Hasbro Popular Books

Hasbro Biography & Facts

Hasbro, Inc. (; a syllabic abbreviation of its original name, Hassenfeld Brothers) is an American multinational conglomerate holding company incorporated and headquartered in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Hasbro owns the trademarks and products of Kenner, Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, and Wizards of the Coast, among others. As of August 2020, over 81.5% of its shares were held by large financial institutions. Among its products are Transformers, G.I. Joe, Power Rangers, Rom the Space Knight, Micronauts, Beyblade, Zoids, M.A.S.K., Monopoly, Furby, Nerf, Ouija boards, Play-Doh, Twister, and My Little Pony, and with the Entertainment One acquisition in 2019, franchises like Peppa Pig and PJ Masks. The Hasbro brand also spawned TV shows to promote its products, such as Family Game Night on the Discovery Family network. It is the former parent of mass media and entertainment company Entertainment One. Hasbro sold E1 to Lionsgate in 2023, however, it kept eOne's family brands and eOne's stake in Astley Baker Davies, placing them into a new subsidiary called Hasbro Entertainment. History Hassenfeld Brothers Three Polish-Jewish brothers, Herman, Hillel, and Henry Hassenfeld, founded Hassenfeld Brothers in Providence, Rhode Island, in late 1923, a company selling textile remnants. Over the next two decades, the company expanded to produce pencil cases and school supplies. On January 8, 1926, Hassenfeld Brothers was incorporated; Hillel left for another textile business while Henry took charge of the corporation. They began making their own pencils after their pencil supplier began making pencil cases as well. Hassenfeld Brothers produced modeling clay and then doctor and nurse kits as their first toys, and they became primarily a toy company by 1942. Hillel died in 1943 and Henry Hassenfeld became CEO, while his son Anthony Merrill became president. The company entered the plastic fields during World War II to support its toy line. The Hassenfeld brothers, immigrants from Ulanów, Poland, also spent the war years helping to rescue and employ fellow Jews from Ulanów; Jacob Klapper, a holocaust survivor born in Ulanów, recalled being told when he arrived in the United States that Hassenfeld Brothers would employ any survivor from Ulanów, no questions asked. Hassenfeld Brothers' first popular toy was Mr. Potato Head, which the company purchased from George Lerner in 1952. In 1954, the company became a Disney major licensee. In 1960, Henry died and Merrill took over the parent company, and his older brother Harold ran the pencil-making business of Empire Pencil. Hassenfeld Brothers expanded to Canada with Hassenfeld Brothers (Canada) Ltd. in 1961. In 1963 the company introduced Flubber, but reports of sore throats and rashes from the product and knock-offs prompted an investigation by the Food and Drug Administration and a voluntary recall by Hassenfeld Brothers. The company was approached in 1963 to license a toy based on The Lieutenant, which they turned down because they did not want to be tied to a possibly short-lived television series. Instead, Hassenfeld Brothers produced the G.I. Joe toy in 1964 which they termed an "action figure" in order to market it to boys who wouldn't want to play with dolls. In 1964 and 1965, G.I. Joe accounted for two-thirds of Hassenfeld's sales. Hasbro Industries The company had previously sold toys under the Hasbro trade name, and it shortened its name to Hasbro Industries on July 12, 1968 and sold a minor stake in the corporation to the public. The unpopular Vietnam War was at its height in 1969, so Hasbro redesigned GI Joe to be less militaristic and more adventure-oriented. Its promotional efforts included the catchphrase "Boy Oh Boy! It's A Hasbro Toy!" in television commercials and print ads. Also in 1969, Hasbro bought Burt Claster Enterprises which produced "Romper Room" and had just begun a Romper Room toy line. A month-long Teamsters strike and Far Eastern supplier troubles caused the company to post a $1 million loss for the year. In 1970, Hasbro began a plan of diversification and opened the Romper Room Nursery School franchise chain to cash in on President Richard M. Nixon's Family Assistance Plan which subsidized day care for working mothers. By 1975, the company had ended the nursery chain. Hasbro also entered the cookware field with the Galloping Gourmet line based on a television cooking show. Two new 1970s toys were public relations disasters. One of the toys was named Javelin Darts which were similar to the ancient Roman plumbata. On December 19, 1988, the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned lawn darts from sale in the United States due to their hazards as a flying projectile with a sharp metal point causing multiple deaths. The other toy was named The Hypo-Squirt, a hypodermic needle-shaped water gun tagged by the press as a "junior junkie" kit. Both were recalled. Romper Room and its toy line had continued success, although Action for Children's Television citizens group considered the program to be an advertising channel for toys. Merrill Hassenfeld took over as CEO in 1974, and his son Stephen D. Hassenfeld became president. The company became profitable once again but had mixed results due to cash flow problems from increasing the number of toys in the line to offset G.I. Joe's declining sales. Hasbro ended the G.I. Joe line in 1975 because of the rising prices of plastic and crude oil. In 1977, Hasbro's losses were $2.5 million, and the company held a large debt load. That same year, Hasbro acquired licensing rights to Peanuts cartoon characters. With the financial situation poor, Hasbro's bankers made the company temporarily stop dividend payments in early 1979. The toy division's losses increased Harold Hassenfeld's resentment regarding the company's treatment of the Empire Pencil subsidiary as Empire received lower levels of capital spending relative to profits than did the toy division. With Merrill's death in 1979, Harold did not recognize Stephen's authority as the successor to the chairman and CEO position. As a solution, Hasbro spun off Empire Pencil in 1980, which was the nation's largest pencil maker, with Harold trading his Hasbro shares for those of Empire. Stephen then became both the CEO and chairman of the board. Between 1978 and 1981, Stephen reduced the Hasbro product line by one-third and its new products by one-half. Hasbro focused on simple, low-cost, longer life-cycle toys like Mr. Potato Head. Hasbro thus stayed out of the electronic games field which went bust in the early 1980s. In 1982, Hasbro revived its G.I. Joe line with the help of Marvel Comics, as an anti-terrorist special forces team based on current events. The company launched the successful Transformers toy line along with a children's animated TV series two years later. With the toys and TV series being popular, Stephen Hassenfeld posed with the toys for a People magazine cover photo. In 1982, Hasbro produced the successfu.... Discover the Hasbro popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Hasbro books.