Mattel Cuts 65 Jobs in Pivot to Digital Gaming

Mattel's 65-employee cut at its El Segundo HQ took effect yesterday under a $200M cost-savings program that the company's own 8-K explicitly ties to a pivot toward "digital gaming ventures." That's a Barbie, Hot Wheels, UNO, and Masters-of-the-Universe IP holder telling the SEC that its growth thesis is now interactive entertainment rather than physical toys. The 65 jobs bring Mattel's total 2025-26 cuts to roughly 250 employees and follow a Toy Fair quarter where the publicly stated message was that licensing-driven games and films are where the margin actually lives. The interesting comparison is Hasbro, which split off Wizards of the Coast specifically because the games business runs on different economics than the toy business — Mattel appears to be solving the same problem by absorbing rather than separating. Either way, the pattern of 2026 keeps repeating: the companies on the toy aisle increasingly think of themselves as game publishers who happen to also make plastic.