Over the holidays, the news came out that Paramount Consumer Products and its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are parting ways with licensee Playmates when their current agreement expires at the end of 2026, closing the latter’s 38-year run as the property’s master toy partner. The end of the relationship is significant not only for the length of the partnership — Playmates has been on board since the early days of the TV series in 1988 — but for the importance of the license to the toy maker. The TMNT line dominated the action figure market in the 1990s and continues to drive a significant percentage of sales for the company. The license represented between 8% and 77% of its total revenues for the past five years, according to Playmates, with the recent high-water mark occurring in 2023. In the first half of 2025, the IP drove 36% of sales.
Paramount, which recently came under new ownership when it merged with Skydance in a deal completed in August 2025, has not named a new mass market licensee yet. It signed McFarlane Toys in March 2025 to produce Turtles collectibles, and has other licensees on board in the collectibles space, including NECA and Super7.
Licensors transition from their long-term toy partners for a variety of reasons, including evolving licensor or licensee strategies, changing market conditions, new ownership structures on either side, a need for refreshment after a partnership has run its course, or other factors. Here are a few examples of other notable splits over the years:
- Bandai produced Power Rangers toys from the property’s inception in 1993 until early 2019, a more than 25-year run. Licensor Saban Brands announced in early 2018 that it would not renew the license but would give the rights to Hasbro instead. A few months later, the new partners revealed that Hasbro would purchase the IP outright. Hasbro remains the property’s owner; it licensed Playmates to produce and distribute the action figures and other toys in 2024, with the first products released in 2025.
- Toy Biz Worldwide was Marvel’s primary toy licensee for 15 years, from 1990 through 2005, when its agreement was ended a year before its expiration date. Hasbro was named the new licensee, starting with a five-year deal that saw the first toys released in 2007; it remains the property’s lead toy partner. The relationship between Marvel and Toy Biz was symbiotic over the course of their relationship, with Marvel taking an ownership stake in Toy Biz (giving it perpetual royalty-free licensing rights) in 1993 and Toy Biz merging with then-bankrupt Marvel and taking control of the business in 1998, with the toy arm becoming a division of Marvel Enterprises. Shortly after the Hasbro deal, Toy Biz was shuttered and its owners went on to top executive roles with Marvel.
- Mattel’s 10-plus-year license with DC Comics largely ended in 2018, when Spin Master and McFarlane Toys were granted rights to make action figures and boys’ playthings (mass and collectible, respectively) and began producing toys two years later. Mattel, which had acquired the full license in 2007 and had been producing select DC lines for a few years before that, retained rights to the preschool and girls’ categories. In February 2025, things came full circle when Warner Bros. Discovery announced it was granting Mattel the DC toy rights again, in their entirety, with McFarlane’s and Spin Master’s licenses winding down in 2026.
- In 2009, Sesame Workshop disclosed that it was moving the Sesame Street license from Mattel to Hasbro when the former’s deal expired in 2010, with new toys releasing in 2011. The Mattel relationship began in 1997 when it acquired Sesame Street licensee Tyco (which had launched Tickle-Me Elmo the year before); Tyco in turn assumed rights to Sesame Street when it purchased Illco (a Sesame licensee since 1988) in 1992. Meanwhile, Fisher-Price, acquired by Mattel in 1993, had been a Sesame licensee for a time starting in 1973, mostly featuring the property as part of its Little People line. Post-Mattel, Sesame Workshop’s relationship with Hasbro lasted for over 10 years; current licensee Just Play took over in 2023.
As indicated by these examples, long licensing relationships in the toy industry can be complex and ever-evolving, with many adjustments over the years depending on the partners’ changing circumstances. Still, it is always a surprise when a decades-long deal, as Playmates had with Paramount, ultimately ends.
Have you seen our summary of the top licensing trends of 2025? If not, you can read it here.
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