Mattel Makes A Play For Collectors With Super Bowl Little People

At the Super Bowl on Sunday, quarterbacks Jalen Hurts and Patrick Mahomes will be competing for more than titles and championship rings. They also will be battling for a chance to see themselves immortalized as Fisher-Price Little People figures.

Mattel is using its Mattel Creations special edition platform to give fans a chance to order collectors sets of figures featuring the winning Super Bowl team.

The Super Bowl promotion is another example of how Mattel is using technology, and new ways of connecting with consumers, to grab a piece of the collectibles and the kid-adult market for specialty toys.

Consumers can pre-order sets of either four Philadelphia Eagles figures, or four Kansas City Chiefs figures, but Mattel will only produce the figures of the winning team. Orders for the losing team will be refunded.

Mattel has been using its creations platform to sell special limited editions of iconic toys. It has produced numerous collector sets of Little People toys, including ones featuring The Rolling Stones, Run DMC, and characters from Seinfeld, Ted Lasso and The Lord of the Rings.

This is the first time Mattel has done a Super Bowl little people’s collection. In 2021 and 2022 it did a limited edition featuring Buffalo Bills players for a Bills charity. Those figures were sold exclusively at Wegman’s stores and quickly sold out.

Sports licensing in the toy world can be tricky, and getting licensing agreements from both the NFL and the NFL Players Association, is a coup for Mattel, James Zahn, Senior Editor of The Toy Insider and Editor-in-Chief of The Toy Book said.

“It’s two separate licenses, and it’s not always easy to pull off,” Zahn said.

“Sports collectibles are a very interesting market, because they could be super super hot. Or they could produce so many of them that they are only worth what you paid,” Zahn said.

“But overall, the Fisher-Price Little People collectors series is a really cool subset that Mattel has developed over the past couple of years,” Zahn said.

There is a lot of demand on the secondary market for the Buffalo Bills figures from past years, he said.

The four-piece Super Bowl sets will sell for $30, and fans can place orders until February 21.

The Eagles set will include Hurts, wide receiver DeVonta Smith, and defensive tackle Fletcher Cox, as well as an Eagles “super fan” dressed in Eagles garb. The Chiefs set will include Mahomes, tight end Travis Kelce, defensive tackle Chris Jones and a Chiefs super fan.

Figures of the winning team will ship to customers beginning in August.

Six months is a pretty fast turnaround time for a special edition toy product, Zahn said.

“Until very recently the average time to bring a new product to market was about 18 months, and that window just keeps shrinking,” he said. “Mattel has been getting a lot faster,” he said.

A growing number of toy companies, both large and small, are using special platforms to respond to collector demand for limited editions. Hasbro has its Hasbro Pulse direct-to-consumer platform, and well as its HasLab division which uses a crowdfunding model to decide which special editions to create.

“Mattel Creations as a whole has been a smashing success,” Zahn said. “They do these limited edition drops that in many cases sell out same day. They have some items that have not sold out right away, but those are the exceptions,” he said.

The Super Bowl Little People promotion also could be a measure of which team has the most fanatical fans. According to the Mattel Creations website, as of this morning Eagles fans had placed 63% of the pre-orders, compared to 37% from Chiefs fans. Sounds like a reason for Mattel to root for the Eagles to win.