Mattel Skip-Bo. Mattel purchased Fisher-Price, Inc. in 1993, Tyco Toys, Inc. (owners of the Matchbox and Dinky Toys brands) in 1997, and Pleasant Company (maker of the American Girl brand) in 1998. Mattel purchased The Learning Company in 1999 for $3.5 billion, but sold it in 2000 at a loss. The company had a $430.9 million net loss that year. Mattel earned the first grant for Disney Princess doll licenses in 2000. In December 2000, Mattel sued the band Aqua, saying their song "Barbie Girl" violated the Barbie trademark and turned Barbie into a sex object, referring to her as a
Retail Solutions Inc. acquired VeriSign’s Retail Data Services business unit, forming Retail Solutions Inc., today’s company. Instead of analyzing RFID tags, Retail Solutions, Inc. (RSi) focused on “ demand signal repositories” and point-of-sale data from retailers. The company formed cooperative relationships with CVS, Walgreens and Delhaize USA. RSi’s first Chinese subsidiary was opened in Shanghai in April 2008. That same year, the first versions of the company’s Retail Visibility and Retail Intelligence products were released as new versions of RSi’s “Retail Execution Management” platform. In September 2010, RSi received Series C funding of $15.2 million in a round led by Investor Growth Capital.