** An independent audit of Mattel, one of the United States ' largest toy manufacturers, reveals that company officials fabricated press releases and financial information to " maintain the appearance of continued corporate growth.

After one season, the toy company Mattel demanded more input into the show, causing Straczynski to quit.

An example of divination or fortune-telling as purely an item of pop culture, with little or no vestiges of belief in the occult, would be the Magic 8-Ball sold as a toy by Mattel, or Paul II, a cephalopod of the Sea Life Aquarium at Oberhausen used to predict the outcome of matches played by the German national football team.

The Magic 8 Ball is a toy used for fortune-telling or seeking advice, manufactured by Mattel.

In January 2010, American toy company Mattel released a Cyndi Lauper Barbie doll as part of their " Ladies of the 80s " series.

Matchbox is a popular toy brand which was introduced by Lesney Products in 1953 and is now owned by Mattel, Inc.

Other brands, including Husky / Corgi Junior, Budgie, and Cigar Box, attempted to compete with Matchbox, but none were particularly successful until American toy giant Mattel introduced the revolutionary low-friction " racing " wheels on its Hot Wheels line of cars.

In May 1992, they sold the brand to Tyco Toys, whose toy division in turn was bought out by Mattel in 1997, uniting Matchbox with its longtime rival Hot Wheels under the same corporate banner.

Realizing that there could be a gap in the market, Handler suggested the idea of an adult-bodied doll to her husband Elliot, a co-founder of the Mattel toy company.

Ken ( Ken Sean Carson ) is a Mattel toy doll introduced by Mattel in 1961 as the fictional boyfriend of toy doll Barbie introduced in 1959.

Mattel Inc., the toy maker, has been plagued with more than 28 product recalls and in Summer of 2007, amongst problems with exports from China, faced two product recalls in two weeks.

After Fisher-Price was bought by Mattel in the 1990s, Little People reappeared on the markets, their figure significantly larger in size from the original Little People characters due to revised toy safety guidelines.

In 2007, lead paint used by a contract toy manufacturer in China prompted Mattel to issue recalls for nearly a million toys, many of which featured Sesame Street and Nickelodeon characters, including Dora the Explorer.

In October 2011, it was announced that American toy company Mattel had concluded a deal to purchase Hit Entertainment for $ 680 million.

Other examples include the lead poisoning paint used by toy giant Mattel, which required a recall of millions of toys globally and caused the company to initiate new risk management and quality control processes.

The Optigan was released in 1971 by Optigan Corporation, a subsidiary of toy manufacturer Mattel, Incorporated of El Segundo, California with the manufacturing plant located nearby in Compton, California.

This design approach to the DC Comics toy lines was continued to a large extent by Mattel when they took over the DC Comics license and produced lines based on the movies Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and Superman Returns as well as the Justice League cartoons.

Hot Wheels is a brand of 1: 64 scale ( and later 1: 43 scale ) die cast toy car, introduced by American toymaker Mattel in 1968.

As was the case with its predecessor, the show was based on a toy line by Mattel ( titled Princess of Power, itself a spin-off from Mattel's Masters of the Universe line ) and was produced with financial backing from Mattel to promote the toys.

The Knowledge Kids subsidiary was headed by Tom Kalinske, a former president of toy conglomerate Mattel.

The patent was licensed first to Mattel Electronics, which failed as a company before any product using the algorithm was developed, then to a startup company founded by some of the laid-off Mattel executives.

It was later picked up by the U. S company, The Games Gang, eventually landing at Hasbro and then Mattel.

After the announcement, the CEO of MGA Entertainment, Isaac Larian sent a statement on December 24, 2006, via e-mail to a fan site of the doll line, Bratz World, and another two days later to Playthings Magazine stating that the information is false and the company is not familiar with the company named in the report and MGA uses first rate factories in " the orient " to make its goods, like Mattel and Hasbro do.

Mattel purchased the company in 1999 for $ 3. 8 billion from entrepreneur Kevin O ' Leary, renaming it " Mattel Interactive ", in what has been called one of the worst acquisitions in corporate history.

* 1997, Wham-O became independent again when a group of investors purchased the company from Mattel.

The Mattel company developed the original He-Man action figure in 1981 ; the franchise backstory was conceived by the Filmation animation studio.

It was produced by Jim Terry and his company American Way, and consisted of five imported Japanese giant robot serials ( originally produced in the mid-1970s by Toei Animation ) in response to the popularity of the Shogun Warriors toy collection ( in fact, Mattel was one of the sponsors ).

A management buyout in 1995 saw the end of Mattel ownership and a new company was born, Corgi Classics Limited.

The circus was sold to the Mattel company in 1971 for $ 40 million, but the Feld family retained production control.

In 2012, the toy company Mattel, which was fictionally depicted as the manufacturer of the hoverboard in the Back to the Future series, announced it would be retailing a replica version of the hoverboard that would be able to " glide " instead of hovering.

By the early 1980s, North American Van Lines had contracted Mattel to make die cast model trucks of NAVL under Mattel's Hot Wheels brand, helping the moving company gain exposure among children and die cast collectors.

In 1968 Mattel introduced Hot Wheels and Roth ’ s Beatnik Bandit was one of the first 16 die-cast toy cars produced by the company.

The Optigan is the most common of these and easiest to find, being mass manufactured by toy company Mattel.

On July 17, 2008, a federal jury ruled that Bryant had created the Bratz while he was working for Mattel, despite MGA's claim that Bryant had not been employed by Mattel at the time and Bryant's assertion that he had designed the Bratz between two separate periods of employment at Mattel.

Aquarius is a home computer designed by Radofin and released by Mattel in 1983.

* Mattel Electronics releases the Aquarius home computer, originally designed by Radofin Electronics Far East.

At Mattel, Ryan also designed the mechanics of the Chatty Cathy dolls.

A white version of Man-Bat was featured as a San Diego Comic Convention exclusive in packaging designed by Frank Varela of Mattel Toys.

Rather, it was designed by Grant Goddard and Samuel Cooper Davis for Abrams Gentile Entertainment ( AGE ), made by Mattel in the United States and PAX in Japan.

Around this time, he also designed the highly successful Marvel Secret Wars toy line for Mattel, which formed the impetus behind the 1984 Secret Wars event.

Intellivision World Series Major League Baseball is a baseball sports game ( 1983 ), designed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower and published by Mattel for the Intellivision Entertainment Computer System.