“Cars 2″ toys drive Mattel’s second-quarter income

Cars 2

Mat­tel Inc.‘s second-quarter net income has jumped by 56%, thanks in part to toys based on Cars 2.

The largest United States toy maker said last Fri­day that sales of play sets and cars con­nected with Pixar-Disney’s lat­est film are sell­ing even more than Toy Story 3 play­things did when they came out last year.

Although toys tied into movies are usu­ally good sell­ers, Mat­tel says that this has been espe­cially true sum­mer. Sales of Cars 2 toys helped rev­enue in Mattel’s enter­tain­ment divi­sion rise by 41%.

“While the sec­ond quar­ter is typ­i­cally all about the big enter­tain­ment prop­er­ties, and cer­tainly Cars 2 was big for us, our global port­fo­lio of core brands is also fuel­ing momen­tum,” CEO Robert Eck­ert said in a call with analysts.

For the three months end­ing June 30, Mattel’s net income rose to $80.5 mil­lion (23 cents per share). Ana­lysts had pre­dicted adjusted net income of 16 cents per share, accord­ing to Fact Set.

Rev­enue rose 14% to $1.16 bil­lion from the same period last year. Ana­lysts had expected rev­enue of $1.1 billion.

In the United States, rev­enue rose 7%; inter­na­tional sales went up by 23.

“Despite the mixed eco­nomic news, I am encour­aged by our strong oper­at­ing results and con­tinue to believe we are well posi­tioned for the all-important sec­ond half of the year,” said Eckert.

Dis­ney Princess toy lines did well, dri­ven by sales of dolls, acces­sories and play sets based on the ani­mated fea­ture film Tan­gled, which came out on DVD in sev­eral coun­tries in the sec­ond quarter.

How­ever, sales of Hot Wheels-themed toys weren’t so hot, drop­ping by 2%. Mat­tel said busi­ness prob­a­bly fell due to sales of Cars 2 toys.

Mat­tel is now work­ing on toys con­nected to the Disney/Pixar fea­ture film Brave, due for release next June. Brave is about a Scot­tish princess and archer. It’s also devel­op­ing toys con­nected with Disney’s ani­mated Planes, to be released on Blu-ray and DVD in the spring of 2013.

Mat­tel share rose 50 cents (1.9%) last Fri­day to close at $27.28.

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