YouSaid · the spoken record

Isaac Larian

lines on the record: 80
first: 2024-03-25
most recent: 2024-03-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I don't believe in luck and I never put my hand in front of anybody for a dollar. So it is hunger. You need to deprive of winning and succeeding. And I have lived the American dream. I could not have done what I've done in any other country. This country has a lot of issues, but if you work hard and you believe in who you are and you're not afraid of failing, you can become successful. There's no other country like it.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get to tell you, I still enjoy what I'm doing. I love it. I mean, I just came up with five new toy ideas. I got COVID, so I was home for five days. I came with five new toy ideas while at home.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a very, very good question. You know, I told you I go to therapy and one of the things that my psychologists keep telling me is Isaac. Okay, I know your childhood and you had these issues tough, hard upbringing. But you're still fighting. You gotta change and relax. And unfortunately, I think some ingrained habits is hard to break. And as you get older, it becomes harder. I have tried to get better. I work less. I'm much calmer with my people, with my family, etc. But for good or bad, I still have that fighting instinct in me.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're not as big as Metal, but we are the number one privately held toy company in North America. So we are big, but I always think like an upstart, and so does my team.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I thought as an adult they look good. Retailers thought they look good. But then after they failed, we went to research and the kids said they don't like aliens. They get scared of aliens.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly huge. So the next day I couldn't wait. I came to my office and I went to my head of design. I said, I want to have the ultimate unboxing toy. We had something called baby brats. They were so cute. And I said, I want these to be at the center of the ball once people unwrap it”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That many kids So, you know, my kids were saying to me, Dad, do you know what unboxing is? People buy Apple iPhones go in front of the camera, unbox it, and they get 18 million views.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they were. It was funny. You know what? It's a good thing they did that because brass is under resurgence and growing again. So on my LinkedIn, I thank them. I thank them for this.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. But, I mean, it goes back to my childhood and coming home bloodied and my mother saying that if you ever come back bloodied, I'm going to hit you. Go back and fight. Don't be bullied. I don't like to be bullied. And I think in general, and I tell my kids, if you are right and you believe in something that you're right, you fight to the end. And I will not change that.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. I mean, guy for six months, I sat in court. I would not come to my office. I hired a guy named John Barber to run my company while I'm in court. You know, one of the things I remember vividly when with jury verdict came and of course all the press was there in the courthouse. And my son Cameron, who at the time was 19 years old, the Ellie Times reporter started asking him how does it make you feel now that your father has won this long bather? He said to the reporter, Yes, my father won this case, but Mattel took away our father from us for the past 10 years. I still have pain about that lawsuit. I still do”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They the injunction, yes By 4 p.m., I was in the car driving for Pasadena to my office and Josh called me and says, Isaac, you don't believe it. Courto Appeal just issued a state injunction. And it was, oh my God. And boy, I again, as usual, I burst into crying, I screamed, I called my wife, got my whole company people together, and I told them this. We opened the bottle of champagne. And I said, now let's bring brats back and kick Matel's”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, when we went to that appeal hearing, literally it was the day after was supposed to be the recall. And during the break, I told Josh Rosenkranz, who was our apparent lawyer, I said, Josh, go ask the judges for a stay.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Personally for me because I don't like to quit I hate quitting I did not want my children to see that oh my god our father is defeated and in the Persian closely knit environment I don't want people to see that I'm a failure and there were days that I was so down but then I would get energized and I said I'm not doing anything wrong so I would go back and fight harder”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, for me it wasn't. I mean, people who know me, they say, oh my God, Isaac had the drop of anything, he starts crying. So I'm not afraid of being in touch with my own internal emotions. But that time with that injunction, I mean, they took me to ER at Cedar Siner. It kept me overnight.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I have been diagnosed with depression because the way I grew up, I mean, I didn't have a childhood. I worked since I was eight or nine years old. And I went through a lot of hardship. And yes, I do have depression. And I've tried to manage this with a lot of things. I meditate. I still go to therapy all the time. Not ashamed about that.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everybody thought we were going to go bank. I thought we were going to go bankrupt. To be honest with you, I became for the first time in my life suicidal.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we went to an appellate lawyer and the appellate lawyer says, we got a file for an emergency appeal So we filed a repeal and literally guided the day before I had to sign the paperwork to do the recall was a hearing on the Ninth Circuit.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we can't suit them for theft of trade secret because I thought there's a mole in my company, to be honest with you. I thought Metalla had a mole in my company.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Japanese restaurant. My cell phone rings is a Wall Street journal. Hi, Isaac. I want to talk to you about this lawsuit that Mattel just filed. They said, what lawsuit? So this lawsuit they filed against Carter Bryant saying that he worked at Mattel for two weeks while he was working for you on brats. And I called Carter Bryant right there. I said, I was just told about this with Wall Street Journal. Did you work at Mattel two weeks at the same time working at Brass Doll? He said, yes, I got so angry. I said, why the hell did you do that? Because now gave him a cause to bring this lawsuit. Anyways, that's how the lawsuit started and we countersuit Mattal for copyright infringement with Mycenae doll.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I did more than that beside the cooking for Bob Eckert, who was the CEO of Mattel, came from Kraft Foods. And I also started making and selling toys and selling cheese are two different things. And apparently Bob Eckert said Suda Sanovich.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“didn't work then they came up with a line called flavors flavors was like urban looking doll with graffiti packaging etc and i did an interview with the wall street journal you can pull it up and they told me what do you think about flavors and i told wall street journal they look like gangster barbie the only thing that's missing is the cocaine vile and she wrote that in the article”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They struck a chord with the girls because they were first of all didn't look blonde. They had what I call passion for fashion. Their fashions were new and”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you look at the history of Matal, they have basically used litigation as a business tool to put competitors out of business.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More than $15 million. So if that didn't work, I would not be in business right now talking to you. I would have gone bankrupt.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wanted to have a live action animation combined with the great music because that was going to cut through the clutter on Nickelodeon. It was different. And now we pumped that TV commercial and it was so catchy. The sales went through the roof. And Toys R Us came back to And they bought it. They bought it and I paid off the”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So comes October of 2001. Toys R Us cancers five and a half or six million dollars worth of brat's orders. I thought now for sure we're gonna go out of business. So I went without my wife's approval, got a second mortgage on our house, and put another one and a half million dollar TV advertising on this doll. And sails went through the roof.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but not enough GRP to, you know, instead of spending two, three million dollars, we were spending a million, and we were not getting enough eyeballs on it.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was selling in Spain, but he wasn't selling well here. And the reason was we were not putting enough advertising behind it.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, just one box at the bottom left corner, the worst area of the shelf. So that's what happened and we launched the doll first, believe it or not, in Spain. They were first in the market. And the product sold out instantly. Instantly.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One lot bite, okay. I said, why? And he says they don't look attractive. So I was so pissed off at the time. I went all the way up to the CEO of Walmart. So he told them, okay, run buy it. So he says, okay, I will buy it, but I only want Chloe, only blonde dolls sell. And I said, Ron, you know, my daughter was born in America, but she has darker skin. She doesn't want a blonde dog. She wants a doll that looks like her. If you want to buy this, you have to buy all four or I won't sell it to you. And he ended up buying it, but one pack. Only one. Can you imagine you had to look for it in the sea of Barbie to find it?”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very important trade So we show these two targets, they like it. The buyer says, yeah, it's different, we'll buy it. We showed these to Toys R Us. They said yes. We will buy it. Banda in Spain, they liked it and they said, yeah, we will buy it. Comes round store. Again, he says he won't buy it.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I said we need to have samples with packaging ready for Hong Kong toy show it was on January 2nd. And they said there is no way you're crazy. It's not going to work. I had a head of sales and marketing who worked for me, who used to work at Mattal before. And he told me, anybody who has taken on Barbie has gone out of business and gone bankrupt, Hasmuth tried. Don't do that. You're going to go out of business. I said, no, we're going to do this. He quit because he says he doesn't want to have a failure on his resume.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but I didn't want to do is bring a stereotype. So like Sasha was supposed to be kind of African American, but not African American or Jasmine was supposed to have olive skin because she has olive skin, but not Persian. I mean, I remember I went to Brazil and I asked a whole bunch of kids about Jasmine and they said, oh, she's Brazilian.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, the retailers had to buy a pack of four, but there's an individual. As an individual, you could buy one. You could buy Sasha, you could buy Jade. I gotcha. Jasmine.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, exactly. So we decide to make what we call Brad's pack. And I insisted we make all four, four dollars and sell all four together.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, because I said to him, why didn't you show it to Mattel will never do a doll that competes with Barbie? Barbie was on the pet store. So the biggest mistake he made guy was he decided to be a nice guy and give Mattel two weeks notice to finish some of the things that he was working on.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. So I said, I'm not sure if this is going to work. And I asked my daughter and she says, Dad, they're pretty cool, actually. So I asked this guy, okay, how'd you come up with this? And he said he works at Metall. I said, okay, but where did you make this? If this belongs to Matala, I don't want it. And he said, no, I did this in Missouri where I was not working. I said, okay, you quit tomorrow. You come here and work on this. You're going to give it a chance. He said, I don't want to be an employee. Say, okay, what do you want? He says, I want to get a royalty. I said, okay, fine, we give you 3% royalty on the dolls, but you must quit Mattel and come here right away.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They do everything for me. They own 90% market share. They come and set up the planogram. They sell and I make my bonuses every year. Why would I take a risk and take a portion of that and give it to you? I said, Ron, what if I came up with something that was better than Barbie and you didn't buy it? You're going to feel left out. He said if and when you do that, I will buy it. So I said, okay, remember this. I came back and told my design tip. Give me something that competes with Barbie. And everything they showed me was a Barbie knockoff. So one day, and I used to take my kids to work and my daughter Jasmine, I think at the time, was 10 or 11. And this guy comes in, his name is Carter Bryant. And he says, I have the next doll concept. He showed me these drawings and they look like aliens.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we'll, but you're going to go back a little bit. This guy runs over who was a buyer, I told you about Walmart. Very tough to sell products to. I came with the next door. He said, no, one day he took me to Walmart right across the street from Walmart headquarters and showed me this 98 feet of Barbie products all in coffin boxes. He says, Isaac, you see these.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it created a lot of rift and issues within the whole extended family. I mean, Fred being the younger one, my mother started saying that, oh no, the giving money, you've made money, give him some money, give him the money. And my dad, may he rest in peace, told me, I know you didn't do anything wrong. It is not your fault. He made a mistake. But please forgive him. And later on we reconciled, but I told him it's like, when you have an expensive piece of porcelain and it falls and it breaks, you can get crazy glue and put it together, but still you can feel the crack.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, we had, frankly, I love my whole family. I love my brother. And it bothered me that the business became like business situation like this happened. And I had offered him, because we were fighting every day. I had offered him either he buys me or I buy him. And I did buy him. And I asked him to keep some of his shares in the company. And he says, no, thank you, good luck. I'm going to go on my own. But unfortunately, he sued me.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, exactly. And then Lucas said he's going to make a new movie. And all of a sudden, the demand for Star Wars went up. But then I still have the exclusive license and it's two years left of the contract. And when I went back to Lucas to negotiate the contract, they said, no. And they had given it to Tiger Electronics. And that really pissed me off, to be honest with you, because I had worked all these years when nobody wanted a Star Wars. And we ended up in litigation with Lucasfilm, which I won. But that really put a bad taste in my mouth. And I said, the hell with it. I don't want to work for this entertainment company. I want to make my own IP.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Frankly, one of the things that was a turnaround for me was When I got the license for Star Wars, nobody wanted Star Wars”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I was actually, I learned from my mistake, from my failure with Nintendo Game and Watch, and this time I did not buy inventory like crazy. I would sell to retailers on what you call FOBs free on board. So they had to open a letter credit and buy it. So they own the risk, not me. And from one dollar, we became next year we had bad time bouncy baby, we had giddy up baby, and we became one of the biggest doll breakers.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, exactly. And at that time, you had to make TV commercials and put it on Nickelodeon and Fox Kids to sell the product. And you needed to have at least four major retailers in order to be able to afford to go on TV. But then I went to a guy named Ron Stover, who was the buyer at Walmart. And he says, I won't buy it. I said, come on, Ron, why? He told me, Isaac, you are micro games of America. Nobody will buy a doll from a company called Micro Games of America. I said, Ron, I'm going to change the company name right now. I'm going to call it MGA. And he says, you're too fast for me. Okay. All right, I'll buy it.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like the toy, you know, and I have the personality when somebody says to me, no, you cannot do it. I'll take that as a challenge. And I made the sample, I went and sold it to Toys R Us, sold it to Target, sold it to Kmart.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Games Red Bouncey Bouncy Baby Me, I still remember that song. And he says, I want you to make this the hall. It's going to be big. I said, come on, Joe, you have gone to Mattel. You've gone to Taiko. You have gone to toy busy. You've gone to everybody. Everybody said, no, why would you come to me? I don't know how to make dolls. And he said, they're stupid. They don't understand it, but you're an entrepreneur. You understand that this is a good toy. And so I said, okay, let me try it. So I took the sample to Hong Kong, sat with two factories who make dolls from Metal. And I said, if you make this for $5, I'll buy 200,000 pieces.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sitting across It was fascinating. I gotta tell you and Heim, I don't know if he remembers this or not. So Power Engines are so strong and we were selling so much. And I called him one day, I said, can I come and see you? His office was in Bearbank. I have a big royalty check for you. So he said, yeah, sure. I went there. He made me angel hair pasta. It was delicious. I gave him a check for $720,000. And guess what? Week after he sent the auditors to come and audit us because he thought and I still talked to him and laugh about it because he thought I was cheating him. There could have been more.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So I got the license for Star Wars. My son Jason at the time was fascinated with Power Rangers, so I went to Haim Saban and got the license for”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that's very interesting. Nintendo watched the success that I had with Game& Watch. And I still today say that Nintendo was inspired by the success of my Game& Watch to come up with Game Boy. And of course, they didn't want to give me Game Boy. I asked for it.”
2024-03-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT