Broderbund

Brøderbund Software, a division of Mattel, develops, publishes and markets a broad line of interactive software for use in homes, schools and small businesses. Since its founding in 1980, the Company has repeatedly broken new ground, conceiving and developing families of software products with enduring customer appeal based on creativity, innovation and ease-of-use. Brøderbund is committed to providing its customers with engaging products that set quality standards and take advantage of the latest technologies. Broderbund Software, which became a division of Mattel, Inc. in 1999, develops, publishes, and markets consumer software for home, school, and small business use. Recognized as a pioneer and leading producer of educational software, the company also became well known for its personal productivity and entertainment software. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, the Broderbund software line has changed through the years, and its lineup in the late 1990s was overseen first by The Learning Company and then by ultimate parent company Mattel. Popular software titles available under the Broderbund brand name have included various versions of The Print Shop, Cosmopolitan Fashion Makeover, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, Compton's Encyclopedia, Totally MAD (the total collection of MAD Magazine ), and Calendar Creator ; the popular software series 3D Home Architect, American Greetings Cards, and National Geographic ; and Family Lawyer, Business Lawyer, and Family Tree Maker (formerly marketed under the Quicken brandname). This lineup of products was shuffled by Mattel when it acquired The Learning Company, and Broderbund along with it. Some original Broderbund titles, such as Myst and Riven are now published under other brand names and divisions in the Mattel corporate structure. Broderbund Software traces its heritage to two brothers, Douglas and Gary Carlston, who founded the company during the computer software industry's infancy in 1980 in order to market computer game programs the elder Douglas had created. Douglas Carlston was first exposed to computers during the 1960s. As a college student he worked as a part-time programmer in Harvard's Aiken Computation Laboratory. Carlston's interests were myriad, however. During the 1960s and 1970s he also spent a year in Botswana teaching geography and math, returned to the United States to write Beginning Swahili, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, wrote language texts for American Express, studied economics at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, returned to Harvard and earned a law degree, and started a two-partner law firm in Maine where he resumed computer programming in his spare time. Utilizing a Radio Shack computer, Carlston developed his first two software games, Galactic Empire and Galactic Trader, which found commercial success after being published by outside companies. By 1979 Douglas Carlston was earning more as a programmer than as an attorney. He then left his law practice and drove a ten-year-old car across country to Eugene, Oregon, where his younger brother Gary lived. The cross-country trip was apparently too much for the vehicle, given what Douglas Carlston later told Forbes: "We started the company because I was stuck without a car and didn't have the money to buy a new one." The name for the Carlston brothers' new company was derived by adding the contrived word "broder" (a blend of Swedish and Danish words meaning "brothers") to the German word "bund" (which in English means "alliance"). With working capital of $7,000 obtained from family members, the "brothers' alliance" was thus formed to market Douglas Carlston's computer game software directly to retailers rather than through other publishers. By mid-1980, after establishing an alliance with StarCraft, a Japanese software house, the company began marketing home entertainment software. In 1981 Broderbund Software, Inc. was incorporated as a California company. Douglas Car