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Major Mattel Misfire
A packaging error for toy dolls has people in an uproar, or in a frenzy to get theirs before they are gone.
Mattel often successfully partners with movie franchises, creating dolls based on the film’s characters and leveraging their popularity.
One recent misstep is putting the company’s kid-friendly reputation in jeopardy.
Mattel has partnered with Universal Studios for its “Wicked” film adaptation of the popular Broadway musical, which will be released on November 22. The official movie website is www.wickedmovie.com. But that’s not the URL that appears on some of the packages of special-edition dolls Mattel has created from story characters.
Some cartons mistakenly printed www.wicked.com instead, which is a link to a pornographic website.
Once discovered, Mattel quickly reacted. Although I could not see a statement of apology on the company’s corporate site, Mattel did respond with a statement to several media outlets when queried.
One of several media outlets to do so, CNN posted Mattel’s statement: “Mattel was made aware of a misprint on the packaging of the Mattel Wicked collection dolls, primarily sold in the US, which intended to direct consumers to the official WickedMovie.com landing page. We deeply regret this unfortunate error and are taking immediate action to remedy this. Parents are advised that the misprinted, incorrect website is not appropriate for children.”
One such “action” Mattel took was to ask retailers to pull affected packages off their shelves. (See photos of some of the packages on Fox News.
According to CNBC, retailers have pulled “thousands” of Wicked dolls from shelves. “Target, Walmart and Amazon had removed the line of ‘Wicked’ dolls from their online storefronts as of midday Monday, as had Best Buy, Barnes & Noble and Macy’s. The products were also being sold at Kohl’s and DSW, among other retailers. Some sites were still taking action on the listings throughout the day Monday.
“It is unclear if Mattel will reprint the packages or provide retailers with stickers to cover the incorrect website domain.”
Could automation in packaging design helped? Not necessarily.
How could this have been avoided? Some packaging departments use asset management systems that house all the information in one database that is then pulled into packaging designs for individual products. This means either all or none of the packages would have had the wrong website printed on them. But that’s not what happened because only some of the boxes were printed with the wrong website.
Only careful data input and proofreading could have … should have … caught this human error.
Some are seeing a rainbow in this storm. If you were lucky enough to buy one of these packages and keep it pristine, your investment might be worth more in the future than what you paid for it now.
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