How I got my job at Mattel - Breaking into the toy industry as a collector

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: hey toy fans collectors and industry folks today I am talking about how to get a job in the toy industry and well I'm gonna use my story because it's kind of interesting and I get asked this actually quite a lot when I do like podcasts or interviews with fan sites is how in the world did I get my job at Mattel so let's jump in quick introduction I'm Scott Knight lick aka Toy Guru on a lot of the forums and I was just Mattel for just a smidgen under 10 years and during that time I really had a dream job I was working on toys which is what I always wanted to do I was in meetings talking about toys I mean it was it was pretty mind-blowing and I get asked all the time how in the world did I you know get this job how did I get into Mattel and working on brands that I love like He-Man and DC and Ghostbusters and you know that kind of stuff so I'll tell that quick story and maybe it'll help inspire you so growing up in Southern California I would always see the old Mattel building in Hawthorne off the side of the freeway every time we drove from Orange County to Los Angeles you would pass this big brick building with the Mattel logo on the side and you know it was like right there and as you know a 10 year old a seven year old you're like wow there's a toy company right there because you would you would see it right off the freeway Mattel eventually moved to El Segundo but that giant logo on the building was kind of you know ingrained into my mind and knowing that there was a giant toy corporation right here sort of you know in my backyard quote-unquote definitely gave me the thought of possibly working there one day now my father worked for a company called Yonex which he was a vice president of the product development in their tennis division that's actually why we moved to California from Connecticut and one of his co-workers her husband was a Mattel executive in the 80s and used to because he knew that my father had young children at home would get us the Mattel catalog every year now this is a industry catalog that is basically given to retailers who want to place orders for product it's not a you know like a public catalog like the Sears catalog was if you will but as as a kid getting the Mattel catalog this was like mind-blowing because it had pictures of all the upcoming you know He-Man toys and then yeah I don't want to say Batman toys there were no Batman toys from Mattel at the time there were some Secret Wars Marvel figures you know but I mean everything from munching cheese to Barbie to Hot Wheels to mad scientist it was all there so I went on after high school to UC Santa Barbara which was about three hours north of Los Angeles and a big reason that I went there is I had a great film and media department which that was my major I started as a film major I eventually actually added communications as a second major since I wanted to get a sort of a more well-rounded education but my goal was to become a screenwriter I actually wanted to write TV commercials was what I thought I would do I definitely had that writing bug and right after college after I graduated I applied to several openings at Mattel and I got a nice postcard back from them saying we had we you know received your application thank you very much we'll keep it on file for six months and every six months and every six months I would resend in my application and then I would get another postcard and I think I still have these postcards I like kept every single one of them but they would basically keep sending me these postcards in the mail telling me you know thank you for applying we will hold on to your material for six months if we need you we'll contact you and I've never heard back from anything but postcards so with knowing you know I was hitting that postcard sort of uh stop in the road I wound up working for a company called Allergan which is a pharmaceutical company and I got a job as a writer working for them and I wrote print ads and medical material for them on their beauty accounts and their Botox and glaucoma accounts I could tell you more about glaucoma and how it works than you probably ever want to know actually kind of feel like I have a medical degree in glaucoma I had to analyze all of these uh what are called empirical studies and pull out results and figure out how to take those results and turn them into headlines and everything had to be backed up by all the legalese now of course writing print ads definitely gave me you know insight into you know being a copywriter which I was eventually able to use at Mattel I wrote all of my own print ads when I was in marketing but that's you know how I got into marketing as a story for another time but you know it was kind of cool that I was able to sort of take that skill set of writing ads and apply it to toys in the long run all right so here I am working for Allergan doing glaucoma print ads and going to comic-con as I did every year because that's what I did and I wandered over to the Mattel booth as I do every year to check out the latest cool stuff and back in 2004 the booth was a little different it was more kind of about the brands and less about Mattel with those giant sort of posters in the air and I happened to meet a gentleman named Eddie Hayden who was the brand manager for Justice League at the time that the Justice League Bruce Tim figures the little four inch figures which ironically I went on to brand manage but again story for another time so Eddie is the brand manager at this point in the Justice League when they were back on blue card so this was like the first two years of the line mostly when they really only had the original league this is way before Justice League Unlimited came about when it was just kind of the core members and getting to talk to him one thing that I came to realize that he was that the legalese in pharmaceutical advertising is very transferable to the legalese in toy advertising or writing on packaging because you have to know you know that there's so many legal disclaimers and there's so many copyrights and so many you know legal marks and all sorts of things that have to be included in toys and this is actually quite a skill set I didn't realize that this was a skill set being able to navigate sort of legalese with copy and that's what opened the door for me with Mattel Hot Wheels was looking for a packaging junior copywriter to join their team and when I showed them my portfolio Eddie was able to get me an interview he was impressed with my portfolio that I had with me at comic-con they saw my ability to do the legalese and pharmaceutical as very transferable to what they needed in the Hot Wheels packaging group someone who could navigate that now I will say you know fast forwarding years later when I was with Mattel and going to comic-con I would have people coming up to me every day asking how to get a job at Mattel and I would ask them well what do you want to do and they would just say I want to make toys very sort of generically so I think a big thing that you know where I stood apart was that I had a professional portfolio and I had work that was applicable meaning again being able to navigate promotional copy and legal needs at the same time which the pharmaceutical industry and what I didn't realize was the toy industry also needs so I got my first job at Mattel at the hot in the Hot Wheels group I was four months between my interview and the job offer which was of course antagonizing but eventually I got a call back and they liked what they saw they they also liked that I sort of had a passion for toys in general and that you know because most people in the toy industry or at Mattel are just kind of you know people working on consumer product the fact that I also love toys definitely pushed me ahead so it was really a combination of the fact that I had a passion for toys and I had a skill set that Mattel needed and the job I wound up getting was as the copywriter on basic Hot Wheels which means I would work with designers like in this case this is a Larry Wood design for a car he created and if you don't know who Larry Wood is you can google him he was he's quite a famous Hot Wheels designer so they would take their sketches turn them into real cars and then it would be up to the copywriter to help come up with a name for that car as well as the names on you know all the play sets etc and all those words now this is obviously a long way from me becoming the brand manager on Maddie Collector and on DC Universe and moving over to the marketing group that is a whole story for another time but I hope that this video at least kind of shed some light on how I got my foot in the door with Mattel and I think that's the key for people who you know want to work at Mattel and say want to work on He-Man it doesn't always work like that it's it's all about kind of getting that first job at that at a company and then maybe moving your way over to the group or the brand you want to work on in time you're not necessarily going to start right away on something like He-Man it's something I built up to after several years and was able to get to work on that I hope you found this video informative if you have any questions or more information let me know in the comments below love a subscription and a thumbs up and I'll see you guys in the toy aisle.