Phelps Toy Company adults who were trying to recapture the experience of their youth The Phelps Toy Company was considering the advisability of adding a new product to its line. Ike Barmes was in charge of new product development. Since the founding of the company in 1990, he had seen sales grow frorm $150,000 a year to almost S40 million in 2010 Although the firm had initially started out manufacturing toy trucks, it had diversified into such items as puzzles, stuffed animals, wall posters, miniature trains, and board games. In 2004, it developed the third most popular board game for the year, based on a popular television quiz show, but the show was canceled two years later. Nevertheless, the firm learned its lesson well and continued to produce board games related not only to quiz shows but to situation A market survey by Ikes Barnes indicated that the Topps Chewing Gum Company was the largest competitor in the industry. The company actually had a public distribution of its common stock in 2003. Other major sellers in 2011 were Upper Deck, Fleer, Leaf, and Donruss. All produce millions of baseball cards on an annual basis. The cards can be purchased in packs of 15-20 cards for $1.00- $3.00 at drug or convenience stores* or in boxes of 700-800 cards for $20 and up. These larger quantities of cards were usually purchased from sport card specialty stores or at baseball card conventions (over 1,000 such conventions throughout the country took place a year) comedies and even a popular detective series However, by January of 2011, the need to generate new products was becoming evident As can be seen in Figure 1, sales and net income were beginning to level off after the previously cited phenomenal growth. After doing a market analysis of possible products, Mr. Barnes decided that the baseball card market was a good area for potential new sales. Baseball cards were a popular product not only among youngsters but also among In doing his analysis, Mr. Barnes discovered that the appeal of baseball cards was not only in opening a wrapper and finding a favorite player enclosed but also that any baseball cards initially purchased for pennies had gained substantially in value Once a player achieved star status, his rookie card (first issued) might greatly increase in worth