Hasbro, Inc.

views updated May 17 2018

Hasbro, Inc.

1027 Newport Avenue
Pawtucket, Rhode Island 02862-1059
U.S.A.
Telephone: (401) 431-TOYS (8697)
Toll Free: (800) 255-5516
Fax: (401) 431-8535
Web site:http://www.hasbro.com

Public Company
Incorporated: 1926 as Hassenfeld Brothers Inc.
Employees: 8,900
Sales: $3.79 billion (2000)
Stock Exchanges: New York London
Ticker Symbol: HAS
NAIC: 339931 Doll and Stuffed Toy Manufacturing; 339932 Game, Toy, and Children’s Vehicle Manufacturing; 511210 Software Publishers

Truly successful toy companies do not just make toys; they manufacture popular culture. Hasbro, Inc., which is the second largest toy maker in the world, behind only Mattel, Inc., certainly fits that description. From America’s Action Hero to a plastic anthropomorphized potato to vehicles that transform into robots to the largest bird in the world, Hasbro toys are instantly recognized by millions of Americans. Hasbro makes G.I. Joe, Mr. Potato Head, and Transformers, and owns licenses for Sesame Street characters. Thanks to numerous acquisitions in the 1980s and 1990s, it also makes Playskool and Romper Room preschool toys, Tonka trucks, Kenner’s Nerf toys, and Cabbage Patch Kids (by way of Coleco). Hasbro has become dominant in the area of board games and puzzles through its ownership of Milton Bradley (maker of Scrabble and Parcheesi) and Parker Brothers (maker of Monopoly). Into the late 1990s and early 21^st century, Hasbro has continued to acquire popular brands, adding Pokemon game cards with their procurement of Wizards of the Coast and reacquiring the license to toys developed from Disney Studios movie releases.

Early History from 1923 to the 1930s

Hasbro traces its origin to an enterprise founded in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1923 by Henry, Hilal, and Herman Hassenfeld, brothers who had emigrated to the United States from Poland. The Hassenfeld brothers engaged in the textile remnant business, selling cloth leftovers. By the mid-1920s they were using the remnants to make hat liners and pencil-box covers. After realizing the popularity of the covers, they soon began making the boxes themselves with eight employees—all family members. In 1926 the company incorporated under the name Hassenfeld Brothers Inc.

Hilal Hassenfeld became involved in other textile ventures, and Henry took control of the new company. Although a paternalistic employer, Henry Hassenfeld was also a tough and shrewd businessman. During the Great Depression—with 150 employees in 1929 and 200 employees in 1930—Hassenfeld Brothers commanded annual sales of $500,000 from sales of pencil boxes and cloth zipper pouches filled with school supplies. At that point, however, the company’s pencil supplier decided to raise its prices and sell its own boxes at prices lower than Hassenfeld’s. Henry Hassenfeld responded with a vow to enter the pencil business himself, and in 1935 Hassenfeld Brothers began manufacturing pencils. This product line would provide the company with a steady source of revenue for the next 45 years.

Transformation to Toy Manufacturing from the 1930s to 1960

During the late 1930s the Hassenfeld Brothers began to manufacture toys, an extension of the company’s line of school supplies. Initial offerings included medical sets for junior nurses and doctors and modeling clay. During World War II Henry’s younger son, Merrill Hassenfeld, acted on a customer’s suggestion to make and market a junior air raid warden kit, which came complete with flashlights and toy gas masks.

By 1942, as demand for school supplies tapered off, the company had become primarily a toy company, although it continued its large, profitable pencil business. Hilal Hassenfeld died in 1943, at which point Henry Hassenfeld became CEO and his son Merrill Hassenfeld became president. Also during World War II, the company ventured into plastics, but was forced, due to labor shortages, to reduce employment to 75.

After the war Merrill Hassenfeld began marketing a girls makeup kit after seeing his four-year-old daughter play with candy as though it were lipstick and rouge. In 1952, the company introduced its still-classic Mr. Potato Head, the first toy to be advertised on television. In 1954 Hassenfeld became a major licensee for Disney characters. By 1960, revenues hit $12 million, and Hassenfeld Brothers had become one of the largest private toy companies in the nation.

Turbulent Times During the 1960s and 1970s

Henry Hassenfeld died in 1960. Merrill Hassenfeld then assumed full control of the parent company, while his older brother Harold Hassenfeld, continued to run the pencil making operations. Merrill Hassenfeld’s succession was logical given his interest and expertise in the toy business, but it also marked the beginning of an intramural rivalry between the two sides of the company. Harold Hassenfeld would come to resent the fact that the pencil business received a lower percentage of capital investment even though it was a steadier performer and accounted for a higher percentage of profits than toys.

In 1961 Hassenfeld Brothers (Canada) Ltd., now Hasbro Canada Inc., was founded. Hassenfeld Brothers seemed to defy the vagaries of the toy business in the early 1960s when it introduced what would become one of its most famous and successful product lines. According to author Marvin Kaye in A Toy Is Born, the company conceived G.I. Joe in 1963 when a licensing agent suggested a merchandise tie-in with a television program about the U.S. Marine Corps called “The Lieutenant.” The company liked the idea of a military doll, but did not want to pin its fate on a TV show that might prove short-lived; so, it went ahead and created its own concept, and in 1964 Hassenfeld unleashed G.I. Joe, a 12-inch “action figure” with articulated joints. In its first two years, G.I. Joe brought in between $35 and $40 million and accounted for nearly two-thirds of the company’s total sales.

The company changed its name to Hasbro Industries, Inc. in 1968—it had sold its toys under the Hasbro trade name for some time—and went public. Only a small portion of Hasbro stock went on the open market, however; the majority stake remained in the hands of the Hassenfeld family. At the same time, Hasbro decided that it could no longer ignore the public’s growing disapproval of war toys, which was fueled by disillusionment with the Vietnam War. In 1969 G.I. Joe, still the company’s leading moneymaker, was repackaged in a less militaristic “adventure” motif, with a different range of accessories. Also in 1969, the company acquired Burt Claster Enterprises, the Baltimore, Maryland-based television production company responsible for the popular “Romper Room” show for preschoolers. Burt Claster Enterprises had also begun to manufacture a line of “Romper Room” toys. Nevertheless, a month-long Teamsters strike and troubles with Far Eastern suppliers hurt Hasbro in 1969, and the company posted a $1 million loss for the year.

The 1960s ended on a turbulent note for Hasbro, providing a foretaste of the decade to come. In 1970 Hasbro decided that it had to diversify, and it opened a chain of nursery schools franchised under the “Romper Room” name. The company hoped to take advantage of President Richard M. Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan, which subsidized day care for working mothers. Running the preschools was a very big mistake. Merrill Hassenfeld’s son, Alan Hassenfeld, told the Wall Street Journal, “We’d get phone calls saying, ‘We can’t find one of the kids.’ The whole company would stop.” Within five years Hasbro had left the day care business. Another ill-fated diversification move was Hasbro’s line of Galloping Gourmet cookware, which sought to capitalize on a contemporary television cooking show of the same name. That venture literally fell apart when termites ate salad bowls stacked in a warehouse.

In addition, two products from Hasbro’s 1970 line turned into public relations disasters: Javelin Darts were declared unsafe by the government, and Hypo-Squirt, a water gun shaped like a hypodermic needle, was dubbed by the press a “junior junkie” kit. Both products were promptly removed from the market. The continuing success of “Romper Room” and its related toy line proved to be a bright spot for Hasbro, although the company came under fire from the citizens group Action for Children’s Television, which accused the program of becoming an advertising vehicle for toys.

In 1974 Merrill Hassenfeld became CEO of Hasbro, while his son, Stephen D. Hassenfeld, became president. Hasbro regained its profitability but floundered once again later in the decade. Poor cash flow accounted for some of the problems, but the company’s underlying mistake was casting its net too far and too wide in an effort to compensate for G.I. Joe’s declining popularity. Hasbro discontinued G.I. Joe in 1975 because of the rising price of plastic. By 1977—the year Hasbro acquired Peanuts cartoon characters licensing rights—the company suffered $2.5 million in losses and carried a heavy debt. The financial situation became serious enough that Hasbro’s bankers forced it to suspend dividend payments in early 1979. The toy division’s poor performance fueled Harold Hassenfeld’s resentment that the Empire Pencil subsidiary continued to receive a smaller proportion of capital spending to profits than did the toy division. The dam threatened to burst in 1979 when Merrill Hassenfeld died at age 61. Stephen Hassenfeld was chairman Merrill Hassenfeld’s heir apparent, but Harold Hassenfeld refused to recognize Stephen Hassenfeld’s authority.

Company Perspectives:

The company’s focus will be on building a strong global business and further strengthening its presence in the children’s and family leisure time and entertainment industry. Hasbro is well poised to leverage its incredible portfolio of classic brands globally, regionally and locally, and aims to achieve this goal with an increased emphasis on global brand marketing and product development, complemented by coordinated regional and local marketing and sales activity.

The feud was resolved in 1980, when Hasbro spun off Empire Pencil, which had become the nation’s largest pencil maker, and Harold exchanged his Hasbro shares for shares of the new company. At the same time, Stephen Hassenfeld became the toy company’s CEO and chairman of the board, and dedicated himself to turning Hasbro around. Where it had once been overextended, the company slashed its product line by one-third between 1978 and 1981, while its annual number of new products was cut by one-half. Hasbro also refocused on simpler toys, such as Mr. Potato Head—products that were inexpensive to make, could be sold at lower prices, and had longer life cycles. This conservative philosophy precluded Hasbro from entering the hot new field of electronic games, as did the fact that it could not spare the cash to develop such toys. The decision to stay out of the market was vindicated in the early 1980s when the electronics boom turned bust and shook out many competitors.

Perhaps the most important event in Hasbro’s revival was the 1982 return of G.I. Joe. The U.S. political climate at the time made military toys popular again, and G.I. Joe was reintroduced as an antiterrorist commando, complete with a cast of comrades and exotic villains, whose personalities were sculpted with the help of Marvel Comics. Two years later, Hasbro introduced its highly successful Transformers line—toy vehicles and guns that could be reconfigured into toy robots. Transformers were tied into a children’s animated TV series and proved so popular that People magazine asked Stephen Hassenfeld to pose with them for a cover photo.

Key Dates:

1923:: Polish immigrant brothers Henry and Hilal Hassen-feld found a textile remnant business in Providence, Rhode Island.
1926:: Hassenfeld Brothers Inc. is incorporated; company begins making pencil boxes and cloth zipper pouches.
1935:: Hassenfeld Brothers begins manufacturing pencils, one of its stalwart revenue sources until 1980.
1943:: Hilal Hassenfeld dies. Henry becomes CEO while Henry’s son, Merrill, is named president of Hassenfeld Brothers. The company expands its product line to include toys, such as paint sets, wax crayons, and doctor and nurse kits.
1952:: Mr. Potato Head, the first toy to be advertised on television, is introduced.
1954:: Hassenfeld Brothers becomes a major licensee of Disney characters.
1961:: Hassenfeld Brothers (Canada) Ltd. is founded.
1964:: G.I. Joe is introduced; the popular action figure accounts for nearly two-thirds of the company’s total revenue in its first two years.
1968:: Hassenfeld Brothers Inc. changes its name to Hasbro Industries, Inc. The company goes public with a small portion of stock; the rest remains with the Hassenfeld family.
1969:: Company acquires Romper Room Inc. (now Claster Enterprises Inc.) television production company.
1974:: Merrill Hassenfeld becomes CEO; his son, Stephen D. Hassenfeld, becomes president.
1975:: G.I. Joe is discontinued due to rising price of plastic.
1979:: Merrill Hassenfeld dies.
1980:: Empire Pencils, the nation’s largest pencil maker, separates from Hasbro. Stephen Hassenfeld becomes CEO and chairman of the board of Hasbro.
1982:: G.I. Joe is reintroduced.
1983:: Hasbro purchases assets from Warner Communication’s Knickerbocker Toy Company, including Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy.
1984:: Alan Hassenfeld becomes president of Hasbro. The company acquires the Milton Bradley Company and its subsidiary Playskool; company is renamed Hasbro Bradley Incorporated. The Hasbro Children’s Foundation is established to help needy children throughout the world.
1985:: Hasbro unites its four subsidiaries—Hasbro Toys, Milton Bradley, Playskool, and Playskool Baby—under the name Hasbro, Inc.
1989:: Hasbro acquires Coleco Industries, makers of Cabbage Patch Kids. Stephen Hassenfeld dies. His brother, Alan Hassenfeld, becomes chairman of the board and chief executive officer.
1991:: Hasbro acquires Tonka Corporation, including Kenner Products and Parker Brothers divisions. Tonka Trucks, Monopoly, Nerf, Easy-Bake Oven, Clue, and Play-Doh are among the many products acquired. Operations are established in Greece, Hungary, and Mexico.
1992:: Company acquires Nomura Toys Ltd. of Japan, and the controlling interest to Palmyra, a toy distributor in Southeast Asia.
1994:: Hasbro acquires Games division of John Waddington PLC, makers of Pictionary.
1995:: Company acquires the Laramie Corporation, makers of SuperSoaker brand water guns. Hasbro creates new division within company, Hasbro Interactive, which releases CD-ROM versions of board games such as Monopoly and Scrabble, and other popular toys, including Tonka and Mr. Potato Head.
1997:: Company acquires licensing rights to three new Star Wars prequels for almost $600 million and over 7 percent of Hasbro stock.
1998:: Hasbro acquires Tiger Electronics, makers of Furby, and also acquires the license to Teletubbies.
1999:: Company acquires Wizards of the Coast, makers of Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering, and Dungeons and Dragons game cards.
2001:: Hasbro sells Hasbro Interactive and Games.com, an interactive gaming Web site, to Infogrames Entertainment. The company closes plants in Cincinnati, San Francisco, and Napa.

Major Acquisitions Mark the 1980s

In 1983 Hasbro acquired GLENCO Infant Items, a manufacturer of infant products and the world’s largest bib producer. Hasbro also sold about 37 percent of its own stock to Warner Communications in exchange for cash and Warner’s struggling Knickerbocker Toy Company subsidiary, which made Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls. The new Warner holdings did not threaten the company’s autonomy, however; the shares were put into a voting trust controlled by the Hassenfeld brothers and other Hasbro executives. In 1984 Stephen Hassenfeld turned over the position of president to his brother, Alan, while remaining CEO and chairman.

In the early 1980s Hasbro was the nation’s sixth best-selling toy maker, with revenues of $225.4 million and $15.2 million in profits. Flush with newfound strength, in 1984 it acquired Milton Bradley, the nation’s fifth best-selling toy maker, and second only to General Mills’s Parker Brothers subsidiary in production of board games and puzzles. Milton Bradley had been founded by a Springfield, Massachusetts, lithographer who set up shop in 1860 and immediately turned out a popular reproduction of a portrait of presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. Bradley’s portrait, however, showed Lincoln clean-shaven, so when Lincoln grew his beard, sales fell off. Looking for a way to stay in business, Bradley invented and produced a board game called The Checkered Game of Life, a distant precursor of a popular Milton Bradley game, The Game of Life, which was introduced in 1960. The game’s success convinced Bradley to stay in the game business. During the Civil War he produced a lightweight packet of board games for the amusement of Union troops. The company incorporated in 1882.

During the late 19th century, Milton Bradley (MB) relied mostly on such favorites as chess and checkers and traditional European games. During the 20th century, however, the company designed and marketed more original games, sometimes with great success. During the Depression, a Milton Bradley financial game called Easy Money became popular. In the 1950s, Milton Bradley pioneered games with tie-ins to television shows—Concentration was an early favorite. In 1968 MB acquired Chicago-based Playskool Manufacturing, which was noted for its preschool toys. Among Milton Bradley’s later successes was the “body action” classic Twister, which was published in 1971 and became a popular prop with talk show hosts for a while after Johnny Carson challenged Eva Gabor to a go-around on “The Tonight Show.”

In 1984, however, Milton Bradley had found itself in an uncertain financial position after fending off a hostile takeover from British conglomerate Hanson Trust. In the wake of that failed bid, several unidentified parties bought up large blocks of MB stock, fueling speculation that another takeover attempt was imminent. Finally, in May 1984, MB agreed to be acquired by Hasbro for $360 million. MB’s strength in board games and puzzles complemented Hasbro’s plastic toys and stuffed animals. Milton Bradley’s Playskool subsidiary provided a solid preschool line including classics such as Lincoln Logs and ABC blocks. The new Hasbro Bradley Incorporated immediately challenged Mattel’s position as the nation’s leading toy maker. In 1985 Hasbro Bradley became Hasbro, Inc.

If Hasbro’s and Milton Bradley’s product lines merged well, their chief executives did not. Stephen Hassenfeld became president and CEO of Hasbro Bradley, with Milton Bradley chief James Shea, Jr., becoming chairman. After only a few months, however, Shea resigned. Stephen himself became chairman, with brother Alan Hassenfeld replacing him as president.

Hasbro surpassed Mattel to become the largest toy company in the world in the mid-1980s. Having done so, it then attempted to dethrone Mattel’s Barbie, queen of the fashion doll market. In 1986 Hasbro introduced Jem, a fashion doll given the dual identity of business woman/record producer and purple-haired rock musician. While Jem posted strong initial sales, her popularity quickly faded and she was retired the following year. In 1988 the company brought out Maxie, a blonde doll scaled to match Barbie in size so that she could wear Barbie clothing and accessories. Maxie lasted twice as long as Jem and was discontinued in 1990.

In 1989 Hasbro acquired bankrupt rival Coleco Industries, owners of the Cabbage Patch Dolls, for $85 million. The Coleco acquisition proved to be Stephen Hassenfeld’s final business achievement. In 1989, he died at age 47, having converted the relatively modest toy company that his grandfather had founded into a juggernaut at the top of its industry with 1989 sales of $1.41 billion, a huge increase over the $104 million figure of the year he took over.

Acquisitions Continue During the 1990s

A new and more challenging era began when 41-year-old Alan Hassenfeld became chairman and CEO of Hasbro. The younger Hassenfeld continued the acquisition trend of the 1980s, as Hasbro acquired Tonka Corporation in 1991 for $486 million. With the deal, Hasbro added not only the Tonka line of toy trucks but also Tonka’s Parker Brothers unit, the maker of Monopoly, and Kenner Products, which featured Batman figures and the Strawberry Shortcake doll. The Parker Brothers unit was merged into Hasbro’s already strong Milton Bradley division. Hasbro took a $59 million charge in 1991 to cover costs of consolidating the Tonka acquisition and restructuring overall operations.

In the late 1980s, Alan Hassenfeld had spearheaded an effort to increase Hasbro’s international sales, primarily by taking toys that failed in the U.S. market and remarketing them overseas at prices as high as four times their original prices. He had helped increase international sales from $268 million in 1985 to $433 million in 1988. So it was not surprising that as chairman he would push to increase Hasbro’s international presence. He did just that in 1991, establishing operations in Greece, Hungary, and Mexico.

It was the Far East, however, which Hassenfeld saw as a critical market for Hasbro to develop. He gained two more distribution channels there in 1992 by purchasing Nomura Toys Ltd., based in Japan, and buying a majority stake in Palmyra, a Southeast Asian toy distributor. Thanks to these efforts, by 1995, Hasbro’s international sales had reached $1.28 billion, which represented almost 45 percent of total sales, a significant increase over the 22 percent figure of 1985. More than 46 percent of the company’s operating profit was attributable to operations outside the United States in 1995. One international setback came in 1993 when Hasbro lost out to arch-rival Mattel in a bid for J.W. Spear, a U.K.-based maker of games.

While international results were improving, Hasbro began to show some weaknesses on the domestic front. Much of the growth since 1980 had come from the company’s various acquisitions, along with Hasbro’s largely successful efforts to leverage the new assets it gained through the deals. Many new product development activities, on the other hand, were not as successful, with the exception of product lines developed to tie in with the movie Jurassic Park and the popular children’s television show “Barney.” As a result, domestic sales stagnated in the early 1990s, and actually fell from $1.67 billion in 1993 to $1.58 billion in 1995. And worldwide sales showed much slower growth as well. From 1991, the year of the Tonka acquisition, to 1995, sales increased only 33.5 percent, with half of the increase occurring in 1992 alone. To help improve the company’s domestic performance, a reorganization was completed in 1994 that merged the Hasbro Toy, Playskool, Playskool Baby, Kenner, and Kid Dimension units into a new Hasbro Toy Group. Meanwhile, in 1993 Mattel acquired Fisher-Price and soon thereafter regained the number one spot in the toy industry.

Also contributing to Hasbro’s challenges in the 1990s was its belated struggle to enter the market for electronic games. Eventually, in 1992, the company began development of a mass market virtual reality game system. Although such a system was successfully developed, it was judged too expensive for the mass market and the project was abandoned in 1995, resulting in a charge of $31.1 million. In 1993, Hasbro bought a 15-percent stake in Virgin Interactive Entertainment, a producer of game software for Sega and Nintendo systems, with the intention of developing software based on Hasbro toys and games. Two years later, however, Hasbro dissolved the partnership and sold its stake.

A more promising venture began in 1995 with the establishment of Hasbro Interactive and the release of its first product that same year, a CD-ROM version of Monopoly. More than 180,000 units were sold in the first eight weeks following its release. Additional titles to be released in 1996 included Risk, Battleship, and Playskool-brand games.

In 1995, Mattel approached Hasbro about a possible merger of the two largest toy companies in the world. Negotiations took place in secret over the course of several months until the Hasbro board early in 1996 unanimously turned down a $5.2 billion merger proposal that would have given Hasbro stockholders a 73 percent premium over the then-current selling price. Hasbro officials expressed doubts that the merger could pass antitrust challenges and wanted a large up-front payment to help the company’s performance during what would have likely been a lengthy antitrust review and to protect itself against the possibility that the merger would collapse. Mattel officials, on the other hand, maintained that the merger would have had little difficulty gaining approval, but backed away—and did not initiate a hostile takeover—when Hasbro waged a vigorous media campaign emphasizing the possible negative ramifications of such a mega-merger. Also clouding the deal was an ongoing Federal Trade Commission investigation into alleged exclusionary policies between toy manufacturers and toy retailers, involving most notably the Toys “R” Us chain.

Having maintained its independence, Hasbro adopted a multi-pronged strategy for reinvigorating its performance as the turn of the century approached. Its strategies included leveraging its well-known brands in new ways; stepping up efforts to market electronic versions of established games, particularly through the Hasbro Interactive initiative; continuing to grow internationally; and bolstering new product development primarily through media tie-ins. Already planned for 1997 were several promising film tie-in prospects, including the movies Jurassic Park 2, Batman and Robin, and Barney’s Great Adventure, as well as the theatrical re-release of Star Wars.

As the new millenium approached, Hasbro looked to be moving towards regaining the top spot in the ever more international and multimedia consumer landscape of children’s toys and entertainment. In 1995, it acquired the Laramie Corporation, creators of the SuperSoaker line of water guns; within three years it had added Tiger Electronics, makers of Furby and Poo-Chi interactive toys. In the April 16, 1999 issue of the Wall Street Journal, Joseph Pereira stated that Furby Generaled about ten percent of Hasbro’s total revenue for the quarter as the “must-have” toy of the 1998 Christmas season. That same year also marked the procurement of Galoob Toys, Inc., makers of Mi-croMachines. The following year, Hasbro not only acquired Wizards of the Coast, makers of the popular 1999 Christmas children’s gift, Pokemon game cards, but they also reaped huge dividends from merchandise associated with the first of three Star Wars prequels, The Phantom Menace. The movie broke the single-day take record in its first 24 hours of release and helped influence high sales of the Phantom Menace line of action figures. With two more prequels to be released in the following decade, Star Wars looked to be a continuous source of revenue for Hasbro, justifying the steep price paid for the license in 1997—almost $600 million and a 7.4 percent stake in Hasbro, Inc.

Restructuring for the 21^st Century

As the 20th century came to a close, Hasbro seemed prepared to seriously challenge incumbent children’s toy leader Mattel. However, precipitous drop-offs in Pokemon and Star Wars merchandise sales and a weak interactive games market led to Hasbro’s first negative financial quarter since 1995. Hasbro’s software games division, Hasbro Interactive, and their interactive gaming Web site, Games.com, had lost over $100 million in 1999 and in 2000, and for the final quarter of 2000, Hasbro overall posted a net loss of $180 million.

Determined to return to profitability in 2001, Hasbro took decisive action. It sold Hasbro Interactive and Games.com to French video game company Infogrames Entertainment and consolidated its U.S. toy group in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, shutting down plants in Cincinnati, San Francisco, and Napa, reducing its workforce by 850 jobs. The company refocused attention on its core group of brands and more traditional toy lines, including Mr. Potato Head, Monopoly, and G.I. Joe; dedicated itself to expanding these brands and toys beyond their traditional markets; and announced movie licenses with Pixar and Disney, as well as Harry Potter movie tie-in trading cards by Wizards of the Coast. Although Hasbro again reported losses in the first quarter 2001 ($25 million loss on revenues of $463 million), the company persevered in rededicating itself to the brands that have made it into one of the most influential producers of popular culture in the previous century.

Principal Subsidiaries

Galoob Toys, Inc; Tiger Electronics Inc.; Milton Bradley Company.; Playskool, Inc.; Tonka Corporation; Parker Brothers & Co; Nomura Toys Ltd. (Japan); Romper Room Enterprises; Kenner Products; Wizards of the Coast, Inc; Oddzon Products, Inc.; Laramie Corporation; WowWee, Inc.

Principal Operating Units

Hasbro Games Group; Hasbro Toys Group; Hasbro Canada; Hasbro de Mexico; Hasbro Latin America; Hasbro France; Hasbro Deutschland; Hasbro Italy; Hasbro Spain; Hasbro UK.

Principal Competitors

Mattel; LEGO; Acclaim Entertainment; Applause; Bandai; Electronic Arts; Infogrames, Inc.; JAKKS Pacific; Marvel Enterprises; Nintendo; Ohio Art; Play-By-Play; Playmates; Play-mobil; SEGA; Sony; Toymax International; Ty; Vivendi Universal Publishing.

Hasbro, Inc.

views updated May 14 2018

Hasbro, Inc.

1027 Newport Avenue
Pawtucket, Rhode Island 02862
U.S.A.
(401) 431-8697
Fax: (401) 431-8400

Public Company
Incorporated: 1926 as Hassenfeld Brothers Incorporated
Employees: 8,200
Sales: $1.41 billion
Stock Exchanges: American London

Truly successful toy companies do not just make toys; they manufacture popular culture. Hasbro, which is one of the two largest toymakers in the world, certainly fits that description. From America’s Action Hero to a plastic anthropomorphized potato to the most famous dog and the largest bird in the world, Hasbro toys are instantly recognized by millions of Americans. Hasbro makes G.I. Joe and Mr. Potato Head and owns licenses for the Peanuts and “Sesame Street” characters. Thanks to acquisitions, it also makes Playskool and Romper Room preschool toys, and owns boardgame-maker Milton Bradley.

Hasbro traces its origin to an enterprise founded in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1923 by Henry, Hilal, and Herman Hassenfeld, brothers who had emigrated to the United States from Poland. The Hassenfeld brothers engaged in the textile remnant business—selling cloth leftovers. By the mid-1920s they were using them to make hat liners and pencil-box covers. Soon, with eight employees—all family members—they began making the boxes themselves, after realizing their popularity. In 1926 the company incorporated under the name Hassenfeld Brothers Incorporated.

Hilal Hassenfeld became involved in other textile ventures, and Henry took control of the new company. Although a paternalistic employer, Henry Hassenfeld was also a tough and shrewd businessman. During the Great Depression—with 150 employees in 1929 and 200 employees in 1930—Hassenfeld Brothers commanded annual sales of $500,000 from sales of pencil boxes and cloth zipper pouches filled with school supplies. At that point, however, the company’s pencil supplier decided to raise its prices and sell its own boxes at prices lower than the Hassenfeld’s. Henry Hassenfeld responded with a vow to enter the pencil business himself, and in 1935 Hassenfeld Brothers began manufacturing pencils. This product line would provide the company with a steady source of revenue for the next 45 years.

During the late 1930s the Hassenfeld Brothers began to manufacture toys, an extension of the company’s line of school supplies. Initial offerings included medical sets for junior nurses and doctors and modeling clay. During World War II Henry’s younger son, Merrill Hassenfeld, acted on a customer’s suggestion to make and market a junior air-raid warden kit, which came complete with flashlights and toy gas masks.

By 1942, as demand for school supplies tapered off, the company had become primarily a toy company, although it continued its large, profitable pencil business. Hilal Hassenfeld died in 1943, at which point Henry Hassenfeld became CEO and his son, Merrill Hassenfeld, became president. Also during World War II, the company ventured into plastics, to support its toy-making, and was forced, due to labor shortages, to reduce employment to 75.

After the war Merrill Hassenfeld began marketing a girls make-up kit after seeing his four year-old daughter play with candy as though it were lipstick and rouge. In 1952, the company introduced its still-classic Mr. Potato Head, the first toy to be advertised on television. In 1954 Hassenfeld became a major licensee for Disney characters. By 1960, revenues hit $12 million, and Hassenfeld Brothers had become one of the largest private toy companies in the nation.

Henry Hassenfeld died in 1960. Merrill Hassenfeld then assumed full control of the parent company, while his older brother Harold Hassenfeld, continued to run the pencilmaking operations. Merrill Hassenfeld’s succession was logical given his interest and expertise in the toy business, but it also marked the beginning of an intramural rivalry between the two sides of the company; Harold Hassenfeld would come to resent the fact that the pencil business received a lower percentage of capital investment even though it was a steadier performer and accounted for a higher percentage of profits than toys.

In 1961 Hassenfeld Brothers (Canada) Ltd., now Hasbro Canada, was founded. Hassenfeld Brothers seemed to defy the vagaries of the toy business in the early 1960s, when it introduced what would become one of its most famous and successful product lines. According to author Marvin Kaye in A Toy is Born, the company conceived G.I. Joe in 1963 when a licensing agent suggested a merchandise tie-in with a television program about the U.S. Marine Corps called “The Lieutenant.” The company liked the idea of a military doll, but did not want to pin its fate on a TV show that might prove short lived; so it went ahead and created its own concept, and in 1964 Hassenfeld unleashed G.I. Joe, a foot-high “action figure” with articulated joints. In its first two years, G.I. Joe brought in between $35 and $40 million and accounted for nearly two-thirds of the company’s total sales.

The company changed its name to Hasbro Industries in 1968—it had sold its toys under the Hasbro trade name for some time—and went public. Only a small portion of Hasbro stock went on the open market, however; the majority stake remained in the hands of the Hassenfeld family. At the same time, Hasbro decided that it could no longer ignore the public’s growing disapproval of war toys, which was fueled by disillusionment with the Vietnam War. In 1969 G.I. Joe, still the company’s leading moneymaker, was repackaged in a less militaristic “adventure” motif, with a different range of accessories. Also in 1969, the company acquired Burt Claster Enterprises, the Baltimore, Maryland-based television production company responsible for the popular “Romper Room” show for preschoolers. Burt Claster Enterprises had also begun to manufacture a line of “Romper Room” toys. Nevertheless, a month-long Teamsters strike and troubles with Far Eastern suppliers hurt Hasbro in 1969, and the company posted a $1 million loss for the year.

The 1960s ended on a turbulent note for Hasbro, providing a foretaste of the decade to come. In 1970 Hasbro decided that it had to diversify, and it opened a chain of nursery schools franchised under the “Romper Room” name. The company hoped to take advantage of President Richard M. Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan, which subsidized day-care for working mothers. Running the preschools was a very big mistake. Merrill Hassenfeld’s son, Alan Hassenfeld, told The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1984, “We’d get phone calls saying, ‘We can’t find one of the kids.’ The whole company would stop.” Within five years Hasbro had left the day-care business. Another ill-fated diversification move was Hasbro’s line of Galloping Gourmet cookware, which sought to capitalize on a contemporary television cooking show of the same name. That venture literally fell apart when termites ate salad bowls stacked in a warehouse.

In addition, two products from Hasbro’s 1970 line turned into public relations disasters: Javelin Darts were declared unsafe by the government, and Hypo-Squirt, a water gun shaped like a hypodermic needle, was dubbed by the press a “junior junkie” kit. Both products were promptly removed from the market. The continuing success of “Romper Room” and its related toy line proved to be a bright spot for Hasbro, although the company came under fire from the citizens’ group Action for Children’s Television because the program was used as an advertising vehicle for toys.

In 1974 Merrill Hassenfeld became CEO and his son, Stephen D. Hassenfeld became president of Hasbro. Hasbro regained its profitability but floundered once again later in the decade. Poor cash flow accounted for some of the problem, but the company’s underlying mistake was casting its net too far and too wide in an effort to compensate for G.I. Joe’s declining popularity. Hasbro discontinued G.I. Joe in 1975 because of the rising price of plastic, which was caused by rising crude oil prices. By 1977—the year Hasbro acquired Peanuts characters licensing rights—the company suffered $2.5 million in losses and carried a heavy debt. The financial situation became serious enough that Hasbro’s bankers forced it to suspend divident payments in early 1979. The toy division’s poor performance fueled Harold Hassenfeld’s resentment that the Empire Pencil subsidiary continued to receive a smaller proportion of capital spending to profits than did the toy division. The dam threatened to burst in 1979, when Merrill Hassenfeld died at age 61. Stephen Hassenfeld was chairman Harold Hassenfeld’s heir apparent, but Harold Hassenfeld refused to recognize Stephen Hassenfeld’s authority.

The feud was resolved in 1980, when Hasbro spun off Empire Pencil, which had become the nation’s largest pencil maker, and Harold exchanged his Hasbro shares for shares of the new company. At the same time, Stephen Hassenfeld became the toy company’s CEO and chairman of the board, dedicated himself to turning Hasbro around. Where it had once been overextended, the company slashed its product line by one-third between 1978 and 1981, and its annual number of new products was cut by one-half. Hasbro also refocused on simpler toys, like Mr. Potato Head—products that were inexpensive to make, could be sold at lower prices, and had longer life cycles. This conservative philosophy prevented Hasbro from entering the hot new field of electronic games, as did the fact that it could not spare the cash to develop such toys. The decision to stay out of the market was vindicated in the early 1980s, when the electronics boom turned bust and shook out many competitors.

Perhaps the most important symbolic event in Hasbro’s revival was the 1982 return of G.I. Joe. The U.S. political climate made military toys socially acceptable again, and G.I. Joe was reintroduced as an antiterrorist commando, complete with a cast of comrades and exotic villains, whose personalities were sculpted with the help of Marvel Comics. Two years later, Hasbro introduced its highly successful Transformers line—toy vehicles and guns that can be reconfigured into toy robots. Transformers were tied into a children’s animated TV series and proved so popular that People asked Stephen Hassenfeld to pose with them for its cover.

In 1983 Hasbro acquired GLENCO Infant Items, a manufacturer of infant products and the world’s largest bib producer. Hasbro also sold about 37% of its own stock to Warner Communications in exchange for cash and Warner’s struggling Knickerbocker Toy Company subsidiary, which made Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls. The new Warner holdings did not threaten the company’s autonomy, however; the shares were put into a voting trust controlled by the Hassenfeld brothers and other Hasbro executives. In 1984 Stephen Hassenfeld, remaining CEO and chairman, retired as president and was succeeded by his brother, Alan.

In the early 1980s Hasbro was the nation’s sixth-best-selling toymaker, with revenues of $225.4 million and $15.2 million in profit. Flushed with its newfound strength, in 1984 it acquired Milton Bradley, the nation’s fifth-best-selling toymaker, and second only to General Mills’s Parker Brothers subsidiary in production of boardgames and puzzles. Milton Bradley had been founded by its namesake, a Springfield, Massachusetts, lithographer who set up shop in 1860 and immediately turned out a popular reproduction of a portrait of presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. Bradley’s portrait, however, showed Lincoln clean-shaven, so when Lincoln grew his beard, sales fell off. Looking for a way to stay in business, Bradley invented and produced a boardgame called The Checkered Game of Life, a distant precursor of a popular Milton Bradley game, The Game of Life, which was introduced in 1960. The game’s success convinced Bradley to stay in the game business. During the Civil War he produced a lightweight packet of boardgames for the amusement of Union troops. The company had incorporated in 1882.

During the late 19th century, Milton Bradley (MB) relied mostly on favorites like chess and checkers and traditional European games. During the 20th century, however, the company designed and marketed more original games, sometimes with great success. During the Depression, a Milton Bradley financial game called Easy Money became popular. In the 1950s, Milton Bradley pioneered games with tie-ins to television shows—Concentration was an early favorite. In 1968 MB acquired Chicago-based Playskool Manufacturing, which was noted for its preschool toys. Among Milton Bradley’s later successes was the “body action” classic Twister, which was published in 1971 and became a popular prop with talkshow hosts for a while after Johnny Carson challenged Eva Gabor to a go-around on “The Tonight Show.”

In 1984, however, Milton Bradley had found itself in an uncertain financial position after fending off a hostile takeover from British conglomerate Hanson Trust. In the wake of that failed bid, several unidentified parties bought up large blocks of MB stock, fueling speculation that another takeover attempt was imminent. Finally, in May 1984, MB agreed to be acquired by Hasbro for $360 million. MB’s strength in boardgames and puzzles complemented Hasbro’s plastic toys and stuffed animals. Milton Bradley’s Playskool subsidiary provided a solid preschool line including classics like Lincoln Logs and ABC blocks. The new Hasbro Bradley Incorporated immediately challenged Mattel’s position as the nation’s leading toymaker. In 1985 Hasbro Bradley became Hasbro, Inc.

If Hasbro’s and Milton Bradley’s product lines merged well, their chief executives did not. Stephen Hassenfeld remained president and CEO of Hasbro Bradley, with Milton Bradley chief James Shea Jr. becoming chairman. After only a few months, however, Shea resigned. Stephen himself became chairman, with brother Alan Hassenfeld replacing him as president.

Hasbro surpassed Mattel to become the largest toy company in the world in the mid-1980s. Having done so, it then attempted to dethrone Mattel’s Barbie, queen of the fashion doll market. In 1986 Hasbro introduced Jem, a record producer who was also, secretly, a purple-haired rock musician. Jem posted strong initial sales, then failed. Hasbro retired Jem the next year. In 1988 the company brought out Maxie, a blonde doll which was made the same size as Barbie so that Barbie accessories could fit it. Maxie lasted twice as long as Jem; it was discontinued in 1990.

In 1989 Hasbro acquired bankrupt rival Coleco Industries for $85 million, just four years after a Toy and Hobby World survey declared that Transformers had passed Coleco’s Cabbage Patch Kids as the best-selling toy in the United States. In addition to the dolls, which had fallen from their peak of popularity during the 1985 Christmas season, Coleco also owned the rights to the classic boardgames Scrabble and Parchesi. The Coleco acquisition proved to be Stephen Hassenfeld’s final triumph, however. In 1989, he died at age 47. Forty-one-year-old Alan Hassenfeld became chairman and CEO.

Alan Hassenfeld has worked for the family business for virtually all of his adult life and had maintained a close working relationship with his brother. While it is Alan’s task to keep Hasbro at the top of its industry, it was Stephen who brought it there, converting the relatively modest toy company that their grandfather had founded into a juggernaut.

Principal Subsidiaries

Claster Television, Inc.; Hasbro Promotions and Direct, Inc.; Hasbro Foreign Sales Corp. (U.S. Virgin Islands); Hasbro Managerial Services, Inc.; Milton Bradley Company; Playskool Baby, Inc.

Hasbro, Inc.

views updated May 29 2018

Hasbro, Inc.

1027 Newport Avenue
Pawtucket, Rhode Island 02862-1059
U.S.A.
(401) 431-8697
Fax: (401) 431-8535

Public Company
Incorporated: 1926 as Hassenfeld Brothers Incorporated
Employees: 13,000
Sales: $2.86 billion (1995)
Stock Exchanges: American London
SICs: 3942 Dolls & Stuffed Toys; 3944 Games, Toys & Children’s Vehicles, Except Dolls & Bicycles; 5092 Toys & Hobby Goods & Supplies; 7812 Motion Picture & Video Tape Production

Truly successful toy companies do not just make toys; they manufacture popular culture. Hasbro, Inc., which is the secondlargest toymaker in the world, behind only Mattel Inc., certainly fits that description. From America’s Action Hero to a plastic anthropomorphized potato to vehicles that transform into robots to the largest bird in the world, Hasbro toys are instantly recognized by millions of Americans. Hasbro makes G.I. Joe, Mr. Potato Head, and Transformers, and owns licenses for Sesame Street characters. Thanks to numerous acquisitions in the 1980s and 1990s, it also makes Playskool and Romper Room preschool toys, Tonka trucks, Kenner’s Nerf toys, and Cabbage Patch Kids (by way of Coleco); and has become dominant in the area of board games and puzzles through its ownership of Milton Bradley (maker of Scrabble and Parcheesi) and Parker Brothers (maker of Monopoly).

Early History

Hasbro traces its origin to an enterprise founded in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1923 by Henry, Hilal, and Herman Hassenfeld, brothers who had emigrated to the United States from Poland. The Hassenfeld brothers engaged in the textile remnant business, selling cloth leftovers. By the mid-1920s they were using them to make hat liners and pencil-box covers. Soon, with eight employees—all family members—they began making the boxes themselves, after realizing their popularity. In 1926 the company incorporated under the name Hassenfeld Brothers Incorporated.

Hilal Hassenfeld became involved in other textile ventures, and Henry took control of the new company. Although a paternalistic employer, Henry Hassenfeld was also a tough and shrewd businessman. During the Great Depression—with 150 employees in 1929 and 200 employees in 1930—Hassenfeld Brothers commanded annual sales of $500,000 from sales of pencil boxes and cloth zipper pouches filled with school supplies. At that point, however, the company’s pencil supplier decided to raise its prices and sell its own boxes at prices lower than Hassenfeld’s. Henry Hassenfeld responded with a vow to enter the pencil business himself, and in 1935 Hassenfeld Brothers began manufacturing pencils. This product line would provide the company with a steady source of revenue for the next 45 years.

Start of Toy Manufacturing in 1930s

During the late 1930s the Hassenfeld Brothers began to manufacture toys, an extension of the company’s line of school supplies. Initial offerings included medical sets for junior nurses and doctors and modeling clay. During World War II Henry’s younger son, Merrill Hassenfeld, acted on a customer’s suggestion to make and market a junior air-raid warden kit, which came complete with flashlights and toy gas masks.

By 1942, as demand for school supplies tapered off, the company had become primarily a toy company, although it continued its large, profitable pencil business. Hilal Hassenfeld died in 1943, at which point Henry Hassenfeld became CEO and his son, Merrill Hassenfeld, became president. Also during World War II, the company ventured into plastics, to support its toy-making, and was forced, due to labor shortages, to reduce employment to 75.

After the war Merrill Hassenfeld began marketing a girls makeup kit after seeing his four-year-old daughter play with candy as though it were lipstick and rouge. In 1952, the company introduced its still-classic Mr. Potato Head, the first toy to be advertised on television. In 1954 Hassenfeld became a major licensee for Disney characters. By 1960, revenues hit $12 million, and Hassenfeld Brothers had become one of the largest private toy companies in the nation.

Turbulent Times in the 1960s and 1970s

Henry Hassenfeld died in 1960. Merrill Hassenfeld then assumed full control of the parent company, while his older brother Harold Hassenfeld, continued to run the pencil-making operations. Merrill Hassenfeld’s succession was logical given his interest and expertise in the toy business, but it also marked the beginning of an intramural rivalry between the two sides of the company; Harold Hassenfeld would come to resent the fact that the pencil business received a lower percentage of capital investment even though it was a steadier performer and accounted for a higher percentage of profits than toys.

In 1961 Hassenfeld Brothers (Canada) Ltd., now Hasbro Canada Inc., was founded. Hassenfeld Brothers seemed to defy the vagaries of the toy business in the early 1960s, when it introduced what would become one of its most famous and successful product lines. According to author Marvin Kay e in A Toy is Born, the company conceived G.I. Joe in 1963 when a licensing agent suggested a merchandise tie-in with a television program about the U.S. Marine Corps called “The Lieutenant.” The company liked the idea of a military doll, but did not want to pin its fate on a TV show that might prove short-lived; so it went ahead and created its own concept, and in 1964 Hassenfeld unleashed G.I. Joe, a foot-high “action figure” with articulated joints. In its first two years, G.I. Joe brought in between $35 and $40 million and accounted for nearly two-thirds of the company’s total sales.

The company changed its name to Hasbro Industries in 1968—it had sold its toys under the Hasbro trade name for some time—and went public. Only a small portion of Hasbro stock went on the open market, however; the majority stake remained in the hands of the Hassenfeld family. At the same time, Hasbro decided that it could no longer ignore the public’s growing disapproval of war toys, which was fueled by disillusionment with the Vietnam War. In 1969 G.I. Joe, still the company’s leading moneymaker, was repackaged in a less militaristic “adventure” motif, with a different range of accessories. Also in 1969, the company acquired Burt Claster Enterprises, the Baltimore, Maryland-based television production company responsible for the popular “Romper Room” show for preschoolers. Burt Claster Enterprises had also begun to manufacture a line of “Romper Room” toys. Nevertheless, a month-long Teamsters strike and troubles with Far Eastern suppliers hurt Hasbro in 1969, and the company posted a $1 million loss for the year.

The 1960s ended on a turbulent note for Hasbro, providing a foretaste of the decade to come. In 1970 Hasbro decided that it had to diversify, and it opened a chain of nursery schools franchised under the “Romper Room” name. The company hoped to take advantage of President Richard M. Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan, which subsidized day care for working mothers. Running the preschools was a very big mistake. Merrill Hassenfeld’s son, Alan Hassenfeld, told The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1984: “We’d get phone calls saying, ’We can’t find one of the kids.’ The whole company would stop.” Within five years Hasbro had left the day-care business. Another ill-fated diversification move was Hasbro’s line of Galloping Gourmet cookware, which sought to capitalize on a contemporary television cooking show of the same name. That venture literally fell apart when termites ate salad bowls stacked in a warehouse.

In addition, two products from Hasbro’s 1970 line turned into public relations disasters: Javelin Darts were declared unsafe by the government, and Hypo-Squirt, a water gun shaped like a hypodermic needle, was dubbed by the press a “junior junkie” kit. Both products were promptly removed from the market. The continuing success of “Romper Room” and its related toy line proved to be a bright spot for Hasbro, although the company came under fire from the citizens group Action for Children’s Television, which accused the program of becoming an advertising vehicle for toys.

In 1974 Merrill Hassenfeld became CEO of Hasbro, while his son, Stephen D. Hassenfeld, became president. Hasbro regained its profitability but floundered once again later in the decade. Poor cash flow accounted for some of the problem, but the company’s underlying mistake was casting its net too far and too wide in an effort to compensate for G.I. Joe’s declining popularity. Hasbro discontinued G.I. Joe in 1975 because of the rising price of plastic, which was caused by rising crude oil prices. By 1977—the year Hasbro acquired Peanuts cartoon characters licensing rights—the company suffered $2.5 million in losses and carried a heavy debt. The financial situation became serious enough that Hasbro’s bankers forced it to suspend dividend payments in early 1979. The toy division’s poor performance fueled Harold Hassenfeld’s resentment that the Empire Pencil subsidiary continued to receive a smaller proportion of capital spending to profits than did the toy division. The dam threatened to burst in 1979, when Merrill Hassenfeld died at age 61. Stephen Hassenfeld was chairman Merrill Hassenfeld’s heir apparent, but Harold Hassenfeld refused to recognize Stephen Hassenfeld’s authority.

Company Perspectives

Our mission is clear. We are determined to succeed.

The feud was resolved in 1980, when Hasbro spun off Empire Pencil, which had become the nation’s largest pencil maker, and Harold exchanged his Hasbro shares for shares of the new company. At the same time, Stephen Hassenfeld became the toy company’s CEO and chairman of the board, and dedicated himself to turning Hasbro around. Where it had once been overextended, the company slashed its product line by one-third between 1978 and 1981, while its annual number of new products was cut by one-half. Hasbro also refocused on simpler toys, such as Mr. Potato Head—products that were inexpensive to make, could be sold at lower prices, and had longer life cycles. This conservative philosophy precluded Hasbro from entering the hot new field of electronic games, as did the fact that it could not spare the cash to develop such toys. The decision to stay out of the market was vindicated in the early 1980s, when the electronics boom turned bust and shook out many competitors.

Perhaps the most important event in Hasbro’s revival was the 1982 return of G.I. Joe. The U.S. political climate at the time made military toys popular again, and G.I. Joe was reintroduced as an antiterrorist commando, complete with a cast of comrades and exotic villains, whose personalities were sculpted with the help of Marvel Comics. Two years later, Hasbro introduced its highly successful Transformers line—toy vehicles and guns that could be reconfigured into toy robots. Transformers were tied into a children’s animated TV series and proved so popular that People magazine asked Stephen Hassenfeld to pose with them for a cover photo.

1980s Acquisitions

In 1983 Hasbro acquired GLENCO Infant Items, a manufacturer of infant products and the world’s largest bib producer. Hasbro also sold about 37 percent of its own stock to Warner Communications in exchange for cash and Warner’s struggling Knickerbocker Toy Company subsidiary, which made Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls. The new Warner holdings did not threaten the company’s autonomy, however; the shares were put into a voting trust controlled by the Hassenfeld brothers and other Hasbro executives. In 1984 Stephen Hassenfeld turned over the position of president to his brother, Alan, while remaining CEO and chairman.

In the early 1980s Hasbro was the nation’s sixth-best-selling toymaker, with revenues of $225.4 million and $15.2 million in profit. Flush with newfound strength, in 1984 it acquired Milton Bradley, the nation’s fifth bestselling toymaker, and second only to General Mills’s Parker Brothers subsidiary in production of boardgames and puzzles. Milton Bradley had been founded by a Springfield, Massachusetts, lithographer who set up shop in 1860 and immediately turned out a popular reproduction of a portrait of presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. Bradley’s portrait, however, showed Lincoln clean-shaven, so when Lincoln grew his beard, sales fell off. Looking for a way to stay in business, Bradley invented and produced a boardgame called The Checkered Game of Life, a distant precursor of a popular Milton Bradley game, The Game of Life, which was introduced in 1960. The game’s success convinced Bradley to stay in the game business. During the Civil War he produced a lightweight packet of boardgames for the amusement of Union troops. The company had incorporated in 1882.

During the late 19th century, Milton Bradley (MB) relied mostly on such favorites as chess and checkers and traditional European games. During the 20th century, however, the company designed and marketed more original games, sometimes with great success. During the Depression, a Milton Bradley financial game called Easy Money became popular. In the 1950s, Milton Bradley pioneered games with tie-ins to television shows—Concentration was an early favorite. In 1968 MB acquired Chicago-based Playskool Manufacturing, which was noted for its preschool toys. Among Milton Bradley’s later successes was the “body action” classic Twister, which was published in 1971 and became a popular prop with talk show hosts for a while after Johnny Carson challenged Eva Gabor to a go-around on “The Tonight Show.”

In 1984, however, Milton Bradley had found itself in an uncertain financial position after fending off a hostile takeover from British conglomerate Hanson Trust. In the wake of that failed bid, several unidentified parties bought up large blocks of MB stock, fueling speculation that another takeover attempt was imminent. Finally, in May 1984, MB agreed to be acquired by Hasbro for $360 million. MB’s strength in boardgames and puzzles complemented Hasbro’s plastic toys and stuffed animals. Milton Bradley’s Playskool subsidiary provided a solid preschool line including classics such as Lincoln Logs and ABC blocks. The new Hasbro Bradley Incorporated immediately challenged Mattel’s position as the nation’s leading toymaker. In 1985 Hasbro Bradley became Hasbro, Inc.

If Hasbro’s and Milton Bradley’s product lines merged well, their chief executives did not. Stephen Hassenfeld became president and CEO of Hasbro Bradley, with Milton Bradley chief James Shea Jr. becoming chairman. After only a few months, however, Shea resigned. Stephen himself became chairman, with brother Alan Hassenfeld replacing him as president.

Hasbro surpassed Mattel to become the largest toy company in the world in the mid-1980s. Having done so, it then attempted to dethrone Mattel’s Barbie, queen of the fashion doll market. In 1986 Hasbro introduced Jem, a fashion doll given the dual identity of business woman/record producer and purple-haired rock musician. While Jem posted strong initial sales, her popularity quickly faded and she was retired the following year. In 1988 the company brought out Maxie, a blonde doll scaled to match Barbie in size so that she could wear Barbie clothing and accessories. Maxie lasted twice as long as Jem and was discontinued in 1990.

In 1989 Hasbro acquired bankrupt rival Coleco Industries for $85 million, just four years after a Toy and Hobby World survey declared that Transformers had passed Coleco’s Cabbage Patch Kids as the best-selling toy in the United States. In addition to the Cabbage Patch dolls, which had fallen from their peak of popularity during the 1985 Christmas season, Coleco also owned the rights to the classic board games Scrabble and Parcheesi. The Coleco acquisition proved to be Stephen Hassenfeld’s final business triumph. In 1989, he died at age 47, having converted the relatively modest toy company that his grandfather had founded into a juggernaut at the top of its industry with 1989 sales of $1.41 billion, a huge increase over the $104 million figure of the year he took over.

1990s and Beyond

A new and more challenging era began when 41-year-old Alan Hassenfeld became chairman and CEO of Hasbro. The younger Hassenfeld continued the acquisition trend of the 1980s, as Hasbro acquired Tonka Corp. in 1991 for $486 million. With the deal, Hasbro added not only the Tonka line of toy trucks but also Tonka’s Parker Brothers unit, the maker of Monopoly, and Kenner Products, which featured Batman figures and the Strawberry Shortcake doll. The Parker Brothers unit was merged into Hasbro’s already strong Milton Bradley division. Hasbro took a $59 million charge in 1991 to cover costs of consolidating the Tonka acquisition and restructuring overall operations.

In the late 1980s, Alan Hassenfeld had spearheaded an effort to increase Hasbro’s international sales, primarily by taking toys that failed in the U.S. market and remarketing them overseas at prices as high as four times their original prices. He had helped increase international sales from $268 million in 1985 to $433 million in 1988. So it was not surprising that as chairman he would push to increase Hasbro’s international presence. He did just that in 1991, establishing operations in Greece, Hungary, and Mexico.

It was the Far East, however, which Hassenfeld saw as a critical market for Hasbro to develop. He gained two more distribution channels there in 1992 by purchasing Nomura Toys Ltd., based in Japan, and buying a majority stake in Palmyra, a Southeast Asian toy distributor. Thanks to these efforts, by 1995, Hasbro’s international sales had reached $1.28 billion, which represented almost 45 percent of total sales, a significant increase over the 22 percent figure of 1985. More than 46 percent of the company’s operating profit was attributable to operations outside the United States in 1995. One international setback came in 1993 when Hasbro lost out to arch-rival Mattel in a bid for J.W. Spear, a U.K.-based maker of games.

While international results were improving, Hasbro began to show some weaknesses on the domestic front. Much of the growth since 1980 had come from the company’s various acquisitions, along with Hasbro’s largely successful efforts to leverage the new assets it gained through the deals. Many new product development activities, on the other hand, were not as successful, with the exception of product lines developed to tie-in with the movie Jurassic Park and the popular children’s television show Barney. As a result, domestic sales stagnated in the early 1990s, and actually fell from $1.67 billion in 1993 to $1.58 billion in 1995. And worldwide sales showed much slower growth as well. From 1991, the year of the Tonka acquisition, to 1995, sales increased only 33.5 percent, with half of the increase occurring in 1992 alone. To help improve the company’s domestic performance, a reorganization was completed in 1994 that merged the Hasbro Toy, Playskool, Playskool Baby, Kenner, and Kid Dimension units into a new Hasbro Toy Group. Meanwhile, Mattel in 1993 acquired Fisher-Price and soon thereafter regained the number one spot in the toy industry.

Also contributing to Hasbro’s challenges in the 1990s was its belated struggle to enter the market for electronic games. Eventually, in 1992, the company began development of a mass-market virtual reality game system. Although such a system was successfully developed, it was judged too expensive for the mass market and the project was abandoned in 1995, resulting in a charge of $31.1 million. In 1993, Hasbro bought a 15 percent stake in Virgin Interactive Entertainment, a producer of game software for Sega and Nintendo systems, with the intention of developing software based on Hasbro toys and games. Two years later, however, Hasbro dissolved the partnership and sold its stake.

A more promising venture began in 1995 with the establishment of Hasbro Interactive and the release of its first product that same year, a CD-ROM version of Monopoly. More than 180,000 units were sold in the first eight weeks following its release. Additional titles to be released in 1996 included Risk, Battleship, and Playskool-brand games.

In 1995, Mattel approached Hasbro about a possible merger of the two largest toy companies in the world. Negotiations took place in secret over the course of several months until the Hasbro board early in 1996 unanimously turned down a $5.2 billion merger proposal that would have given Hasbro stockholders a 73 percent premium over the then-current selling price. Hasbro officials expressed doubts that the merger could pass antitrust challenges and wanted a large upfront payment to help the company’s performance during what would have likely been a lengthy antitrust review and to protect itself against the possibility that the merger would collapse. Mattel officials, on the other hand, maintained that the merger would have had little difficulty gaining approval, but backed away—and did not initiate a hostile takeover—when Hasbro waged a vigorous media campaign emphasizing the possible negative ramifications of such a mega-merger. Also clouding the deal was an ongoing Federal Trade Commission investigation into alleged exclusionary policies between toy manufacturers and toy retailers, involving most notably the Toys “R” Us chain.

Having maintained its independence, Hasbro adopted a multipronged strategy for reinvigorating its performance as the turn of the century approached. Its strategies included leveraging its well-known brands in new ways; stepping up efforts to market electronic versions of established games, particularly through the Hasbro Interactive initiative; continuing to grow internationally; and bolstering new product development primarily through media tie-ins. Already planned for 1997 were several promising film tie-in prospects, including the movies Jurassic Park 2, Batman and Robin, and Barney, as well as the theatrical rerelease of Star Wars.

Principal Subsidiaries

Hasbro Foreign Sales Corp.; Hasbro International, Inc.; Milton Bradley Company; Playskool, Inc.; Romper Room Enterprises, Inc.; Tonka Corporation; Kenner Parker (Australia) Ltd.; Milton Bradley Australia Pty. Ltd.; Tonka Corp. Pty. Ltd. (Australia); Hasbro-MB S.A. (Belgium); Hasbro Canada Inc.; Kenner Parker Canada; Kenner Products (Canada) Limited (50%); Hasbro S.A. (France); Kenner Parker Toys (France; 70%); MB France S.A.; Kenner Parker Toys International (Germany); Milton Bradley GmbH (Germany); Hasbro Bradley Far East (1987) Ltd. (Hong Kong); Kenner Parker (H.K.) Ltd. (Hong Kong); Tonka Far East Limited (Hong Kong); MB Ireland; MB Italy S.r.l.; Tonka Italia S.p.A. (Italy); Nomura Toys Ltd. (Japan); Tonka Corp. (Mexico); Kenner Parker Toys (Netherlands); MB International B.V. (Netherlands); Kenner Parker (N.Z.) Ltd. (New Zealand); Milton Bradley (N.Z.) Ltd. (New Zealand); MB Espana, S.A. (Spain); MB (Switzerland) AG; Hasbro Bradley UK Limited; Hasbro Europe UK Limited; Kenner Parker Europe (U.K.); Tonka Europe, Limited (U.K.).

Principal Operating Units

Hasbro Games Group; Hasbro Toy Group.

Hasbro, Inc.

views updated May 21 2018

Hasbro, Inc.

founded: 1923 by henry and hilal hassenfeld ashassenfeld brothers company

Contact Information:

headquarters: 1027 newport ave.
pawtucket, ri 02861 phone: (401)431-8697 fax: (401)431-8535 url: http://www.hasbro.com

OVERVIEW

Hasbro, Inc. is currently the second largest toy maker in the United States, ranked only behind Mattel. The company designs and manufactures a diverse line of toy products and related items throughout the world, including traditional board and card games, electronic and interactive CD-ROM games, puzzles, action toys, plush products, and infant products. Hasbro also licenses a number of trade names and property rights for use in connection with the sale by others of noncompeting toys and nontoy products.

The company is organized into a Toy Group and a Games Group. The Toy Group includes the Playskool, Playskool Baby, Hasbro, Kid Dimension, and Kenner divisions. The Games Group includes the Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers divisions. Milton Bradley produces a line of more than 200 games and puzzles for children and adults. Its most popular products include Scrabble, Battleship, Chutes and Ladders, Operation, and Twister. Parker Brothers' staple products include Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly, Clue, Risk, and Sorry!. Hasbro Interactive develops interactive CD-ROM games based on the company's traditional products such as Monopoly and Battleship. Hasbro's Emerging Business Group has developed the Super Soaker line of water toys, the Koosh soft play items, and a line of interactive candy.

Hasbro continues to market its classic items, such as Tonka Trucks, Nerf products, and its extensive line of Kenner toys. These, and the high-quality infant and toddler products from Playskool and Playskool Kids, are major sources of revenue. The company plans to regain the number-one toy maker position by aggressive marketing, corporate acquisitions, and introducing new toys based on popular movies, comic books, and television programs. Hasbro also plans to invest in the further development of CD-ROM games and online gaming.

COMPANY FINANCES

In 1997 worldwide sales totaled $3.12 billion. Of this, 37 percent was derived from two retail outlets: Toys 'R' Us (22 percent) and Wal-Mart (15 percent). Also in 1997 the company spent $386,912 on royalties and product development and approximately $411,574 on marketing programs. Hasbro's current licensing agreements are expected to cost the company up to $500 million in royalties between 1998 and 2005.

As of March 1998, more than 133 million shares of Hasbro's common stock were outstanding. The total market value of the common stocks held by nonaffiliates (i.e., people not considered officers of the company) was approximately $4.49 billion. Hasbro's stock prices ranged from $22 7/8 to $36 3/4 over the prior 12-month period.

ANALYSTS' OPINIONS

Standard & Poor's includes Hasbro in its S&P 500 index, and its February 1998 Stock Report recommends buying Hasbro stock. They expect the company's new products, reduced inventory, and corporate restructuring program will help the stock outperform the market.

Some consumers, however, have been complaining about unfair business practices. A 1998 Fortune magazine article notes that many collectors are asking why the toy maker allows its miniature sports collectibles to be sold "out the back door." The article notes that "out the back door" sales are a problem with all toy collectibles, but most seriously with Kenner's Starting Lineup figures. This line of miniature sports action figures initially flopped, but demand for them increased after production was cut and shortages developed—or as the article suggests, were encouraged.

HISTORY

Hasbro traces its origin to an enterprise founded in Providence, Rhode Island, by Henry, Hilal, and Herman Hassenfeld, brothers who had emigrated from Poland. They formed the Hassenfeld Brothers Company in 1923 to distribute fabric remnants. Hilal Hassenfeld became involved in other textiles, and Henry took control of the company. Although he took the role of a father figure at the company, Henry was a tough and shrewd businessman. During the Great Depression, with 200 employees, Hassenfeld Brothers commanded annual sales of $500,000 from sales of pencil boxes and cloth zipper pouches filled with school supplies. At that point, the company's pencil supplier had raised its prices and began to sell its own boxes at prices lower than Hassenfeld's. Henry Hassenfeld responded with a vow to enter the pencil business himself, and in 1935 Hassenfeld Brothers began manufacturing pencils. This product line would provide the company with a steady source of revenue for the next 45 years.

During the late 1930s Hassenfeld Brothers began to manufacture toys. Some of the early products included toy medical kits and modeling clay. During World War II, Henry's younger son Merrill acted on a customer's suggestion to make a junior air-raid warden kit complete with flashlights and toy gas masks.

By 1942, as demand for school supplies declined, the company had mainly focused on toy manufacturing. During this time, Hassenfeld ventured into plastics to better support its toy making. In 1952 Mr. Potato Head became the first toy advertised on television. In the 1960s, the toy division introduced G.I. Joe. An instant success, the doll quickly became their most popular toy.

Although still run by the Hassenfeld family, the company went public in 1968 and changed its name to Hasbro Industries. The pencil and toy divisions were run by different family members in the 1970s, and disagreements regarding finances, leadership, and the company's future direction led to a separation in 1980. The toy division continued to operate under the Hasbro name, and the pencil division became the Empire Pencil Corporation.

Under new CEO Stephen Hassenfeld, Hasbro grew rapidly in the 1980s. He reduced the number of products by one-third in order to concentrate on specific markets. The company also refocused on simpler toys, like Mr. Potato Head-products that were inexpensive to manufacture, could be sold at lower prices, and had longer life cycles. Hasbro introduced a successful line of toys during this time, which included Transformers and a smaller version of G.I. Joe dolls. In 1983, Hasbro purchased much of Knickerbocker's inventory, including Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls, from Warner Bros.

In the early 1980s Hasbro was the sixth-best-selling toy maker in the United States, with revenues of $225.4 million and $15.2 million in profit. Hasbro surpassed Mattel as the country's number-one toy maker when it bought Milton Bradley (the nation's fifth-best-selling toy maker at the time) in 1984. The company acquired Cabbage Patch Kids, Scrabble, Parcheesi, and other products from Coleco in 1989. Stephen Hassenfeld died that year, and his brother, Alan, took control of the company.

In 1991 the company purchased Tonka for $486 million and, in that same year, established operations in Greece, Mexico, and Hungary. In 1992 Hasbro purchased Nomura Toys, a Japanese corporation, and acquired a majority interest in the Asian toy distributor Palmyra. In 1994 the company formed a joint venture with Connector Set Limited Partnership to market its K'Nex construction toys outside the United States. It also established operations in Israel, purchased British game maker John Waddington, and the puzzle and board game businesses of Western Publishing. Mattel again became the number-one toy maker in 1994 and attempted a takeover bid for Hasbro. Hasbro blocked the takeover by insisting that antitrust authorities in the United States and Europe would block the sale.

The 1990s were also a time of scandal for the toy maker. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused Hasbro of deceptive advertising and of violating antitrust laws.

STRATEGY

Hasbro plans to surpass Mattel as the number-one toy maker again. Its strategy includes continuously developing and acquiring new products and implementing an aggressive marketing campaign. New products include computer versions of their popular board games and action figures based on popular television and movie characters.

CURRENT TRENDS

Acquisitions are likely to continue at Hasbro. In 1997 the company announced plans to acquire Tiger Electronics, Russ Berrie's Cap Toys, and OddzOn Products. In 1998 The Wall Street Journal speculated that Hasbro might also be eyeing Galoob Toys as a potential acquisition. They also reported that two former Milton Bradley officials had been indicted for tax fraud and money laundering. Although Hasbro settled its deceptive advertising lawsuit with the FTC in 1993, they were still found guilty of violating anti-trust laws in 1997 by entering into vertical agreements with Toys 'R' Us to restrict certain toys to warehouse club retailers.

CHRONOLOGY: Key Dates for Hasbro, Inc.

1923:: Brothers Henry, Hilal, and Herman Hassenfeld form Hassnefeld Brothers Company
1935:: Hassenfeld Brothers begin manufacturing pencils
1942:: Company focuses mainly on toy manufacturing
1952:: Mr. Potato Head becomes first toy advertised on television
1964:: G.I. Joe is introduced
1968:: Goes public and changes name to Hasbro Industries
1974:: Merrill Hassenfeld becomes CEO and his son, Stephen D. Hassenfeld becomes president
1980:: Spins off Empire Pencil; Stephen Hassenfeld becomes CEO and chairman of the board
1984:: Becomes country's number-one toy maker with purchase of Milton Bradley
1989:: Acquires products from Coleco
1991:: Purchases Tonka
1994:: Forms joint venture with Connector Set Limited Partnership
1997:: Company is found guilty of violating anti-trust laws

FAST FACTS: About Hasbro, Inc.

Ownership: Hasbro, Inc. is a publicly owned company traded on AMEX.

Ticker symbol: HAS

Officers: Alan G. Hassenfeld, Chmn., Pres. & CEO, 49, 1996 base salary $1,407,900; Harold Gordon, VChmn., 59, 1996 base salary $703,230; Alfred J. Verrecchia, COO, Domestic Toy Operations, 54, 1996 base salary $778,397; George R. Ditomassi Jr., COO, Games & International, 62, 1996 base salary $705,577

Employees: 12,000 (6,500 located in the United States)

Principal Subsidiary Companies: The company's principal subsidiaries are: Kenner, Nerf, Playskool, Milton Bradley, and Parker Brothers.

Chief Competitors: Hasbro's primary competitors are: 3DO; Acclaim Entertainment; Lego; Galoob Toys; Mattel; Nest Entertainment; Nintendo; Ohio Art; Pleasant; Revell; Rubbermaid; SEGA; SLM International; Toy Biz; and Tyco Toys.

PRODUCTS

Throughout the years, Hasbro has introduced many nationally recognized products. Toys have ranged from board games to action figures geared toward several age groups. The Kenner division develops Batman, G.I. Joe, and Star Wars action figures. These particular products are especially popular toys for children and adult collectors.

The Playskool division is geared toward toddlers and pre-schoolers. Playskool products include Play-Doh, Lincoln Logs, Weebles, and the Easy Bake Oven. The Tonka division manufactures realistic versions of trucks that are well-built and sturdy enough for any playtime adventure.

Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers produces Battleship, Monopoly, Twister, Scrabble, Clue, Risk, and Trivial Pursuit.

CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP

Hasbro donated $6.5 million in 1996 to service programs that help children, their families, and their communities. The company helps disadvantaged children through the Hasbro Children's Foundation and the Hasbro Charitable Trust. The Hasbro Charitable Trust also supports the Hasbro Children's Hospital, which opened in 1994.

GLOBAL PRESENCE

Hasbro manufactures and sells its products throughout the world. The company has subsidiaries on six continents and sells its products through more than 20,000 retail outlets worldwide. International sales accounted for approximately 45 percent of revenues in 1996.

THE FORCE IS WITH HASBRO

Not too long ago, in this very galaxy, the most successful film-based merchandising program got its start with the release of the Star Wars trilogy, the most successful film series of all time. Star Wars spawned a toy and game franchise that was unprecedented. 20 years after their initial release, Star Wars toys remained the leading brand among boys.

Kenner produced the original toys in 1976. Hasbro bought Kenner in 1991 and took over the franchise. In 1997, George Lucas, the creator of the Star Wars films, released an enhanced version of the trilogy, thus spurring a huge increase in sales for Hasbro. At about the same time, Lucas announced that he was beginning work on the first of three "prequels" to the original trilogy. The first was scheduled to be released in May 1999. The Force proved strong with Hasbro—Lucas awarded the company exclusive rights to make Star Wars toys and games related to the prequels. Some estimated that sales of Star Wars-related items could surpass $1 billion in 1999—that's a lot of Imperial credits for Hasbro.

Hasbro has capitalized on the Star Wars craze by tying it in to some of its other popular games. In 1998, Hasbro released a Star Wars edition of Trivial Pursuit. The previous year it had released a Star Wars edition of Monopoly that was a complete sellout; later the same year, Hasbro released a CD-ROM version. It included full-motion, 3D versions of Star Wars characters and also extensive footage and music from the trilogy. Instead of Boardwalk and Park Place, players vied for galactic properties like Dagobah and Tatooine. Players were also able to play with people from all across the country through Microsoft's Internet Gaming Zone.

Fans can access the center of Hasbro's Star Wars Universe through its Star Wars home page. There one can view pictures of all Hasbro's Star Wars toys and games, many of which can be viewed in 3-D rotating views and video clips. At this web site, kids can access the Death Star Construction Area where they can find instructions on how to create their own Star Wars environments. Or you can visit the Mos Eisley Spaceport and see how various Hasbro Star Wars figures were developed. Want to discuss Star Wars stuff with other fans? Visit the Cantina, the Star Wars chat room.

Star Wars has made an indelible mark upon popular American culture—in no small part due to the fact that the last couple of generations of children have grown up playing with Star Wars toys such as the Millennium Falcon, X-wing fighters, Darth Vader, and R2D2. With the release of the next trilogy, it's assured that little boys and girls will be pretending to be in the Star Wars universe for years to come. And the Imperial leaders at Hasbro's toy Empire couldn't be happier.

The company relies especially heavily on Chinese manufacturing. Its 1997 annual report expressed concern over the potential impact of the United States or European Union imposing sanctions against China. Such an action could significantly increase the cost of importing toys to the United States and Europe.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

Bibliography

"company news' sec is asked to investigate trading of hasbro." bloomberg business news, the new york times, 8 may 1996.

"ex-officials at unit of hasbro are indicted on tax fraud charges." the wall street journal, 15 april 1998.

fitzgerald, kate. "hasbro, mattel play for keeps in cyberspace." advertising age, 15 january 1996. available at: http://www.conceptone.com/netnews/nn713.htm.

greenberg, herb. "hasbro's short-toy shortage." fortune, 27 april 1998.

"hasbro, inc. company profile." 19 march 1997. available at http://www.efund.com/hasbro_co_prof.html.

hasbro, inc. homepage. 20 april 1998. available at: http://www.hasbro.com/corporate/index.html.

"hasbro, inc." hoover's company profiles, hoover's, inc.: austin, tx, 1997. available at: http://www.hoovers.com.

For additional industry research:

investigate companies by their standard industrial classification codes, also known as sics. hasbro's primary sics are:

3942 dolls & stuffed toys

3944 games, toys, & children's vehicles

Company Profiles for Students

Hasbro, Inc.

Hasbro, Inc.

Early History from 1923 to the 1930s

Transformation to Toy Manufacturing from the 1930s to 1960

Turbulent Times During the 1960s and 1970s

Company Perspectives:

Key Dates:

Major Acquisitions Mark the 1980s

Acquisitions Continue During the 1990s

Restructuring for the 21st Century

Principal Subsidiaries

Principal Operating Units

Principal Competitors

Further Reading

Hasbro, Inc.

Hasbro, Inc.

Principal Subsidiaries

Further Reading

Hasbro, Inc.

Hasbro, Inc.

Early History

Start of Toy Manufacturing in 1930s

Turbulent Times in the 1960s and 1970s

Company Perspectives

1980s Acquisitions

1990s and Beyond

Principal Subsidiaries

Principal Operating Units

Further Reading

Hasbro, Inc.

Hasbro, Inc.

Contact Information:

OVERVIEW

COMPANY FINANCES

ANALYSTS' OPINIONS

HISTORY

STRATEGY

CURRENT TRENDS

CHRONOLOGY: Key Dates for Hasbro, Inc.

FAST FACTS: About Hasbro, Inc.

PRODUCTS

CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP

GLOBAL PRESENCE

THE FORCE IS WITH HASBRO

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

Bibliography

For additional industry research:

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Hasbro Inc

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Restructuring for the 21^st Century