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Strategies & Market Trends : Buffettology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jurgis Bekepuris who wrote (692)	12/16/1998 9:16:00 PM
From: Shane M	Respond to of 4690

Jurgis, Good links that you posted. I also just wanted to comment on an article I read several months concerning the toy business. The article identified the primary trends in toys as 1) Interactivity, and 2) decreased # of years that children play with toys. On #1: essentially they see the interest in traditional toys falling. This is not good for companies whose franchises are built around traditional toys. On #2: This is even a more telling point if true. According to the industry, children appear to be growing out of toys at younger ages. This very much sounds like a shrinking of the pie. (I haven't looked into Mattel or TLC and have no opinion on either.) Shane

To: Jurgis Bekepuris who wrote (692)	12/16/1998 11:12:00 PM
From: James Clarke	Respond to of 4690

Thanks, these TLC links are very helpful. We were talking about proxies last week. Mattel's is dubious to say the least. Great business though. I'm still doing my homework. I think I know Mattel - its this TLC thing that makes me want an extra large margin of safety. JJC

To: Jurgis Bekepuris who wrote (692)	12/16/1998 11:21:00 PM
From: James Clarke	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4690

Jurgis, I know they're not your posts you linked, but since they're on the thread and seem authoritative, let me just point out that there is one big factual error. The deal has a collar, in that the number of shares Mattel has to pay is capped. The most they have to pay is 1.2 Mattel shares per TLC share even if Mattel stock goes to 10. So the number is not 165, its about 135 million. In that light, take the rest of that repost for what its worth - the guy is short the stock, and if it were appropriate here I would argue with a lot of his finance assertions. But I just wanted to point out the factual error in case anybody is doing the analysis. I'm sure I'm not the only one on this thread trying to get up to speed on Mattel. Jim