Dragon Slayer

Warning: Marketing toys is more cutthroat than it looks on tv.

There's no disputing Barney the purple dinosaur's grip on the preschool set: Since 1992, he's amassed an empire, presided over by licensor HIT Entertainment, of more than 200 million toys, videos, DVDs, CDs, cassettes, and books. As the primary toy licensee for the brand, Mattel-owned Fisher-Price is producing about 20 Barney toys this year, and Matt Novoselsky helps create the promotional campaigns to sell them to retailers like Toys 'R' Us. His biggest challenge: He's in what he calls "a fashion business," where brands wax and wane in popularity depending on consumers' fickle tastes. Even a powerhouse like Barney isn't immune. It would be easy to blame video games, which contribute to fluctuations in the toy industry as a whole, but Barney's audience is too young for them. Rather, a bevy of new characters-Dora the Explorer, Little People, The Wiggles-are jockeying for kids' loyalty. Barney's situation is far from dire, Novoselsky says, but there's always the worry, with any major license brand, that the character could fall completely out of favor with its audience. When something like that happens, he says, "it doesn't matter how great the toy is, it's not going to sell."