Mattel Tries to Get Back Into Game With Preteen Console

Melding some preteen favorites -- video games, superheroes and trading cards -- Mattel Inc. is introducing a game console for the too-young-for-Xbox set.

The El Segundo-based toy manufacturer today is set to introduce Hyperscan, a game console that uses computer chip-embedded trading cards, aimed at an elusive and lucrative group: 8- to 12-year-old boys.

To make sure it gets its target audience’s attention, Mattel is planning a marketing offensive designed to win back consumers who generally left traditional toys around the time they graduated from footed pajamas.

“Mattel hasn’t done a lot in terms of the electronics market, and they see how much kids are playing with electronics,” said Jim Silver, editor of Toy Wishes magazine. “It’s a hard market, but it’s a market Mattel wants to play in and it’s a great entry for them.”

Hyperscan consists of a console, a controller, a game CD and six collector cards featuring a character or special power.

Players plug the console into a television, insert the game CD, scan a character card under the system’s card reader and then scan another card giving that character a special power, such as a weapon or skill. A player can fight the system or combat a friend.

At the end of the battle, the characters are accorded additional strength and speed based on how well they played. With another swipe of the character card, those enhancements are permanently retained so that players can battle on friends’ consoles -- and have an incentive to collect new cards with different powers and build up their characters’ skills.

The system will sell for about $70 -- about $10 more than the cost of a single game for a high-end console such as Xbox 360, Mattel noted. A booster pack of six cards will go for about $10.

“Video games are at the top of the list of what boys are interested in, and it piqued our interest in creating video games in a way that meshes with our core strengths,” said Cynthia Neiman, Mattel’s vice president of marketing for games and interactive. “We saw an opportunity to come to the market with something very, very different.”

Mattel hasn’t gone after the gaming market in a big way since 2000, when it divested itself of the disastrous acquisition of software developer Learning Co.

Hyperscan is a way for the company to go after younger players who aren’t well served by expensive game systems with violent or mature content that many parents find inappropriate, said Silver, the Toy Wishes editor.

“What Hyperscan has going for it is that it costs a lot less money and it does something that’s never been done before,” Silver said. “Nobody has done something in which you can take your card, build up powers and go play against someone else.”

Mattel won’t be the only one battling for younger gamers, Silver said. It will have competition, particularly from Nintendo’s Wii (pronounced “wee”), a system that the company promises will be cheaper and simpler than rival consoles from Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp.

But Mattel is prepared for a battle for holiday dollars.

Learning from the examples of new products that failed as a result of paltry content, Mattel has a series of titles lined up for Hyperscan, which is expected to hit the market in mid-October.

The game included with the console is based on Marvel’s X-Men characters, the company said. In all, Mattel will offer as many as 100 different X-Men cards -- 10 to 20 character cards and 80 modification cards -- in booster packs.

Before the end of the year, Mattel will introduce additional games based on Marvel Heroes, Cartoon Network’s Ben 10, Mattel’s own Interstellar Wrestling League and Nickelodeon’s Avatar.

It’s a strategy that worked four years ago for Malibu-based Jakks Pacific Inc., which launched a series of simple $15-to-$20 hand-held games that plug into a TV. What came to be known as “plug and plays,” later mimicked by other toy companies, have generated more than $1 billion in sales for Jakks since the first games were introduced in 2002, a company spokeswoman said.

In launching the new toy category, Mattel is planning a marketing blitz, starting with today’s debut at Comic-Con, the comic book and pop culture expo being held this weekend at the San Diego Convention Center.

The company will follow with TV ads, an interactive website, a 20-city mall tour, in-store units for demonstrations and a team of teenagers who will troll preteen hangouts.

To build buzz, Mattel’s teenage hawkers will hand out T-shirts, Hyperscan cards and, for those kids who seem to be trend drivers, free Hyperscan consoles.

After playing with Hyperscan, Silver said Mattel had a promising entry into the $25-billion annual global games market.

“They had to take the controller away from us because we wanted to continue playing,” he said.