Mattel said it’s considering raising prices on U.S. toy shoppers, a warning that comes one day after President Donald Trump doubled down on comments that American children don’t need more than a handful of dolls.
“Toys are such an essential part of children’s lives,” Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz told CNBC on Tuesday morning.
While the maker of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars is “committed to the uninterrupted supply of quality products at a wide range of affordable price points,” he said, Trump’s tariffs have put price hikes on the table: “Where necessary, we will be taking pricing action in the U.S.”
Analysts warned there’s a limit to what households will want to pay for dolls, games and matchbox cars after shouldering years of steep cost increases for essential goods.
“Consumers are extremely price-sensitive when it comes to toys,” said Brian Benway, senior tech and gaming analyst at the market research firm Mintel.
Mattel said Monday that it still expects 40% to 50% of its products to cost $20 or less, but warned in its first-quarter earnings report that it’s “operating in an uncertain macro-economic environment with significant volatility, including changes in global trade policy.” As a result, the company held off providing a financial outlook for the year, a step Ford also took Monday.
The toy maker said global sales rose 2% from a year earlier, adding that it expects “not only to manage through this period but strengthen our competitive position.” But its latest warnings of potential price increases, which the company also floated in February, come amid ongoing trade policy turbulence that is drawing growing alarms from corporate c-suites.
Mattel’s stock has fallen more than 18% since April 2, the day Trump unveiled a sweeping set of global tariffs that he partially walked back days later. The erratic tariff rollout — which has featured numerous delays, revisions and surprises, including a new proposal to slap levies on foreign films — comes at a tough time for a toy industry that Trump’s recent remarks have thrust into the spotlight.
“Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting last week, “and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”
Although he campaigned on providing immediate economic relief, the president and his allies have more recently suggested that Americans may need to endure short-term pain as the administration’s trade policies take hold.
