The toy company announced the launch of its NFT marketplace at Mattel Creations, its own platform for selling to fans, as well as adding new digital collectibles to its portfolio.
Mattel is one of the largest toy companies in the world. Based in California, it produces items such as action figures and dolls, in addition to owning the intellectual property rights to several well-known brands, such as Barbie, Hot Wheels, UNO, and many more.
Currently, the company only has NFT collections of Barbie and Hot Wheels brands. Hot Wheels digital collectibles are currently on the WAX blockchain, but will be moved to the FLOW network, alongside the launch of the new proprietary marketplace.
This Mattel platform will be called “Mattel Creations“, and is going to be released alongside the fourth edition of the Hot Wheels NFT collection. This marketplace has started to be built on the FLOW blockchain, where they have also developed the NBA Top Shot platform.
In this way, we see how the intentions of the toy company to enter the Web 3.0 world and the metaverse are becoming more and more visualized. One of the main objectives of the Mattel Creations marketplace is to consolidate a new trend of toys as art, by which it seeks to take toy collecting to a new stage.
Thus, the new collectibles platform has been designed for those regular customers of the brand, and a fact that the company points out is that it will not be necessary for users to have cryptocurrencies to obtain a collectible of the brand.
In a separate section of the marketplace, they have communicated that the company has plans to add a peer-to-peer trading option in the future, whereby users will be able to buy and sell their collectibles among the same fans, but it will be for next year 2023.
As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, the Hot Wheels brand already has an NFT collection that has been on the market for some time now, which goes by the name of “Pedal to the Metal”. According to analysts, it is one of the best performing NFT collections on the WAX network, where the collection was originally launched. These digital collectibles sold for $25 and included a voucher for a physical Hot Wheels toy.
On the other hand, it has been reported that the first release of the platform will be the fourth edition of the Hot Wheels NFT garage, which will feature artwork of 60 car models from different brands, in which you can find Aston Martin or McLaren. Each pack will include 7 NFT with their respective rarity levels. Only the rarest ones can be exchanged for a physical toy.
Following the launch of the new collection on the brand’s own marketplace, the migration to the Flow network will take place. Following the statistical data on the previous collections, the company expects that the launch of the new collection will have strong supporting effects for the new platform.
Mattel Future Lab Vice President Ron Friedman said that the creation of their own marketplace will allow the company to translate Mattel’s historic IP into digital art. On the other hand, regarding future releases, he expressed that they are eager to share new releases that are inspired by Mattel brands.
One of the top brands most likely to be next is Barbie, as it has an NFT collection resulting from a Mattel collaboration with Balmain, a fashion house.
In summary, we can see that this new brand strategy has been a success, as the Hot Wheels NFT collection continues to be in the top 3 by sales volume on the WAX blockchain, so there is a good chance that the launch of its own marketplace will be another success for the brand.
Written by Luciano Garriga (TW:@luchogarriga) for NFT Express