‘Little Girl With the Toy Company’ Is a Key Player at an Early Age
Mary Rodas grabs a cloth leg on a miniature wrestling puppet, winds up and flings the Undertaker doll across the room with a force that belies her 4-foot-11-inch stature. When caught, the WWF Banger cackles, “I’ll bury you.”
Not the usual toy for a little girl. And Rodas still considers herself a little girl despite attending college, turning 23 on Christmas and becoming the youngest president of a toy company--Catalyst Toys--just weeks earlier.
At an age when most people are launching a career, Rodas already has 10 years’ experience as vice president of marketing for a sister division called Catco Inc.
“ ‘The little girl with the toy company’--that’s how everybody knows me, which is great. I’m always breaking new barriers, I guess half the time due to my age,” she said in an interview from the company’s New York headquarters.
In 1993, she helped create Balzac, a balloon protected by a stretchy cloth that comes in vibrant designs. It was one of the hot products of Christmas 1993 and turned Catco into a $70-million company.
She was earning $200,000 a year by 18--the age she could legally enter the Toy Fair trade expo in New York instead of sneaking in.
Rodas sees her latest creation, WWF Bangers, as a mix of her love for the, um, sport, and an extension of the aerodynamic idea used in Balzacs.
The $8 dolls, with heads molded after World Wrestling Federation figures, talk trash when caught or hit against a hard surface. The Christmas holiday release of WWF Bangers was even moved up from the spring to take advantage of wrestling’s popularity.
“Anything WWF right now is going to be very successful. It’s one of the hottest licenses that is out there right now,” says Chris Byrne, editor of Playthings Market Watch.
But while Balzac was a groundbreaking idea, Byrne says WWF Bangers seems a knockoff of other toys like Gibson Greetings Co.’s Silly Slammers. He also says Rodas may have an executive title, but toy companies commonly rely on children to test their product.
“On some level I think it’s a gimmick,” Byrne says. “Who’s really ruling?”
Rodas is more than qualified to rule, said Don Spector, president of Catalyst Applied Technologies, a holding company for his hundreds of toy and technology patents. Catco is its manufacturing division, while Catalyst Toys licenses its products.
He compares Rodas’ role to that of a song production company, where the president would be a musician.
“Mary’s role in Catalyst is very much what her role in Catco was. She’s a toy picker. She has great instincts. She can know what will sell and what won’t,” Spector said. “In a creative business, the person who makes the creative decisions is more important than the person who does the bookkeeping.”
Rodas’ career started at age 4, when her father, a Salvadoran immigrant working as a building supervisor, brought her along as he made repairs to an apartment. She noticed a man laying tile and pointed out his mistakes.
That man was Spector. He liked her spirit and began giving her toys to test, then a vice president’s job and the presidency at 22.
“I don’t know of any toy company presidents younger than that,” said Diane Cardinale, spokeswoman for Toy Manufacturers of America. “Children are used in focus group testing . . . but that’s certainly towards the end of the whole chain of events. Mary was at the forefront batting around ideas.”
Because of classes at New York University, Rodas’ typical business day runs from noon to 5 p.m. Duties include promoting products, dealing with corporate customers -- and playing with toys, about 20 new pitches a day.
“She still has a kid’s touch,” Spector says. “She still looks like a kid.”
Rodas views that as a strength, despite the obvious drawback that made it tough for her to be taken seriously.
“A lot of people used to compare me to the movie, ‘Big,’ ” she said. “Forget about me being a woman. Forget about my nationality. Just my age is like ‘forget it.’ It just threw people off.
“I remember us coming to toy fairs--it’s like, ‘Hmm, who’s that little girl,’ even though I had my suit and looked very corporate. Those first couple years were pretty rough.”
Since then, she’s had a hand in creating toys like a CD-ROM kit where children can print Barbie’s image on plastic jewelry that needs to be baked down to size. Another idea called Deco-Disc provides a cardboard alternative to the plastic cases that CDs come in.
Sure, she’s all grown up now. She’s a senior mass communications major at NYU. She’s a green belt in karate. She’s got a seven-figure stock portfolio. But she says she still sees at a kid’s-eye view in a company without glass ceilings.
“Of course I’m not going to be 13 or 14 again,” Rodas said. “But I think it’s all in the mind, honestly. I look at product and ask, ‘Is a kid going to pick up this toy and play with it?’ ”