Mattel Inc

The city Ethics Commission voted Tuesday to approve $236,000 in fines against Mattel Inc. and two former company representatives. The panel approved fines against Fermin Cuza, a former Mattel senior vice president, and political consultant Alan Schwartz for using $20,000 of Mattel's money to make reimbursements for political contributions made in their names and the names of others, including family members.

Toy giant Mattel Inc. reported Friday that second-quarter profit rose 56%, and company executives hinted that the company's long-running battle with rival MGA Entertainment Inc. over the Bratz doll line wasn't over despite Mattel's recent loss in federal court. The El Segundo company said that for the three months ended June 30, profit totaled $80.5 million, or 23 cents a share, compared with $51.6 million, or 14 cents, a year earlier. Sales increased 14% year-over-year, to $1.16 billion from $1.02 billion.

A prolific inventor who has spent more than a decade proving toys aren't all fun and games has been awarded millions of dollars by a federal jury, which said toy giant Mattel Inc. infringed on his patent with its popular "Hot Wheels." "I am floating on cloud nine," 66-year-old Jerome Lemelson said Friday, a day after the judgment. "My hope is that as a result of it, toy inventors will get a fair shake from the industry." The jury awarded Lemelson $24.

Strong Christmas sales of Barbie and other toys helped push Mattel Inc.'s fourth-quarter profit up 86% compared with the same period a year earlier, the nation's largest toy maker said. The El Segundo company has been working to rebuild its performance after months of frugal consumer spending. Its image also took a hit after a spate of high-profile recalls in 2007 related to excessive levels of lead and harmful magnets. A year ago, Mattel said it would aggressively cut costs and improve its supply chain; on Friday, Chief Executive Robert A. Eckert said those moves bolstered the company's fourth-quarter and full-year results.

Barbie, that swinging California girl who has outlasted dozens of fads with nary a wrinkle to show for it, can now claim the granddaddy of all fads, the Hula Hoop, as another of her many accessories. On Monday, Barbie's maker, Mattel Inc., bought Kransco, the San Francisco company that makes Wham-O brand Hula Hoops and Frisbees, Morey Boogie boards and the increasingly popular Power Wheels ride-on toys.

Nolee, Chelsea and Madison are fashion mavens who wear navel-revealing tops, low-riders and platform shoes. This fall, your second-grader could look like them. The Mattel Inc. dolls are the inspiration for a back-to-school clothes collection aimed at girls ages 7 to 14 that will be sold at Too Inc.'s Limited Too stores. Like so many other firms with an eye on the $11-billion so-called 'tweens market, analysts say, Mattel and Too Inc.

Robert A. Eckert, chairman and chief executive of El Segundo toy maker Mattel Inc., received a compensation package last year valued by the company at $7.3 million.

Mattel Inc. recalled an additional 38,000 Go Diego Go! toys as part of a larger recall of 665,000 lead-contaminated products, the government said.

A Barbie doll is for sale at the Anaheim Toys "R" Us store in a bright cardboard-and-cellophane box labeled "Made in China." The price is $9.99. But how much will China make from the sale of the pert fashion doll marketed around the world by Mattel Inc. of El Segundo? About 35 cents, according to executives in the Asian and American toy industry--mostly in wages paid to 11,000 young peasant women working in two factories across the border from Hong Kong in China's Guangdong province.

Barbie's former beau is getting a makeover almost two years after the pair broke up. Ken, ditched by Barbie in February 2004, will get a more contemporary look. The doll's "head to toe" revamp will be introduced in the spring, Mattel Inc. said. The makeover follows eight straight quarters of declining sales of Barbie merchandise.

Disney Pixar Animation guru John Lasseter found himself tangled in a miniature fashion kerfuffle. Toy maker Mattel Inc. had made a prototype doll of "The Princess and the Frog's" newly minted princess, Tiana, wearing her bayou wedding dress. But one animator worried that the gown failed to reflect the one in the film, whose multiple layers resemble the petals of an unfolding waterlily. Lasseter suggested a way to create the illusion of volume without driving up the doll's $10 price tag -- namely, printing a swirling pattern of glitter atop the diaphanous outer layer of fabric.

Mattel Inc. says it has reached an agreement to settle "virtually all" U.S. claims related to its 2007 toy recalls. The world's largest toy maker recalled millions of toys that year because they contained excessive levels of lead or had design problems, such as hazardous magnets. Mattel said the class-action settlement was subject to court approval. "Safety of our products remains Mattel's top priority," the El Segundo-based company said in a statement Tuesday. According to a statement by plaintiff law firm Whatley Drake & Kallas, the settlement "provides tens of millions of dollars in monetary relief as well as significant injunctive relief."

Barbie turns 50 this month, and to shake off a midlife crisis she's getting tattooed and opening the doors to her first megastore in China. The developments are causing a stir on two continents, not bad for a plaything whose global cachet has been sagging of late. We begin in Southern California, where, just in time for spring, Mattel Inc. has released Totally Stylin' Tattoos Barbie. The doll comes with a set of more than 40 tiny tattoo stickers that can be placed on her body.

MGA Entertainment Inc.'s Bratz dolls, which were found to infringe Mattel Inc.'s copyrights, can be sold this year, a federal judge ruled, modifying a decision that could have resulted in an earlier ban. U.S. District Judge Stephen Larson in Riverside ruled Wednesday that retailers would be allowed to buy the spring and fall lines of the pouty, multiethnic dolls from MGA until Dec. 31, or from either Mattel or a court-appointed receiver if he awards them rights to the infringing Bratz products.

The Bratz doll maker had another bad day in federal court Tuesday, but fans of the sassy dolls were given hope that the girls will live to see another Christmas. Bratz manufacturer MGA Entertainment Inc. lost a bid to remain in the Bratz business past Feb. 11, the date of a hearing set earlier in U.S. District Court in Riverside.

MGA Entertainment Inc., maker of Bratz dolls, filed an emergency request Friday with a U.S. appeals court to stay a court order barring it from making and selling the dolls while it appeals the ruling. If MGA doesn't get a stay by Dec. 31, the Van Nuys company will suffer irreparable harm, it said in a redacted filing with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Mattel Inc. and eight other toy makers Thursday agreed to pay $1.8 million and accelerate reductions in the levels of toxic lead in consumer products to settle an environmental lawsuit brought by the state and the city of Los Angeles. California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, who filed the complaint against 17 toy manufacturers a year ago, said he was pleased to resolve the case.

Day One: Bratz held hostage. The fate of the hugely popular dolls -- either beloved fashionistas or streetwalkers-in-training, depending on whom you talk to -- was unclear Thursday in the wake of a federal court order that handed the rights to the dolls and the Bratz name to the biggest toy maker of them all: Mattel Inc. Also in limbo was the fate of MGA Entertainment Inc.