Barbie’s lived high on the hog for generations now, riding around in her own beach buggy, horse and carriage, private jet, Vespa. When she hasn’t been traveling in style, she’s been hanging out by the pool or in her three-story, pinkariffic dream townhouse.

But she may need to put away her fancy dresses and modes of transport for the time being, roll up her sleeves, and get her well-manicured fingers to work. (To that point, she's now making another run at the White House with a presidential glampaign.) 

In the first three months of this year, for the first time in 10 quarters, sales of Barbie products went down for Mattel, which directly hurt the company’s bottom line, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. Part of the explanation: Toys “R” Us and Walmart cut back on Barbie products in the first quarter, and a few other Mattel lines, such as Hot Wheels, Cars, and Fisher-Price, didn’t do so well, either.Continue reading...

If you’re trying to sell a car, it helps if you’ve got an established brand to put on your hood ornament. Qoros, a joint venture between China's Chery Automobile and a subsidiary of Israel Corp., is planning to buck the system and put its first car on the market in China and Western Europe in 2013, according to EastDay.com.

First, though, the company has to build a car manufacturing plant, a process that is now underway and will produce 150,000 autos annually, EastDay notes.

The original plan was for Chery to provide its own designs for international release but things have shifted so that it is only a financial investor and the designs will be completely separate from the Chery brand, the Association Press reports.Continue reading...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 featured seven branded products. That is seven more than the second part of the film, the just-opened, record-smashing (biggest midnight opening, opening day and opening weekend box office) finale in the entire Harry Potter movie franchise.

Yes, the eighth and final Harry Potter film feature not one identifiable brand… except, of course, the biggest brand of them all: Harry Potter.

The seven brands we spotted in the seventh film (Deathly Hallows Part 1) also represents the highest pre-movie brand tally of any of the record-breaking series.Continue reading...

The trailer for Pixar's sequel to Cars — called, wait for it, Cars 2 — is out and it's full of brands. Except, in keeping with Pixar tradition, those brands are not real. One product-placed "brand" in particular is all over the place, but what does it mean?Continue reading...

Part of Disney's brand magic is the company's ability to turn characters into profit-producing franchises. The Pixar hit movie "Cars," featuring animated talking car characters, is no exception. Though the movie was released in 2006, "Cars" has been a smash hit ever since in terms of merchandise spin-offs. A second movie, "Cars 2," is scheduled for release in the summer of 2011.

This summer, Disney plans to launch an online community, "World of Cars," in an effort to keep the momentum going. "We look at anything we can do online as a way to deepen and extend relationships with the characters," Steve Wadsworth, president of Disney Interactive Media Group, told the Los Angeles Times. "That only helps elevate the mind-share of that property or franchise with our audience."Continue reading...