Mattel Universe

The boss of toy company Mattel would like Barbie to be the next Iron Man. That's because Ynon Kreiz aspires to create a "Mattel universe", he tells me - emulating the success of the Marvel universe, which has spawned dozens of hit films for Disney from a cast of comic-book characters like Thor, Captain America and Guardians of the Galaxy. This is the strategy behind the Barbie movie, which comes out on 21 July. Kreiz began working on it when he became CEO of Mattel in 2018 and he remains executive producer. Kreiz acknowledges there is some risk in giving Barbie the Hollywood treatment. Barbie remains Mattel's biggest-selling brand, making the company more than £1bn ($1.5bn) annually. Its other brands include Hot Wheels, Masters of the Universe, Monster High, Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine. Kreiz argues Mattel's other brands also have the potential to be turned into successful spin-offs. But the recent collapse of Toys R Us shows why toymakers like Mattel need to diversify beyond the sale of physical products. Barbie was first introduced in America in 1959, developed by Ruth Handler, co-founder of Mattel. Mattel is restructuring the company to move with the times. Now it simply divides its products into categories (like dolls, vehicles and pre-school), rather than having teams devoted to separate boys' and girls' products.

Barbie

Twitter Loosing Ad Revenue

Twitter has lost almost half of its advertising revenue since it was bought by Elon Musk for $44bn (£33.6bn) last October, its owner has revealed. He said the company had not seen the increase in sales that had been expected in June, but added that July was a "bit more promising". Mr Musk sacked about half of Twitter's 7,500 staff when he took over in 2022 in an effort to cut costs. Rival app Threads now has 150 million users, according to some estimates. Its in-built connection to Instagram automatically gives the Meta-designed platform access to a potential two billion users. Meanwhile, Twitter is struggling under a heavy debt load. Cash flow remains negative, Mr Musk said at the weekend, although the billionaire did not put a time frame on the 50% drop in ad revenue. In a tweet he said: "Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else." The development is the latest sign the aggressive cost-cutting measures have not been enough to ignite a return of advertisers who fled after changes to its content moderation rules.

Twitter

McDonalds Drops Tomatoes in India

The price of the everyday staple has been climbing steeply for the past couple of weeks, and now stands at almost 200 rupees (£2; $3) a kilo in certain parts of India - a sharp shift from the usual 40-50 rupees. The costly tomato has wreaked havoc on wallets, in kitchens and even on the streets. McDonald's recently made news - not for adding a new dish - but dropping tomatoes from its menu in most of its outlets in northern and eastern India. It cited the unavailability of quality tomatoes "due to seasonal crop issues" as the reason. The skyrocketing prices have been particularly hard on India's middle and lower classes, who make up the bulk of the population. Experts say that bad weather conditions have damaged crops, fuelling shortages in the market and a mismatch between demand and supply. India often faces supply-demand challenges when it comes to perishable, but essential, vegetables like the onion and tomato. Both crops are grown almost around the year and produce from different states hits the market during different months.

Tomatoes in India

MrBeast Chocolate Bars Set To Hit UK

Asda and Spar have secured deals to stock the viral Feastables chocolate bars from the star of one of the world’s most-subscribed YouTube channels, MrBeast. The Crunch, Deez Nuts, Milk Chocolate and Original Chocolate variants, which launched in the UK direct to consumer at the end of June, will now be rolling out in over 400 Asda stores from 9 July, The Grocer reported. While a 60g tablet format will initially be available from the supermarket, 35g bars will also be launching in stores later this year. Spar has been chosen as the brand’s exclusive convenience partner, with Feastables rolling out in participating stores from 10 July. In a sign of the power of the brand to bring customers through Spar’s doors, MrBeast has the biggest number of subscribers of any individual on Youtube at 164m followers, well over double the number of Prime Hydration backers KSI and Logan Paul combined. The chocolate bars have been dubbed as the new 'Prime' with bars being sold online for over £10.

Feastables

Twitter Threatens Legal Action Over Threads

 

Twitter is considering legal action against Meta over its fast-growing rival app Threads. Threads, which was launched to millions on Wednesday, is similar to Twitter and has been pitched by Meta bosses as a "friendly" alternative. Twitter's Elon Musk said "competition is fine, cheating is not" - but Meta denied claims in a legal letter that ex-Twitter staff helped create Threads. More than 30 million people have signed up for the new app, according to Meta. That is less than a tenth of the estimated 350 million users on Twitter, according to Statista. According to an SEC filing from 2013, it took Twitter four years to build the same number of users that Threads gained in a day - though Twitter grew its userbase from scratch, while Threads was able to tap into the pre-existing two billion monthly users Meta says Instagram has. The look and feel of Threads are similar to those of Twitter, BBC News technology reporter James Clayton noted. He said the news feed and the reposting were "incredibly familiar". But US copyright law does not protect ideas, so for Twitter to be successful in court it would have to prove that its own intellectual property, such as programming code, was taken.

Threads

Smart Speaker Sales Drop Off

 

Sales of smart speakers have "fallen off a cliff" as customers cut back and trade down on electrical items, the boss of Currys has said. Sales overall fell 7% in the year to 29 April as people bought cheaper goods due to the rising cost of living. Shoppers also bought more products on credit to spread their costs. "People aren't as interested in Amazon Alexa as they used to be," managing director Alex Baldock told the BBC's Today programme. This is surprising as many industry analysts have predicted a boom in smart speakers. However, the firm said that after a surge in sales during the first stages of the Covid pandemic, people were not upgrading. Mr Baldock said that shoppers were "being careful with their money". He said some shoppers were also trading down to buy lower value items. These included TVs and smaller kitchen appliances like kettles, where an entry level product "still boils water for you", the firm said. Smart speakers were "selling like hot cakes" a few years ago, but now sales have come back down, according to Joseph Teasdale, head of tech at Enders Analysis. He said people do not tend to replace them once they have one, and "maybe you buy a second device for the kitchen, but not much more than that".

Speaker Sales

Meta Launch Monthly VR Service

Facebook owner Meta has launched a virtual reality (VR) subscription service as it tries to make that part of its business profitable. Meta says paying users will get access to two new games a month. For the first three months of the year, the parent company of Instagram saw a $4bn (£3.1bn) loss at its VR unit. Meta faces competition from firms including technology giant Apple, which unveiled its highly anticipated mixed-reality headset this month. On Monday, the company said the Meta Quest+ service, which costs $7.99 a month or $59.99 for an annual subscription, was compatible with its Quest 2, Quest Pro and upcoming Quest 3 headsets. Apple's headset, which will be released early next year in the US, will be priced at $3,499. That is considerably more than other headsets currently available in the market. Meta's VR headsets are priced between $299.99 and $999.99.

Quest