The rise and fall of the company behind ‘Reader Rabbit’ and all your favorite educational games | The Outline Highlight

Eighteen months later, Mattel — now bleeding a million dollars a day — sold TLC for $27 million. Barad was forced out. Analysts at the Observer and Bloomberg have described the sale as one of the worst business takeovers of all time; a 2008 case study characterized Mattel at that time as “a company which many considered lost.” Of course, the toymaker eventually found its footing. Educational computer games would not have the same luck.