this would be terrible. There needs to be competition. Hasbro already shelves gi joe to do marvel and star wars.

I suspect that would be one of many monopoly issues that such a merger would face. That and such a sheer dominance of action figure, girl/doll, board game and diecast car segments within the industry.

My gut feeling would be that some things would be scuttled (KreO has no place with MegaBloks), but we could also see some licenses and lines having to be "sold off" from the newly merged company.
I think between the two, DC is in a FAR weaker position than Marvel, and given the choice, they would probably keep Marvel. Which would open Playmates, Jakks or Bandai as possibly getting the DC license.

Not exactly. GI Joe sales were on the decline. They pulled the plug for now to bring it back with more oomph during a movie year and when they have another toon series to back it, as well as an overall direction and hook to get back into the market. (Keeping my fingers crossed for a Cyberninja/Techno Arashikage sub-line!)

They did not shelve it for Star wars and Marvel, on the contrary, Hasbro would prefer to have GI Joe and Transformers dominate. They profit more off of those than licensed to them IPs. Self-owned IPs always take priority because you don't have the licensing fees to worry about or the same kind of royalty concerns either.

I'm not saying Marvel and star wars don't make them money, that's absurd to say they don't, but there is a big difference in a self-owned IP compared to one that's licensed to you. Less restrictions too.

I guarantee you there would have been much more emphasis and development on gi joe the past 20 years had it not been for the hasbro/kenner merger.

You're right...because Hasbro wouldn't have had access to the lucrative Batman or Star Wars licenses or other lucrative licenses.
But that's irrelevant to the current situation.

Mattel and Hasbro spent most of last decade wiping competitors out of US toy aisles. But this merger wouldn't be just to further domestic dominance. They want to dominate the South American and Asia markets before any regional toy companies take root. And then they'll spend all their time marketing to boys in China and girls in Argentina because the US market is shrinking.

Not sure the market is outright "shrinking", more so that it is so mature that there really isn't much growth to be had. Still a LOT of growth to be had in international territories.

And in fairness, there still remain significant competitors in most segments of the toy aisle:
Playmates (TMNT)
Bandai (Power Rangers, history of work with Warner/DC)
Spinmasters (diverse range of properties and segments)
Jakks Pacific (who is picking up a lot of "oddball" segments from Disney)
Jada Toys (mostly Dub City diecast, but are venturing into action figures)
plus niche guys like Funko, Jazwares, NECA, Maisto, Tomy (who has a healthy slice of the preschool segment) and many others.

Such a merger would give the combined company MASSIVE pull and presence...but Lego pretty much commands 75% of the building block aisle so it will probably depend on who oversees the case whether such a company would be a "toy monopoly"

This rumor gave both stocks a nice short term spike, but Mattel has shown comparative volatility and weakness over the last two years, losing more than half its market capitalization since Christmas 2013 (from $50 to $20), whereas Hasbro has enjoyed a strong, steady uptrend for several years. Chart-wise, the two companies tell different stories. I venture to guess that the strong player here is Hasbro, and they may have approached Mattel for sale of select assets, or more likely, some trader sparked a rumor of a takeover.

Both companies show bullish potential near-term, but I would expect nothing to happen for a while, especially if the near-term spike in Mattel experiences a breakdown, creating an opportunity to scoop up more shares at a cheaper price. JMO.

An interesting article from Bloomberg re: why this won't happen

Mattel, Hasbro Would Face Rising Antitrust Worry Over Mega Deals - Bloomberg Business

Yeah, important to keep in mind it very well may not happen. It does present interesting hypotheticals though. And the original article notes that the antitrust concerns might not be as big as folks think since they wouldn't even be close to owning the "whole" market for toys (about 25% of it).

I don't think it would be the all doom and gloom that people are decrying. Hasbro and Mattel aren't going to stop wanting to get money from collectors entirely just because they're one company now, and in the grand scheme it could be win-win...Mattel's distribution seems better than Hasbro's, and Hasbro's collector-oriented offerings are generally superior.

It wouldn't arrest the decline of the 3.75" figure quality, but it'd probably make for good 6" figures and a lot of them.

It definitely IS possible for a company to hold the license for both Marvel and DC at the same time...Toy Biz did it in the late 80's/early 90's, though only for a couple years (It's super-weird to remember that Toy Biz basically made its' big "splash" into the market with toys for the Michael Keaton Batman movie, considering they eventually became part of Marvel Entertainment). I just suspect that they wouldn't keep one or both once they came up for renewal. But who knows?

Pick a sector nowadays, any major sector, and what do you see? A cartel: an industrial complex. And what happens when industry forms a cartel? More and more money goes toward sustaining the cartel, and less and less goes toward the market that the cartel was supposed to serve, and what does get produced is of poorer and poorer quality, because in typical organizational-behaviour fashion, the priority shifts from developing a really good product to other objectives like steady cash flow and putting money into insider pockets. It's endemic during this period of political and socioeconomic decline, and going to get a lot worse as many smaller operators dry up and blow away. I don't post these comments here lightly: take a look at every single measure used to gauge the health of retail, and the picture is terrible.

If things get bad enough, mergers and acquisitions are inevitable, if for no other reason than survival. I hope it doesn't get that bad. Regardless, we should support the upscale collector niche as much as we can.