What do Barbie, SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog, and Leapfrog’s educational toys have in common? Their success is the brainchild of one man, Tom Kalinske. He has been CEO of various multinational companies such as Mattel, SEGA America, and Leapfrog. In each of the companies, he has consistently brought products to its heights and revolutionized industries.

Today, Kalinske is executive chairman and one of the founders of a new company called Global Education Learning, which is focused on the early childhood education market in China. Their goal is to bring quality US curriculum and educational materials to China. They recently acquired another company and launched their first product this past year, and are already profitable in the millions.

We recently spoke with Kalinske on his work and experiences.

Reviving Barbie at Mattel

Kalinske started working at Mattel in 1972. During his time as President and CEO, he helped build the Barbie, Hotwheels, and Masters of the Universe brands. This made Mattel the largest toy company in the world.

In recognition of his achievements, Kalinske was inducted into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame, which includes names such as Walt Disney, George Lucas, Mattel founders Ruth & Elliot Handler, and Hasbro’s Stephen Hassenfeld.

What made you take up the challenge of saving the Barbie brand? How did you do it?

At the time, Barbie just had its first decline from about US$100million to US$42million. The market was saturated and there was a lot of competition. I was working on the pre-school line for Mattel. Ruth [Handler] walked into my cubicle one day and told me, “Both the sales team and retailers say Barbie is over, and we should focus on something else.” The Wall Street analysts thought that it was over as well. I told Ruth, “That it is the dumbest thing that I have ever heard. I think Barbie will be around long after you and I are gone.” And so, she made me in charge of the Barbie business.

In determining the strategy for Barbie, I asked Ruth, “Why is Barbie special?” She told me, “Barbie can be whatever every girl wants it to be.” That became the strategy for how we positioned Barbie; the strategy was to segment the market. Up until then, the company would introduce one lead doll per year, with one set of accessories and a costume. I thought that was too little, so I did market segmentation and introduced a variety of Barbie dolls. There was a “My first Barbie” for the young girls. Then, there was fashion, Hollywood, and super-star Barbie for the older girls.

We also did price segmentation. At that time, people did not believe that a doll could be sold for more than $6. We introduced a series of collectors’ Barbie dolls, which sold for more than $100. We did the same thing with the accessories and costume for Barbie. There were occupational Barbie dolls such as astronaut Barbie and even the President Barbie. The theme was that every girl could be whatever she wanted to be.

Business grew very rapidly in the US and around the world. And, revenue grew from $42million to over $550million in only a few years. Barbie uses the same strategy today.

Battling Nintendo at SEGA America

Success at Mattel was only the beginning for Kalinske. In 1990, Kalinske joined SEGA America as its CEO. His appointment transformed SEGA into a $5 billion company, and their market share grew from 10% to a peak of over 50%. In the fiercely competitive gaming market, Kalinske employed an aggressive and remarkable strategy against the market leader then, Nintendo. The success of Sega has inspired and transformed an entire generation on video gaming.

Unfortunately SEGA’s fortune took a dive with the introduction of SEGA Saturn. SEGA never recovered from Saturn and was eventually pushed out of the gaming industry. It is well documented that Kalinske was forced to introduce SEGA Saturn to the market although the hardware was not fully developed and there was simply not enough game titles to support the launch.

In May 2014, Blake J. Harris authored a new book titled Consoles War on the corporate battle between SEGA and Nintendo, featuring Bill White, Perrin Kaplan, Al Nilsen and Tom Kalinske. A documentary movie is currently in the works and scheduled for release at the Sundance Film Festival in late 2014. This story has also triggered interest in Hollywood, and we expect a movie to be released in 2016.

What was the secret behind the marketing strategy against Nintendo?

We tried to change the market. At that time, Nintendo was going after the teen market, in the range of 9 to 15-year-old boys. So, we went after a different market — the older teens and college students. We introduced more sports-theme games, like Joe Montana football, NBA, and FIFA Soccer. We also introduced strategy and war games to appeal to the older age group. And, we also had a great lead character like the Sonic Hedgehog, which was very different from Mario Bros.

We also made fun of Nintendo. We positioned ourselves as the big boys, and emphasized that their games was for the kids. We appealed to the older audience and had to develop the SRB rating systems too, because we didn’t want young kids to be playing older-kid games, such as blood and shooting games.

What would you have done differently with SEGA Saturn, if you had a second chance?

I was not impressed with how the hardware of SEGA Saturn was developed. The head of R&D, Joe Miller, and I wanted it to be better and more differentiated. We lost that fight with SEGA Japan. The engineering model was that SEGA America focused on the software and games, while SEGA Japan worked on the hardware.

We had an opportunity to collaborate with Sony to produce a Sony-SEGA hardware system. We were great at software, where the money was. And, Sony was working on an more advanced hardware system. But, SEGA Japan rejected that idea. That was the first mistake, and I was forced to introduce Saturn. I would not have introduced it until the hardware was better, and when we had enough software to support the launch. We only have 3 titles at the launch, so that was not enough to get it going.

Was that the most difficult decision you have to make while at SEGA?

It was definitely one of the toughest decision I was forced to do it. And, it led to the most difficult decision: to leave SEGA. We had great people at SEGA, and it was tough to leave. I received an offer to start and run a company called Education Technology, which was later renamed to Knowledge Universe. The goal was to look into using video game technology to improve education. I thought it was a very exciting opportunity.

Tripling Down as CEO and Transforming Education at Knowledge Universe

In 1996, Kalinske left SEGA to become President of a newly formed company, Knowledge Universe. Under his leadership, Knowledge Universe grew from a $500million into a $3.6billion dollar group by 2005. The company also invested in over 35 education companies, including a company called K12, which is valued at $1.2billon today. One of their well-known successes is the acquisition of LeapFrog. At LeapFrog, Kalinske made video games highly educational and was a first in the industry to do so. In doing so, he transformed the company into the largest educational toy company in the world. Revenue quickly grew from $72 million to $680 million within a short span of 4 years, from 1999 to 2003.

What was a key lesson you learned from mixing entertainment with education?

At Knowledge Universe, I had $500 million to form or buy education companies. The second company that we bought was LeapFrog. It was only doing $9million in revenue at that time, and they were losing money. The Wall Street analysts said it was crazy to buy LeapFrog, because they didn’t believe that parents would pay extra for educational toys. We ended up proving them wrong. We used video game technology to make education more fun and adaptive for children.

We discovered that parents really are willing to pay more, and children will really use and learn from educational toys. For me, that is the future of education.

How did you make LeapFrog profitable?

We worked very closely with Dr. Robert Calfee, who was the Associate Dean at School of Education at Stanford University, to help with the design of our products. Later, he formed an education review board with other professors from UC Berkeley, Michigan, Harvard, and Yale to review and ensure that our products were educationally correct. We first ensured that they were educationally correct, and then we made them fun and interesting. Our competitors were copying everything that we did. But, they did not have the same resources in Stanford as we did. This made a big difference.

Secrets for Success

Does success beget success? It certainly seems like Kalinske has a recipe for success.

What is your secret for success?

Always be critical and skeptical about what the common experts say. In my career, I have almost always gone up against the experts’ beliefs and proved them wrong. I have also learned to not be arrogant or complacent when you have success, otherwise it will be short-termed. And, always do something that your competition will not and cannot do. Be different.

What advice do you have for aspiring leaders?

Be a real student of the market. You have to know your market better than anyone else does. Always do more than what is asked of you. Think about how you can help others in your company. Be different and again, never be arrogant or complacent.

Before Panty & Stocking with Garter Belt pushed the boundaries of good taste, before Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann redefined struggle on a cosmic scale, even before Neon Genesis Evangelion rewrote the rules of the mecha subgenre, a studio of fans-turned-animators known as Gainax made waves with Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. Loosely based on Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne, inspired by an unproduced story concept from Hayao Miyazaki, and helmed by series director Hideaki Anno, Nadia is a tale of high adventure set in a fantastical version of Europe and the Atlantic Ocean during the year 1889.

The series chronicles the exploits of Jean, a French boy who also happens to be an ingenious inventor, and Nadia, a young circus performer with a mysterious past. Together they seek to return Nadia to her native land, but this task is difficult since Nadia has no memories of her life before the circus. During their quest, Nadia and Jean run afoul of Grandis Granba, a wicked noblewoman with a pair of bumbling henchmen and an amphibious flying tank. Grandis covets Nadia’s Blue Water gem and will stop at nothing to possess it. Jean and Nadia also cross paths with Neo-Atlantis, a shadowy organization bent on world domination. With the aid of Captain Nemo and the crew of the Nautilus submarine, will Nadia finally discover the truth of her origins? And what is the secret of the Blue Water, the enigmatic bauble that glows whenever danger threatens Nadia?

Nadia is a show with two identities: on one hand, it’s a children’s adventure story complete with an annoying animal sidekick and a buffoonish trio of antagonists straight out of the Time Bokan animation series. On the other hand, it’s a surprisingly dark and somber proto-steampunk fantasy that leans heavily on the anticolonial and antiwar themes expressed in Jules Verne’s original novel. On the one hand, Jean is a mechanical genius whose whimsical gadgets invariably break down in a puff of cartoon smoke. On the other hand, the technology employed by Neo-Atlantis sinks ships and orphans children. In one breath, a sailor trapped in a damaged section of the Nautilus heroically accepts his fate. In the next, he screams over the intercom that he doesn’t want to die, pleading for a rescue that even he knows to be impossible. The closest comparison I can make is to Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky, a film with which Nadia shares a similar aesthetic and tone.

Nowhere is this contrast of styles more apparent than in the dreaded “island episodes,” which were created during the final third of the series to answer the demand for more content during Nadia’s initial NHK broadcast. During the island episodes both the storytelling and the animation quality of the show take a turn for the terrible. To borrow a metaphor from another nautical work of fiction, this sequence of episodes is an albatross chained to the neck of an otherwise excellent series.

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water has had a rocky release history in the United States. During the VHS era, Streamline Pictures released eight English-dubbed episodes of Nadia. This version is noteworthy only for the quality of the dubbing, which I’ve often heard described as “infamous.” Many years later, ADV Films attempted to publish Nadia via a subscription-based model under their ill-fated ADV Fansubs label. Then in 2001 and 2002, ADV published a general release that spread 39 episodes across 10 individual DVDs, none of which were labeled by volume number. Perhaps as a result of this treatment, Nadia never achieved an American following like later Gainax shows did.

Now Sentai Filmworks, one of the orphans of ADV Films, is rereleasing the show in complete collections on Blu-ray and DVD. Hopefully this release will receive the attention it merits, because although it’s been eclipsed by the popularity and influence of Evangelion, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water is nevertheless a highwater mark for anime from an earlier era. Recommended.

This Thanksgiving morn I wake to sadness for there is nothing to be thankful for, unless of course you are a brutal dictator who has served US interests for the past 33 years. If that is the case, then you are just smiling and clapping cus it’s payday in America!

In Saudi Arabia, a Yemeni dictator, a true dictator who neolibralized his nation on behalf of the international bankers and speculators at the cost of the well-being of 90% of his people, signed an agreement with the United States and other neoliberalized countries to officially step down and leave his country in ruin and enduring civil war.

The deal that our secretary of state brokered with the brutal dictator (after we tried to keep him in power with cruise missile strikes, CIA death squads, and drone warfare) includes and undisclosed amount of cash (probably mounds of stock options) and promises that he will not be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

Joy and Thanksgiving for a dictator

President Saleh was photographed smiling as he signed his deal and his joy was so overwhelming he actually clapped his hands together a few times in celebration. His family, after 3 decades of pocketing US cash and setting up government business deals with his family members, is one of the richest in the world.

Saleh, like many other dictator puppets of the past, will come to New York for “medical treatment” and probably remain to live here, safe from prosecution or extradition, a reward for having served the American way of globalist business for 33 years in Yemen.

“Seated beside Saudi King Abdullah in the Saudi capital Riyadh, Saleh signed the U.S.-backed deal hammered out by his country’s powerful Gulf Arab neighbors to transfer power within 30 days to his vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. That will be followed by early presidential elections within 90 days. He was dressed smartly in a dark business suit with a matching striped tie and handkerchief, and he smiled as he signed the deal, then clapped his hands a few times. He then spoke for a few minutes to members of the Saudi royal families and international diplomats… ” MSNBC

Undoubtedly, the Obama administration will try to turn this into some kind of success for their foreign policy agenda. They can’t gloat too much as that would involve exposing the heinous nature of President Saleh’s dictatorial rule in Yemen and the Hunt oil interests it supported.

But let’s all remember, back in Dec. of 2009, when Barack “peace prize” Obama had just gotten started with his “CHANGE” program, he authorized two US cruise missile strikes (cruise missiles armed with the indiscriminate killer Cluster Bombs (which have been banned by most civilized nations)) against the rebellion in Yemen in support of the dictator who is now leaving office. Those strikes killed 23 children and a number of other innocent people and that was just the beginning of a Barack Obama campaign of drones and other bombings in Yemen which has killed hundreds more.

In November of 2010, just a year ago, President Obama quietly sent CIA death squads into Yemen to help tamp down the uprising in the north. He called them “hunter killer” teams.

“Allowing the U.S. military’s Special Operations Command units to operate under the CIA would give the U.S. greater leeway to strike at militants even without the explicit blessing of the Yemeni government. In addition to streamlining the launching of strikes, it would provide deniability to the Yemeni government because the CIA operations would be covert. The White House is already considering adding armed CIA drones to the arsenal against militants in Yemen, mirroring the agency’s Pakistan campaign.” Wall Street Journal

In January of 2011 Hillary Clinton went to Yemen in secret (Yemen at that time was deep into a revolution which we were helping to put down) and met with the dictator Saleh to hand over some cash and to show him he was still President Obama’s boy in the region. All told, the Obama administration gave President Saleh 300 million dollars in 2010, up from 17 million in 2008… I guess the increase is the cost of killing 23 kids in Yemen that the American people had to pay.

“Mrs. Clinton, the first secretary of state to visit Yemen since James A. Baker III in 1990, undertook a delicate balancing act. She gently prodded the country’s longtime autocratic president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to open up his political system while leaving no doubt that he remained a crucial partner in the fight against Islamic extremism. Arriving from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, under a cloak of secrecy, Mrs. Clinton spent barely seven hours in this ramshackle, beguiling capital. But she got a vivid impression of America’s tangled relationship with Yemen, to which it sent $130 million in nonmilitary aid in 2010, up from $17 million in 2008, an increase that brings it almost in line with 2010’s $170 million in military aid.” New York Times, Jan 2011

Other “regular visitors” to the dictator’s home in Yemen under the Obama administration were “: John O. Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the military’s central command”

After two years of killing civilians and protesters to keep our dictator in power in Yemen, in the end the will and the determination of the Yemeni people forced him out and so our “peace prize” winning president gives him a massive retirement package, invites him to live free in America, and will probably look to spin it up as some kind of “progressive” foreign policy success story for his upcoming marketing campaign for re-election.

Clinton made sure that the meeting to sign the agreement was just before Thanksgiving in order to bury the story as best as possible. Hate to damage the image of the Peace Prize President a year before the upcoming election.

President Saleh’s family is deeply entrenched in Yemeni politics and the military and they hold important and powerful seats such as the head of the secret police service and other intelligence positions. Saleh himself also sits on the boards of many big businesses in Yemen which he certainly will not give up. Even from New York, the dictator will still wield a great deal of control in Yemen.

In other news, Hillary Clinton has announced that the United States will not be able to live up to it’s responsibility and agreement to destroy out stockpile of chemical weapons by April 29th 2012 and so we will attempt to push that date back to somewhere around 2020 making us guilty of what we have accused Libya of doing, without the slightest bit of proof. We still hold thousands of warheads with both chemical and biological weapons in clear violation of any moral contract the United States ever had with civil society.

The US agreed to destroy its stockpile of aging chemical weapons – principally mustard agent and nerve agents – by 2007. The final destruction deadline was extended to April 29, 2012. And now it is seeking another extension, this time by 2022 Press TV

Meanwhile in Egypt, a revolution that was hijacked by Sec. Clinton and her globalist partners is again struggling to fight against the military junta that we helped put in power as an alternative to the real democracy the Egyptian protesters had fought and died for under the last days of our last puppet dictator, Mubarak. Chemical weapons are being used routinely against the people of Egypt… chemical weapons made and supplied by the United States of America.

“Tear gas! Rubber bullets! Nerve gas!” he cried out, displaying the spent metal canisters. “Where are they from, America?” people asked, already knowing the answer. “Yes, America,” the man replied furiously. The crowd murmured with unsurprised disdain. Like many gas canisters in Tahrir, one of his was marked with blue letters that read “Made in USA” and bore the name of the company that produced it: Combined Tactical Systems, in Jamestown, PA. Huffington Post

One of the greatest things about all these streaming services is that the old TV shows come back around. They’re not quite like we remember them from the old days.

Amazon Prime has picked up the old “Magnum, P.I.,” which ran on CBS from 1980-88. Starring Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a former Naval intelligence officer who served in Vietnam, the series follows his exploits as a private investigator in Hawaii, living gratis on the wealthy Robin Masters estate. While some of the charm has worn off “Magnum, P.I.’s” eight seasons, there are still many great lessons to be learned from that dashing P.I. driving a borrowed Ferrari through paradise.

An Ode to Dads and Tom Selleck in Shorts

“Magnum, P.I.” isn’t so much a guilty pleasure as an ode to Tom Selleck in shorts. The shorts are really a testament to how ’80s-fabulous this show is. Better than Don Johnson’s jacket and Bruce Willis’ dimples are Selleck’s super short shorts.

In fact, ’80s fashion for men was better all around than it is today. Short shorts are better than cargo shorts, tailored suits are better than Jimmy Fallon’s child-sized suits, and short-sleeved sweatshirts are perfectly acceptable if you have the arms for them. People joke about ’80s fashion and even hyperbolize it, with neon stripes and paint splatters (and yeah, I had that shirt), but the basic, mainstream lewks hardly pushed the sartorial envelope. Some things are better as they actually were, without the sheen of memory.

Magnum has that same mustache all we Gen Xers’ dads had when we were kids, which gives him a comfortable, familiar look — like this guy can put together a doll house and take down a ring of international jewel thieves, all before breakfast. And he’s got some good friends.

There’s Higgins (John Hillerman), Rick (Larry Manetti), and T.C. (Roger E. Mosley). Higgins is a veteran too, though of an earlier war, while Rick and T.C. were with Magnum in Vietnam. They rarely talk about the intricacies of the war, which is notable. Jokes and bits of connection, yes, but not so much the hard stuff. Back in the ’80s, the horrors of the war weren’t so far in the past that they had to be conjured up in dialogue to be present on screen.

1980s-Style Masculinity

The simple backstory that these guys were Vietnam vets was enough to give viewers deep and meaningful insight into the grief and turmoil in their hearts. There was a collective, public awareness of veterans’ experiences of the war, an understanding of both the facts of how the whole thing went down and the feelings that went along with it. That’s something we simply don’t have now, when nobody can agree on facts, and feelings are so subjective that only their bearer can understand them.

The guys keep their emotions bottled up inside, and while now and then the briefest facial expression denotes some past, buried trauma, they never let it out. They’re too manly for that — different from how a show would express past war grief today.

There are no hard feelings. They just suck it up, move on, and deal with the fact that they are damaged by looking cute, smiling at ladies, generally being stand-up guys, and having each other’s backs no matter what. The best kind of 1980s style is masculinity that not only looks good in shorts, but holds its emotions so close they turn into diamonds of kindness and compassion.

Magnum, the Man We All Need

“Magnum, P.I.” ran something like 20 hour-long episodes every season, and each one was stand-alone. That’s not the kind of thing you see anymore. On today’s TV shows, a plot builds and builds for an entire season, teases out the break, then leaves you hanging until the next season — or sometimes forever.

Every episode, Magnum and his friends come back fresh, relaxed, and ready to tackle a new mystery. Frankly, it’s a joy to find that nothing, no matter how bad or crazy, and no matter who gets shot or pushed from the top of a Honolulu skyscraper, the boys come back, right as rain, to face a new challenge in paradise.

No matter the challenge, Magnum can overcome it and be back to his Ferrari-driving ways in just a week’s time. Magnum narrates the story, talking about his intuition and gut feelings, and now and then he does us all a favor by looking out at the camera and gracing us with a knowing smile.

Most of the women who co-star on Magnum, a different one each episode and no regulars, show their good sense by not swooning for him. But no matter how accomplished and independent, the women come to trust Magnum. Maybe it’s the dimples, the short shorts, the mustache, or the unbuttoned Hawaiian shirts with hairy chests (which was in vogue back then) — or perhaps it’s Magnum’s hapless yet powerful demeanor. Whatever the reason, every episode, he maintains his standing as a gentleman.

He treats women as equals, and those he knows — journalists (one fiercely played by Tyne Daly), novelists, radio DJ’s, Jessica Fletcher (“Murder, She Wrote’s” Angela Lansbury) — are autonomous, self-sufficient, and capable. Yet they still appreciate a bit of chivalry — that most maligned, arcane concept where men acquiesce to women’s needs just for the fun of it.

Just as a childhood home once revisited seems smaller, these old shows from the ‘80s seem laden with preconceived notions that just don’t fit who we are culturally anymore. We don’t like big, strong men who look good in shorts trying to protect their friends and honor. We don’t like male friendships based in wartime bonding. We don’t like displays of affluence that don’t come with celebrity.

But there’s still plenty to love about “Magnum, P.I.” It’s an honest reflection of what prime time, family-friendly content was. There’s no over-the-top sex humor — the scantily clad women are merely beach background — and Magnum doesn’t let his personal ambitions get in the way of doing the right thing.

This isn’t a series you need to watch all of to get the general vibe and basic ideas. In fact, it’s best watched as a delightful background, to reminisce about when the worst crimes we could fathom were diplomatic assassinations, high-level embezzlements, and international jewel heists.