EL SEGUNDO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 19, 2026--
Mattel, Inc. (NASDAQ: MAT), a leading global play and family entertainment company and owner of one of the world's most iconic brand portfolios, today announced a new release from its premium building brand Mattel Brick Shop™, a highly detailed, 1:1-scale buildable display model of the original Microsoft XBOX console. Created in celebration of the console's 25th anniversary, the collector display piece is available for presale now at select retailers globally, including Amazon, Best Buy and Mattel Creations.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260819848021/en/
With an expansive 3,509-piece design, the premium building set delivers a full-size recreation of the legendary XBOX console and its iconic controller for gamers, builders and collectors alike. Packed with interactive features, hidden details and memorable tributes to three of the platform's most beloved games—Halo: Combat Evolved, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and Psychonauts—the set is designed as both an immersive building experience and a striking display piece. The console's three game-inspired modules can be removed and showcased individually. The set also includes 12 NanoWorld™ figures, allowing fans to recreate memorable moments from the featured games.
The classic XBOX controller, affectionately known as “The Duke,” serves as the key to unlocking the model's interactive features. As builders press the controller's buttons, hidden scenes from the three games come to life with illuminated lighting effects accompanied by its corresponding in-game soundtrack. Fans can also discover a hidden button combination that triggers an exclusive lighting sequence.
Since its launch in 2025, Mattel Brick Shop™ has continued to expand its portfolio through collaborations with some of the world's most recognizable brands, bringing fan-favorite properties to life through premium building sets. Recent additions include Masters of the Universe® building sets, the Halo Warthog inspired by the original Halo game trilogy, and licensed vehicles from some of the world's most prestigious automotive manufacturers, reflecting the brand's continued expansion across automotive, entertainment and gaming.
Ted Wu, SVP, Global Head of Vehicles and Building Sets at Mattel said: "Whether it's legendary supercars, beloved entertainment franchises or iconic video games, Mattel Brick Shop is dedicated to transforming the brands and moments that define culture into premium building experiences. As with every Mattel Brick Shop project, we obsessed over every detail to faithfully recreate the original XBOX console, creating a collectible build that celebrates one of gaming's most influential consoles while rewarding fans with authentic features and hidden details to discover."
Mattel Brick Shop XBOX Original
Ages 17+ | SRP: $329.99
Building fans can stay up to date on the latest information from Mattel Brick Shop at www.MattelBrickShop.com.
About Mattel
Mattel is a leading global play and family entertainment company and owner of one of the most iconic brand portfolios in the world. We engage consumers and fans through our franchise brands, including Barbie®, Hot Wheels®, Fisher-Price®, American Girl®, Thomas & Friends™, UNO®, Masters of the Universe®, Matchbox®, Monster High®, Polly Pocket®, as well as other popular properties that we own or license in partnership with global entertainment companies. Our offerings include toys, content, consumer products, digital and live experiences. Our products are sold in collaboration with the world’s leading retail and ecommerce companies. Since its founding in 1945, Mattel is proud to be a trusted partner in empowering generations to explore the wonder of childhood and reach their full potential. Visit us at mattel.com.
Mattel Brick Shop XBOX Original
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Across 250 years, only three elected governors out of thousands have been Black –- all Democrats and all men, including current Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.
But Moore could soon have company.
With Florida Republicans nominating U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds on Tuesday, there are seven Black major party gubernatorial nominees in addition to Moore — men and women, Democrats and Republicans — on November ballots.
“We do have a unique moment here,” said Moore, who recently became chair of the National Governors Association. He often says that his historic status is “not an applause line” but instead represents a bigger challenge that this country is still looking to overcome.
The Black nominees typically do not focus on the history at stake, instead emphasizing their experience and policy proposals.
“Florida is a great meritocracy in America,” Donalds told reporters Tuesday night after not mentioning his race at all in his victory speech. “I’ll let you guys write about that,” he added.
But many said that more reflective representation matters given the nation’s history, from slavery to Jim Crow and the lingering effects.
“It’s not a secret that some issues in the African American community get ignored and don’t have a voice,” said Aaron Ford, Nevada’s first Black attorney general and now the Democratic nominee for governor. Ford said he brings a focus to issues ranging from voting rights and civil rights to the economy.
Republican Lisa Demuth said she “has never led with any type of identity politics” as Minnesota's first Black House speaker and now her party's nominee for governor. “But I recognize the historic state we are in right now,” she said. Michigan Republicans also chose U.S. Rep. John James, who is Black, as their gubernatorial nominee.
Former New York Gov. David Paterson, a Democrat who was not elected but ascended when Eliot Spitzer resigned in 2008, celebrated that the slate crosses party lines. “This is one day when maybe the Democrats and Republicans could stand in front of a statue of George Washington and let him know that we’re finally getting it right,” he said.
Democrats, meanwhile, emphasized that their Black candidates – who also include Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, Jermaine Johnson in South Carolina and David Crowley in Wisconsin – are especially important after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for states to redraw legislative districts that are majority or plurality nonwhite. That was compounded by President Donald Trump’s attacks on diversity initiatives and push to rewrite how the U.S. tells its history of the slave trade and Jim Crow segregation.
“Governors, in many ways, are becoming the last lines of defense against what we’re seeing in Washington,” Moore said.
Karen Finney, who helped push Democrat Joe Biden to select a Black woman as his vice presidential running mate, said Black politicians often are the first and loudest advocates on issues that acutely affect Black constituents. She and others cited health disparities such as maternal and infant mortality and sickle cell disease, and Finney noted that an inflationary economy hits harder in Black communities that, on average, have lower income and net worth than the wider population.
She said it is important for legislators to raise those matters and even more impactful when it is an executive.
“These are people who have the power to shape our lives, and they shape the agenda," Finney said.
But the governor's seat has been notoriously hard for Black politicians to reach, even more difficult than the U.S. Senate. Democrat Douglas Wilder of Virginia took office in 1990 as the nation's first elected Black governor.
“I didn’t become Maryland’s first Black governor because the Democratic Party said, ‘I think it’s time for us to put Wes Moore up in the seat’,” Moore said. “I had to run against the party.”
“I don’t think that the party is doing enough,” Moore added, specifically bemoaning a “negligence” in Southern states where Black voters anchor Democrats' base.
Stacey Abrams, who lost two Georgia governor’s races, recalled white Democratic power players raising money for her primary opponent in 2018, although she disputed that explicit racism was the issue.
“We do what we’ve done because it’s what we did,” she said. “Black women have not been executives, and the absence of that proof point becomes a self-reinforcing philosophy.”
This time, she noted, Bottoms already has been an executive as mayor of Atlanta.
In Minnesota, history will be made in November when the state elects its first female governor as Demuth competes against Democrat Amy Klobuchar, a U.S. senator. Demuth said she looks forward to a day when such distinctions seem less notable.
"One of the things that I really do look forward to is where it’s already done, where it no longer makes history,” she said. “So I think of young women, little girls that are looking at you, could I ever be governor of Minnesota? I hope when I win, they’re able to look at, point to that and say she’s already done it.”
In Georgia, Bottoms told the National Association of Black Journalists last week that she does not “give a lot of talk … about the historical nature” of her campaign. Yet she notes her family's Georgia ties go “back at least five generations through a plantation in Crawfordville” and that her grandfather had to “walk through these back doors” when he moved to Atlanta. She never mentioned slavery or segregation but said her ancestry “is always present with me.”
Abrams, who has campaigned for Bottoms and other Democrats this year, was more direct, arguing that all politics is identity politics of some kind — and that Republicans’ version is simply more coded.
“When your Constitution specifically strips a race of its humanity, you cannot then later on say identity doesn’t matter and has no effect, and we've spent 250 years trying to reckon with that identity” with social, political and legal fights, she continued. “So, it’s deeply disingenuous, if not woefully naive, to say that identity does not matter.”
Deval Patrick, whose tenure in Massachusetts overlapped with Paterson's in New York, said his race mattered especially to his Black constituents and what they wanted from him. It was “just different than the expectations of my predecessors,” he said, recalling criticism after he did not visit a Boston neighborhood where a teenager had been killed by gun violence.
“His mother was on the news grieving, and at some point she said while the cameras were rolling, where is Gov. Patrick?” he said. “Nobody had ever asked one of my predecessors to come to a crime scene in a neighborhood. Never.”
In Nevada, Ford said being governor still means recognizing how many core issues – jobs, housing and healthcare – cross demographic lines.
“It could be a white man, a Latino woman. It could be a person urban, suburban or rural Nevada. It could be someone from northern Nevada, southern Nevada. These are the issues that are important to them,” he said.
Patrick, who talks regularly with Ford and Moore, agreed, saying that is not just how a governor does the job, but how a candidate wins it in the first place.
“The successful candidates are the ones who present themselves as candidates for everyone,” he said, “and not candidates for just some.”
Sloan reported from Washington.
FILE - Gubernatorial candidate Aaron Ford, attorney general of Nevada, reacts during a primary election night watch party after winning the Democratic nomination, June 9, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
FILE - Gubernatorial candidate Aaron Ford, attorney general of Nevada, speaks during a primary election night watch party after winning the Democratic nomination, June 9, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, speaks during a Minnesota Governor Candidate Forum in Morgan, Minn., Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Crowley, center, and lieutenant governor nominee Sarah Godlewski, right, meet supporter Mike Balisle, left, following a breakfast with Democratic leaders Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026, in Middleton, Wis. (AP Photo/Kayla Wolf)
Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds, center, waves next to his wife Erika, while standing on stage with their children Darin, left, Damon, second from left, and Mason during at a primary election party Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
