Mattel’s New Partner: The United Nations
Organization Helping To Shape Stories
On a recent weekday afternoon, a corporate executive met with United Nations staffers at the organization's landmark building high above the East River. The executive wasn't an energy or environmental mogul looking for a government contract. She was a senior marketing manager for Thomas the Tank Engine, Mattel's musty toy brand about a rail car that speaks. And the U.N. staffers, in person and Skyped in from around the globe, were there for an unusual purpose — to vet “Thomas” content for its U.N.-worthiness.
“So, what do you think?” said the manager, Megan Pashel, after playing a clip from a laptop in New York.
“I thought it was excellent — I was really impressed with the representation of gender equality,” said Tolulope Lewis-Tamoka, Africa program adviser for U.N. Women, speaking from Nairobi. “I think this will make a strong impression on boys and girls. And it has gender-sensitive language, which is what U.N. Women really stands for.”
For more than 70 years, young children have been told stories about the mischievous Thomas and his track-bound pals, originally in a British book series and, for much of the past three decades, in a TV show titled “Thomas & Friends.”
But viewership and merchandise sales have been sharply declining in recent years. So in what principals from both sides say is a first, Mattel has called on the United Nations to help, hoping that an appetite for inclusive characters and “woke” messages will make the property more appealing to modern children — and, maybe equally important, to their parents.
Mattel and the United Nations have been engaged in an 18-month collaboration that has the diplomatic body helping shape story lines and characters on the cable television series, now titled “Thomas & Friends: Big World! Big Adventures!” When the new-look show launches on Nick Jr. on Friday, on display will be not just a fresh direction for a toy brand but also a trial balloon of sorts for a new — and, to some, thorny — form of entertainment, one in which global activism and commercial Hollywood are entwined.
“We think this can be a whole new way of collaborating,” Richard Dickson, president and chief operating officer of Mattel, said in an interview. “We hope partnerships like this become an example for others.”
The arrangement began when Mattel executives in early 2017 approached the United Nations and said they would like to work together. Soon teams from Mattel and the United Nations were gathered in New York, where U.N. staffers pitched ideas to Thomas brand managers. The parties were trying to figure out which of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals — the 17 objectives in areas such as poverty, hunger and sanitation it aims to achieve by 2030 — would make sense for story lines.
They eventually settled on six. Five of them — education, sustainable communities, responsible consumption, gender equity and “life on land,” about healthy ecosystems — will be featured in a total of nine of the 26 episodes and related short-form content this season. (A sixth goal, related to clean water, was accepted but wound up on the cutting-room floor because it could not be worked in easily.)
To address gender equality, for instance, producers replaced several male characters with female ones, including an orange car named Rebecca, an African car named Nia and a Chinese engine named Hong-Mei, and worked messages about gender into the episodes.
“Some think girls are weak, but I know that's not true,” Thomas says in one piece of content soon after he is bested in a race — and rescued — by Hong-Mei.
“Gordon can pull the engine, and Rebecca can pull the engine,” he adds. “If boys and girls aren't given the same opportunities, they might not be given the chance to work as equals, and that's not fair.”
For the global body, the hope is that putting the messages in an entertainment context will help them reach people in ways that bureaucratic programs cannot.
Mattel certainly needs the brand reinvention to work, with Thomas sales dropping 8 percent in the most recent quarter.
The character's turn to the United Nations has not been welcomed by all. Some on the right say the new direction is a bone thrown to the left and politicizes a toy and its preschool audience.
The agreement marks a step beyond where Hollywood has gone in its diversity initiatives, which have largely focused on hiring, not scripts.
But those behind Thomas say this is not a matter of outsourcing Hollywood's creative process.
“If you look at Thomas, the property has always been changing,” McCue said, from books to CG.“This is just another change we needed to make.”