Joe Euteneuer
Analyst · Morningstar. Your line is now open.
Sure. Look, it is a tough category. You could look at the MPD data, and it's certainly the biggest category out there. But it's also one of the toughest categories out there. On Fisher Price, which is the largest brand within the category, you can see the improvement and the conversations that we've had start to formulate in proof points. We are on track for the stabilization of Fisher Price. And we're really starting to see some part of it – positive signs for the brand globally. As I mentioned, if you exclude the recall, we actually would be up single digits in Fisher Price, which would have been a great report. But unfortunately, we obviously have had that recall, but we continue to strive and make some progress. If I tell you that there's a lot of indications, but what I would look at is product performance. We're seeing great traction on some of the new product innovation launches that we've had, Linkimals, in particular, is off to a really strong start in the third quarter, and it's responding incredibly well to retail promotions in most major markets. We have a variety of other segments that we launched this year that are getting traction. And as we head towards the fourth quarter, our new brand platform that we recently launched, Let's Be Kids in the U.S., which started at the end of September has gotten great traction to [Hero Brand] film with seven different product spots. We've gotten some really terrific retail partnership and activations that will continue around this campaign. Terrific retail payment events happening at Walmart, and certainly Target and great programs at Amazon, as well as our partnerships throughout the world. Within the infant preschool category, our challenging brand is Thomas, which we talked about actively working to improve the product portfolio. One of the indications of this is, we're rolling out a singular core system of play, which combines both push along a motorized play on a single-track system. It's a lot of detail and I recognize that in the answer, but truth be told, we had various different tracks systems for Thomas, and we believe ultimately, actually, distracted the consumer from the actual system of play. So, we're working very hard at strengthening the product portfolio, as well as continuing to build up our retail presence in merchandising, and new content. As Ynon mentioned, 2020 marks Thomas’ 75th anniversary. So, you can look for redefining content, new product and some great reveals that we’ll share as time suggests. But ultimately, we believe in the category Fisher Price is a leading brand within the category and we will certainly report at the end of the year how our products and our portfolio performed.