into a behemoth. Under Rosenberg's guidance they leveraged Mattel Toys success to buy other companies and start other ventures, in the process creating a conglomerate in which Mattel Inc. became the parent company to not only Mattel Toys but also to Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey (circus), Monogram (plastic model kits), Metaframe (pet supplies), Audio Magnetics (cassette players), Turco (playground equipment) and Optigan (electronic organs). Each of these other companies was a separate corporation.

2.  The conglomerate's financial plan depended on its stock price continuously increasing. When the inevitable downturn occurred the company's management resorted to some extremely creative accounting to keep the stock price up. This caught up with them when sales didn't magically turn back around. In 1973 Mattel Inc. imploded and began selling off its ancillary businesses. The Handlers and Rosenberg were targeted by the government for fraud.

3.  Art Spear, who had come to Mattel from Revlon and risen to executive vice-president, managed to keep himself untainted. He obtained financing from an investment banker named John Vogelstein and manipulated his control of their personal relationship to engineer a coup that eliminated the Handlers and installed himself as president of Mattel Inc.

4.  Although bruised, the Mattel Toys subsidiary, which included Barbie, was on its own still a viable business. Ray Wagner, vice-president for marketing and also untainted by the scandal, became president. Josh Denham became vice-president operations. Richard Chang, who had had a close personal relationship with Elliot Handler in starting the Optigan electronic organ division, became a director of Preliminary Design in the toy company in charge of the group developing new electronic toys.

5.  But Spear had greater ambitions: he wanted to be a mogul himself. As Mattel recovered, he returned Mattel to the strategy of getting into new businesses, either by buying them or by developing them internally. Among other things Spear hired Ed Krakauer, who had been "consulting" after losing his position at Hunt-Wesson, to develop new businesses. Krakauer, a bit out of his element in the toy world, found an acolyte in Jeff Rochlis at Aurora. As a seed, the two were given Chang's handheld auto race and football games to market. This became the nucleus of Mattel Electronics. It helped that there wasn't a turf war: Wagner didn't particularly want the electronic games business for Mattel Toys. Tom Kalinske was somewhat interested, but he got a plum position running Mattel International instead.

6.  In 1979 Spear became chairman of Mattel Inc. and a Reynolds Tobacco executive named Robert Anderson was hired to become its president.

7.  Spear and Anderson wanted to resume conglomerating and oversaw a huge spending splurge. By the start of the 1983 crash, Mattel Inc.'s holdings had grown to include

  Mattel Toys, under the direction of Ray Wagner
  Mattel International, under the direction of Tom Kalinske
  Mattel Electronics, under the direction of Josh Denham
  Western Publishing (Golden Books)
  Holiday on Ice
  Circus World
  Solid State Scientific

8.  In 1983 the video game business crashed and Mattel Electronics imploded. The parent company Mattel Inc. was on the hook for many of Mattel Electronics' obligations and was so in big trouble. But that didn't materially affect either Mattel Toys or Mattel International: both of those companies remained viable and profitable. They were separate corporations insulated from Mattel Electronics and in no real danger from its collapse.

9.  The Toy company did have one problem: at the beginning of 1983 a few large retailers who were customers of both Mattel Toys and Mattel Electronics wanted to return unsold video game inventory to Electronics for credit and threatened to dump Barbie if the combined company didn't agree to do so. Toys "R" Us was particularly exposed as a result of the market crash and therefore particularly aggressive out of desperation. (Big surprise: it was not just the manufacturers whose viability was threatened by the crash.) It was, of course, a big game of chicken, for any retailer who refused to carry Mattel's popular toys out of spite would be putting itself at a competitive disadvantage with respect to those who chose to move forward. Toys "R" Us was helped by the fact that the Toy company executive's bonuses were contingent upon meeting projections, which motivated them to put their personal interests ahead of what was in the best interest of Mattel Inc. as a whole. That is to say, Toy company executives, who had always harbored a poorly hidden resentment of the upstart Electronics division, argued for Electronics to take back Toys "R" Us overstock so that Toys "R" Us wouldn't stop selling Toy company product and their own performance bonuses wouldn't be impacted. But that was a transitory problem that worked itself out in a few months.

10.  By July 1983 everybody of note in the corporate financing world knew of Mattel's problems. By everybody I mean capital firms like Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts, E.M. Warburg, Pincus & Co., Drexel Burnham Lambert, Carl Icahn, etc. They could all see that Electronics was toast and that Toys was a plum waiting to be plucked. There was ZERO danger of the toy division going under—one of the vulture funds was going to snap it up. Barbie was an ongoing success and there was NO WAY she was going to be bankrupted. Wagner had done well with the Toy division, so his own job was secure too.

11.  Not only was Barbie well protected by corporate structure, but by November it was clear that the toy business was booming and that Mattel Toys was going to experience a record year.

12.  The only real question was, could Spear and Anderson manage the situation in such a manner that (a) Mattel Inc.'s existing shareholders ended up with something and (b) the two of them kept their jobs.

13.  The answer was, yup. They could and they did. Spear went back to his old buddy John Vogelstein. In an absolute masterful piece of sleight-of-hand, the two people most responsible for being asleep at the wheel, Spear and Anderson, not only managed to escape blame, they actually got credit in the press for rescuing the company. Spear was even credited with rescuing the company twice. ("Arthur S. Spear, who as chairman of Mattel Inc. led the company, widely known for its line of Barbie dolls, through two crises, died on Sunday at the U.C.L.A. Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 75." New York Times.) Talk about having a good publicist.

So did the Intellivision really almost kill off Barbie? I think not.

Clickbait.

WJI

 

Hopefully you were typing on a laptop or a regular computer keyboard and not text to speech.

 

Breathe! LOL 

[Walter Ives]

On 2/18/2024 at 8:12 AM, Walter Ives said:

Nope. The Handlers were the not-entirely-hapless victims of giving MBA geniuses sufficient power to conduct an earlier run at bankrupting Barbie and were caught red-handed trying to cover up the ensuing carnage. They didn't exactly step down—Art Spear engineered their removal and banishment, and that of their little dogs, too. Starting in 1973 their fingernails were unceremoniously pried from Mattel, one-by-one, until the final ties were cut in October 1975. The new emperor scrubbed Mattel of their memory; all that remained were tiny, flickering flames hiding the bosoms of the likes of Denham and Wagner.

WJI

I note the "confused" icon in the feedback area, so let me unpack it.

On 2/18/2024 at 8:12 AM, Walter Ives said:

Nope. The Handlers were the not-entirely-hapless victims of giving MBA geniuses sufficient power to conduct an earlier run at bankrupting Barbie and were caught red-handed trying to cover up the ensuing carnage.

See the attached article.

 

On 2/18/2024 at 8:12 AM, Walter Ives said:

They didn't exactly step down—Art Spear engineered their removal and banishment, and that of their little dogs, too.

Note that the government was not demanding the Handler's resignation. The article states, "the banks who loaned Mattel large sums of money didn't want the Handlers running the company." That's a platitude—"banks" are inanimate, inanimate entities can't want things. Specific humans want things. Spear was the executive at Mattel managing the rescue financing, and he used his position and personal relationship to persuade John Vogelstein of Warburg Pincus to help him stage his coup.

Unlike Zzzz Best, Enron or Theranos, which were entirely fraudulent operations, the Handlers had built up a legitimate underlying business and didn’t start out trying to cheat its shareholders. Mattel's shareholders would probably have reaped more value had the Handlers been allowed to stay on and clean up the mess, with minders to watch over the financials (the SEC even offered to accept this). But kings are toppled by the persistent undermining, plotting and machinations of specific power-grubbing individuals who have it in for them, and here Spear played Scar to the Handlers' Mustafa.

 

On 2/18/2024 at 8:12 AM, Walter Ives said:

and that of their little dogs, too.

New kings clean house and replace the previous king's underlings with their own.

 

On 2/18/2024 at 8:12 AM, Walter Ives said:

Starting in 1973 their fingernails were unceremoniously pried from Mattel, one-by-one, until the final ties were cut in October 1975.

It took Spear two years to completely separate the Handlers from Mattel: first they had to relinquish their executive positions, then the chairmanship of the board, then their board seats, finally all of their stock.

 

On 2/18/2024 at 8:12 AM, Walter Ives said:

Nope. The Handlers were the not-entirely-hapless victims of giving MBA geniuses sufficient power to conduct an earlier run at bankrupting Barbie and were caught red-handed trying to cover up the ensuing carnage. They didn't exactly step down—Art Spear engineered their removal and banishment, and that of their little dogs, too. Starting in 1973 their fingernails were unceremoniously pried from Mattel, one-by-one, until the final ties were cut in October 1975. The new emperor scrubbed Mattel of their memory; all that remained were tiny, flickering flames hiding the bosoms of the likes of Denham and Wagner.

WJI

Wagner, Denham and Chang had all had close and loyal personal relationships with the Handlers and had learned the business from them. They retained considerable respect for the Handlers despite Ruth's misdeeds. While the new king needed their experience, he demanded undivided loyalty, so they prudently kept their admiration hidden, like scarlet A's under their tunics.

 

WJI

 

Edited June 8 by Walter Ives

[+DZ-Jay]

3 hours ago, Walter Ives said:

I note the "confused" icon in the feedback area, so let me unpack it.

 

See the attached article.

 

 

😱

 

I must admit I didn't really follow the legal travails of Mattel, so that article comes as a shock.  Yes, I had a rather privileged and sheltered childhood.

 

3 hours ago, Walter Ives said:

 

 

 

Note that the government was not demanding the Handler's resignation. The article states, "the banks who loaned Mattel large sums of money didn't want the Handlers running the company." That's a platitude—"banks" are inanimate, inanimate entities can't want things. Specific humans want things. Spear was the executive at Mattel managing the rescue financing, and he used his position and personal relationship to persuade John Vogelstein of Warburg Pincus to help him stage his coup.

Unlike Zzzz Best, Enron or Theranos, which were entirely fraudulent operations, the Handlers had built up a legitimate underlying business and didn’t start out trying to cheat its shareholders. Mattel's shareholders would probably have reaped more value had the Handlers been allowed to stay on and clean up the mess, with minders to watch over the financials (the SEC even offered to accept this). But kings are toppled by the persistent undermining, plotting and machinations of specific power-grubbing individuals who have it in for them, and here Spear played Scar to the Handlers' Mustafa.

 

 

New kings clean house and replace the previous king's underlings with their own.

 

 

It took Spear two years to completely separate the Handlers from Mattel: first they had to relinquish their executive positions, then the chairmanship of the board, then their board seats, finally all of their stock.

 

 

Wagner, Denham and Chang had all had close and loyal personal relationships with the Handlers and had learned the business from them. They retained considerable respect for the Handlers despite Ruth's misdeeds. While the new king needed their experience, he demanded undivided loyalty, so they prudently kept their admiration hidden, like scarlet A's under their tunics.

 

WJI

 

Thank you for the historical context.

 

   dZ.