
MGA Entertainment: A privately-owned toy company doing billions in revenue - dsr12
https://julieyoung.substack.com/p/insane-companies-no-one-talks-about
======
rl3
Upon viewing the product video[0], I immediately wondered whether anyone's
studied the effects of aggressive jump cuts on child psychology. Turns out,
they have! Kind of.[1]

Personally I find jump cuts jarring if not repulsive, emblematic of the "Like
and subscribe!" cultural, intellectual wasteland that is most YouTube and
Twitch content. It's arguably not healthy for adults, let alone children.

Then again, I grew up watching _The Ren & Stimpy Show_, so far be it from me
to talk.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9IqcnQ9GQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9IqcnQ9GQU)

[1]
[https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-35066-001](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-35066-001)

~~~
l33tbro
I think you mean quick cutting. Jump cuts refer to when the filmmaker uses
roughly the same frame size and jumps forward in time. Godard's 'Breathless'
being the first prominent use.

~~~
rl3
> _Jump cuts refer to when the filmmaker uses roughly the same frame size and
> jumps forward in time._

I believe I was referring to that. YouTube content is notorious for them, and
jump cuts are part of the lexicon in that space as a result. There's even a YC
company with the namesake.

Fast cutting or quick cutting doesn't have the same-frame restriction as far
as I'm aware.

~~~
l33tbro
I re-clicked and still don't see any jump cuts. The video actually has pretty
standard film grammar, but cuts at a very quick pace. The Youtuber aesthetic
you mention is full of abrupt jumpcuts.

~~~
rl3
After watching it again I agree with you now. Either way, the pace of the cuts
are still jarring.

Interestingly some of the cuts do jump forward in time, but they zoom in on
the same subject usually.

------
vmception
> Larian initially did not love the Bratz sketches, saying they looked like
> aliens. However, his 12 year-old daughter Jasmin was also in the meeting.
> She was immediately enthralled with the dolls, exclaiming “These are so cool
> - I need these!”

This is unironically the inclusivity we need. The corporation concept doesn’t
exist to satisfy employees’ ego, it exists to access a market.

There should be people with different, unfamiliar backgrounds closer to the
market you want to access, in the decision making process.

~~~
jgalt212
I suggest you watch the movie Big.

------
donw
There's a lot of great lessons here.

(1) Billion-dollar companies are often built on products that consumers don't
know what they want, until they see and experience it.

Plenty of MP3 players pre-dated the iPod. But the iPod changed the market and
put Apple back on the game board.

The iPod had an experience, the form-factor, the capacity, and the horizontal
integration -- being able to buy music directly on iTunes -- and once you
experienced it, you realized that this was just better.

(2) Find your blind spots and fix them.

A wide variety of dolls, covering the full palette of skin colors, opened up a
_huge_ market for all the girls that didn't just want an Industry Standard
Barbie Available In One Skin Tone.

Rhianna had the same problem -- she could never find makeup that worked with
her skin color. So she introduced her own makeup brand -- marketed as being
for all women -- which is now valued in excess of three billion dollars.

We see this a lot in Japan, by the way -- Silicon Valley companies come here,
and engage in what I would say are _aggressive_ levels of cultural ignorance.

(3) Recognize the context around your customers.

MGA recognized that Kids These Days spend a lot of time on YouTube, so they
built a product designed to be YouTubed.

Glock is a great example of this. The founder, Gaston Glock, didn't come from
a gunsmithing or firearms manufacturing background.

To create the first Glock pistol, Gaston put together a cross-functional
working group, including metallurgists, plastic-manufacturing specialists, and
members of the Austrian police and military that would actually use the
design.

Focusing on how the pistol would be used -- from both a tactical and
logistical standpoint -- they created something which was a total departure
from everything else on the market. A completely integrated safety system.
Tool-less takedown and reassembly. Easy maintenance. Most companies require a
unique magazine for each different type of pistol -- Glock magazines are
totally interchangeable within the same feed mechanism.

Today, Glock is the biggest pistol brand, and every other pistol manufacturer
carries Glock-inspired design.

Being able to look at problems from the outside is powerful.

~~~
samwestdev
> We see this a lot in Japan, by the way -- Silicon Valley companies come
> here, and engage in what I would say are aggressive levels of cultural
> ignorance.

Any concrete example of this? I'm working in Tokyo right now and I see
Japanese companies pretty much engage in anything SV throws this way (stuff
like apple, slack, uber eats, github etc etc).

~~~
donw
Sure!

Apple is a bit of an exception because they created a completely new market --
the smartphone. Japanese companies move _slowly_ , and are hobbled by design-
by-committee, so their response to new market entrants is... leisurely.

I'm not sure how that will play out long-term. We'll see where Apple is in
twenty years. And Macs are _very_ uncommon, compared to Windows PCs.

SV tech tends to show up at startups, often started by Westerners that have
moved here.

That's a common pattern, and if you're in the foreigner bubble, it can be hard
to notice.

But in the rest of Japan?

Slack? I'm not sure I actually know any Japanese companies that use it, and
the market statistics don't show a lot of grip outside of the US/EU.

Uber Eats is doing well! Especially with COVID-19.

But that's after Uber fell totally flat launching here in Japan. And it
remains to be seen if they can hold on to their lead.

It took Uber years of flailing around when they first arrived here, during
which they ignored advice like "Japanese taxis are _super_ safe" and "Thumbing
your nose at regulators here isn't going to work like it does in the US."

Line totally dominates Japanese instant messaging. It's the WeChat of Japan.
Facebook didn't really understand Japanese privacy needs until recently, and I
don't see them un-seating Line.

Apple Pay is a second-rate payment system in Japan, and doesn't work if you
have a foreign credit card. Japanese banking is... complicated. I once had a
gym that outright refused to take my monthly payment on a credit card -- until
they realized that my bank and their bank didn't have a "relationship".

Never in the US was I told that, in order to pay for a service, Wells Fargo
first needed to take USAA out for dinner and a movie.

Anyhow, Meetup never caught on here, because they didn't understand the
market. Gap is around, but they never felt like a major player in the fashion
space. None of the education offerings in the US have any traction here.

OpenTable? Nope. You use TableCheck if you want a reservation somewhere.

Overall, I don't see any of the companies on this list[1] having any traction
at all here, outside of major players which (a) have invested billions; and
(b) took years to understand the local market well enough to adapt their
offerings.

And even then... Google still has to to advertise in Japan, and I strongly
suspect that Google Maps plays second fiddle to Norikae.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_based_in_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_based_in_the_San_Francisco_Bay_Area)

~~~
onion2k
_Apple is a bit of an exception because they created a completely new market
-- the smartphone._

I have a drawer full of WindowsCE and PalmOS phones that disagrees with you.

Apple improved on the smartphone significantly but they didn't even come close
to creating the market. Smartphones had been around for half a decade before
the iPhone launched.

~~~
orthoxerox
> Apple improved on the smartphone significantly but they didn't even come
> close to creating the market. Smartphones had been around for half a decade
> before the iPhone launched.

Pre-iPhone smartphones weren't mass market devices. I remember them well. They
were handheld PCs with a phone, marketed as productivity devices.

iPhone was a leisure device. A music player, a phone and an internet browser
in one device. They entered a niche market and turned it into a mass market.

~~~
onion2k
_Pre-iPhone smartphones weren 't mass market devices._

I'm not arguing with that. I'm saying that there was already a market and what
Apple did was help to grow it. They didn't create "create a completely new
market". The iPhone didn't even have _that_ big an impact on smartphone sales
to start with - [https://www.statista.com/statistics/191985/sales-of-
smartpho...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/191985/sales-of-smartphones-
in-the-us-since-2005/) \- the growth in 2006 (year before the iPhone launched)
is bigger in percentage terms than the following three years combined.

------
scandox
I banned unboxing videos for my kids. The only thing I ever had to explicitly
ban. I didn't have a big issue with them per se but when I saw the effect on
the kids I couldn't allow it.

They were...strung out.

------
wnevets
The lol dolls are just the worst. The amount of waste plastic is insane. Then
you have the outright terrible dolls that reveal lingerie when you wet them.

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lol-surprise-dolls-
water/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lol-surprise-dolls-water/)

~~~
kennydude
Yup, they're so expensive and have multiple layers of waste plastic. And I
thought twisty ties were bad enough for packaging things

------
mgh2
The original article had a long insightful comment- the author has since
deleted it (some may have noticed the censoring). I will not be surprised if
MGA's attack on Mucciolo's might be deleted as well- as MGA deleted its
tweets. Here is a record just in case: [https://www.fa-mag.com/news/toy-
billionaire-deletes-post-sla...](https://www.fa-mag.com/news/toy-billionaire-
deletes-post-slamming-black-lives-matter-group-56507.html)

I detect some biased portrayal on part of the author towards MGA (investment
newsletter)- we get that they made a killing on a 'great' product, but its
negative implications cannot be understated.

Takeaways:

1\. MGA is just profiting from trendy cultural uprisings, without actually
believing in any values it embodies- as seen in its attack on Mucciolo

2\. MGA is brainwashing girls into following counter-culture examples to fuel
#1

So yes, MGA might be an underdog here (that is why the appeal), but not all
underdogs are good: portraying as one is just another marketing stunt to
accomplish 1 & 2

Note: "Fully developed brain" for girls as described in the article denies the
fact that they are more susceptible than the general public to marketing
tricks

~~~
ralfd
To be fair: MGA claims the design was done before Mucciolo styled herself that
way:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/MGAEnt/status/1270904973727952897...](https://mobile.twitter.com/MGAEnt/status/1270904973727952897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1270904973727952897%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lamag.com%2Fculturefiles%2Flol-
surprise-studio-mucci%2F)

And the designer of the doll swearing herself that:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbgLX6wXYAEonlk?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbgLX6wXYAEonlk?format=jpg&name=large)

I see the similarity, but I can also belief that it is coincidence. Margot
Robbie as Harley Quinn made the twin rope hairstyle 2016 popular and also that
colorful neon turquoise.

~~~
mgh2
Nice resource, thanks. If I were MGA, I would not risk the company’s
reputation on copying from a freelancer. If I were the freelancer, I will
create buzz on social media to gain popularity as a victim. So not sure were
the truth lies, but incentives can reveal insights sometimes.

------
bitwize
As noted in the article, this was the company also responsible for Bratz, the
2000s (decade) fashion-doll phenomenon that served as the Sonic to Barbie's
Mario: hipper, edgier, and ultimately flash-in-the-pan-ier. They're like
experts at no-holds-barred marketing to kids.

~~~
agency
Yeah the focus on making the “perfect unboxing you” is a brilliant business
move but it’s kind of dystopian. Just imagining all these kids watching
endless algorithm-recommended unboxing videos.

~~~
bitwize
One need not imagine this. Round about the same time as the ElsaGate
phenomenon (and often lumped in with it) was a series of unusual YouTube
videos that featured adults unwrapping Kinder Surprise and other such small
toys, over and over. Kids were supposedly transfixed and would stare slack-
jawed at the screen, waiting for the next toy to be revealed seconds after the
last one was. Presumably, LOL Surprise capitalizes on this phenomenon as well.
To be honest, I don't see the appeal and find the naked attempt to capture
children's eyeballs worrisome.

Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to go watch LGR unpack a new-old-stock
286 and attempt to boot Commander Keen on it...

------
rootsudo
I come here for these kinds of posts. Informing, interesting, and quite sad in
a way.

------
ralfd
> People do not really take kids seriously, and they especially do not take
> young girls seriously. (How many times have you read articles about how
> great Fortnite is, with no mention of Roblox?

I have never heard of Roblox!

It was discussed though a few days ago here on hacker news I learned through a
search. Interestingly through a specific nerdy lense:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24221010](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24221010)

------
segmondy
I work for a privately owned company that has been doing billions for more
than a decade. I live 10 miles away and never even heard about them until I
started working for them, most people don't that live here don't know about it
or what they do. It made me realize and look into businesses that are
privately held that are doing well. Killed that idea for me that you need SV
or VC funding to scale.

------
TaylorAlexander
Just want to highlight the fact that manufacturing huge volumes of cheap
plastic toys is not necessarily something to be celebrated.

~~~
bluedevil2k
Moral police alert!! Care to expand on your condemnation of the company? Or is
this just a random “big companies are evil” kind of negative comment?

~~~
ireflect
For many kids, this kind of toy has a short window of novelty and then waits
in a closet until its time comes to go to the landfill. We should be extra
skeptical of consumerism that targets children. I think that’s what GP was
getting at.

~~~
bluedevil2k
Well GP is wrong. I have a 10 year old girl, I’ve bought a dozen of these, and
she loved them each time. Yes, she may play with them only for a few hours
each, but if it brings a smile to her face & makes her happy for many hours,
then I think most parents agree it’s worth it.

~~~
deepzn
What ever works for you man. That stuff is meth, trash, superficial garbage.

~~~
kgraves
That kids can grow out of, it's harmless than actual 'meth' and other
'addictions' adults almost never 'grow out of'.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Do you know where our plastic ends up? Every documentary I’ve seen on the
subject shows that our plastic ends up with no oversight in some poor country
while children literally sift through it for pennies a day.

~~~
brendawalsh
Maybe your plastic.

Mine is transported several miles away, where it is buried and can then leech
into the river, which is used as our water supply downstream.

But, yeah, who decided to put the water treatment plant next to the landfill?

------
ericls
Isn't this gambling?

~~~
smabie
Buying dolls is gambling? I'm gonna go with.. no? And even if we contort the
definition and say it is, does it matter?

~~~
bmn__
GP refers to the collecting aspect mentioned in the article. Whether it's
gambling or not depends on how it's implemented precisely. When a consumer
cannot know the probability of obtaining a rare item with a purchase, and must
spend an unknown quantity of money to achieve the goal, then – so the argument
goes – it is an exploitative manipulation of the mind and breaks anti-gambling
laws and anti-consumer regulations.

The digital equivalent ("loot-boxes") has been brought to court in Belgium and
restricted/regulated in the EU since. Regulated collecting by purchase shows
the probabilities, and allows obtaining a rare item or set for a fixed,
predetermined price.

~~~
smabie
So is the silicon lottery gambling?

~~~
bmn__
IANAL but I find this comparison strenuous because a chip manufacturer lacks
the intention and culpability of exploiting the consumer.
[http://enwp.org/silicon_lottery](http://enwp.org/silicon_lottery) says:

> the potential for overclocking of a product is not typically tested during
> the binning process

------
crawsome
Those kids dolls are skimpy and slutty as hell. Literally marketing these
barely-dressed dolls to little girls, while seeing this old man smile makes me
sick to my stomach.

