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The Learning Company

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The Learning Company
Type Subsidiary
Headquarters San Francisco, California Cedar Rapids Iowa, USA
Industry CD-ROMs
Parent Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Learning Company (TLC) is an American educational software company, founded in 1980. It produced a grade-based system similar to Knowledge Adventure's JumpStart series. The products for preschoolers through second graders feature Reader Rabbit, and software for more advanced students features The ClueFinders. The company also purchased the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium.

The original The Learning Company was founded by three women educators who saw the Apple II as an opportunity to enhance the ability to teach young children concepts of math, reading and science. Part of the original funding for the company came from a National Science Foundation grant. Additional funding was provided by Jack Melchor, and Melchor Venture Partners, among others. The Learning Company first went public on April 28, 1992 - Morgan Stanley and Robertson, Stephens & Co. served as the lead underwriters. In 1995 TLC became the target of larger software firms interested in purchasing it. In that year a "bidding war" took place between Brøderbund and SoftKey, with the latter eventually acquiring TLC for $606 million in cash. SoftKey took up The Learning Company's name and continued acquiring other software companies including Mindscape, Inc. in March 1998 for $150 million and, ironically, former rival Brøderbund in June of the same year for $416 million. Mattel purchased the company in 1999 for $3.8 billion [1], renaming it "Mattel Interactive". It has been called one of the worst acquisitions in corporate history.[2] Mattel sold Learning Co. to Gores Technology Group, receiving $27.3 million for the unit. TLC, along with Brøderbund, is now a subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; however, some of the acquired entertainment holdings were sold to Ubisoft.

As of December 17, 2008, TLC closed their online store, leaving their products to be found at retail stores and other online distributors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Learning_Company