‘The realest little things on the market’: How Thinkerbell tackled Mattel product launch
Mattel has engaged Thinkerbell to help launch the first products for its new brand, Mattel Brick Shop. Tom Wenborn, chief creative, tells Mumbrella how the agency took an unassuming product launch to the next level.
In collaboration with Hot Wheels, the first products to launch are a collectible range of car building sets. There are currently three collectibles: the 1963 Corvette Grand Sport, the 1990 Honda NSX, and the 1954 Mercedes Benz 300 SL. The brand wanted to fuel imagination, inspire storytelling, and create emotional connections.
Wenborn told Mumbrella the agency leant into its “alchemy” approach, which he described as the crossovers between earned media, paid media, activations, promotions, in order to fit the brief.
“At the edge of all those things is where we find the most interesting ideas,” he said.
For Mattel Brick Shop, Thinkerbell enlisted Australian racing legend Craig Lowndes to front the debut campaign, and it even launched the collectibles on Carsales, as if they were real cars.
“The idea is that these are the realest little cars you can buy,” Wenborn said. “They’re the realest little things on the market. They’re made with metal and thousands of pieces, they take hours to put together. So if we’re going to have these real little cars, we needed to bring them to life in the realest way possible.”
Lowndes’ one-of-a-kind model — that he built himself — was sold on Carsales within 30 seconds of a Today Show appearance this week.
Working with him was “awesome”, according to Wenborn, because of Lowndes’ professionalism and enthusiasm.
“Plus, his name carries a lot of weight, he’s had Craig Lowndes editions of real vehicles, so when we got him to do a version of this car, it garnered quite a bit of interest.”
The agency also recreated the original magazine ads for each model as print ads that have rolled out in various current car-related magazines.
“Originally, they crafted beautifully long copy press ads and they ran in magazines that collectors or people who could afford these real cars would look,” Wenborn told Mumbrella. “And that’s kind of the audience we were looking for in this as well, so crafting up these print ads was awesome.
“We got a true car photographer in, we built a mini road in front of scenes thats reflected where the cars were once shot. This was a true bit of craft that went into it.”
Wenborn said overall, it was top of mind to keep the work authentic.
“These products, they have manufactured themselves and engineered them to be as real as possible. And a lot of times in our industry, we try and manufacture that authenticity. We try and give you a reason to trust in a brand or trust in a product, and we’ll go to the nth degree to kind of develop that or manufacture it,” he said.
“Whereas when you find a product like this where the reason behind creating this thing was to give collectors the realist version, then it becomes the one thing that you just have to scream as loudly as possible. Like if they’ve gone through this effort, then it’s our job to tell the audience that and make sure the ad lives up to that effort.”
Credits:
Creative agency: Thinkerbell
Client: Mattel
Media: UM
Production: Thinkerbell
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Lauren McNamara was the associate editor at Mumbrella. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS. She left Mumbrella in August 2025.
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