Mattel snagged the rights to Hello Kitty by flying a team to Tokyo and pitching the brand's 91-year-old 'patriarch'

'Hello Kitty was not available, it was not being pitched or presented for people to bid on,' the toy giant's CEO said.

"Hello Kitty was not available, it was not being pitched or presented for people to bid on," Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz said at a conference this week."We went to Tokyo, multiple meetings with the patriarch owner of Sanrio," he added,"pitched and won those rights."to develop toys, dolls, games, baby gear, and other products based on Hello Kitty and other cute characters such as Chococat and Tuxedosam.

Mattel has landed licenses for Minions, Toy Story 4, and other high-profile franchises in recent months. Securing the Hello Kitty license shows Mattel is"not necessarily following the beaten path of getting into a bidding cycle on known properties that come to the market, but rather innovating and going out and creating a new line out of something that was not necessarily available," Kreiz said.

, Kreiz said."It's not meant to be a toy, but we turned it into a toy line through creativity and innovation and going after it and winning it aggressively." Shares in Mattel surged about 12% on June 4, the day it announced the Hello Kitty deal. However, they plunged more than 10% on August 9 after the company received an"anonymous whistleblower letter" andin order to investigate its claims. It hasn't disclosed any further information about the letter.

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