Hasbro

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Making the world transform.

Hasbro is a toy company, and owner of the Transformers brand in most markets outside of Japan, where it is owned by TakaraTomy.

History

Siamese twins at home.

Hasbro was originally founded in 1923 as "Hassenfeld Brothers" by brothers Henry and Helal Hassenfeld from Rhode Island. The company originally sold textile remnants, but soon moved into manufacturing pencil boxes and school supplies.

In 1952, Hasbro first rose to fame with a little toy called Mr. Potato Head. You might have heard of it. The company went so far as to purchase advertising time for the toy on a newfangled invention called television. You might have heard of that, too.

In 1964, Hasbro had an even greater success with the original G.I. Joe toy designed by Don Levine, which caused Hassenfeld Bros. to grow to be one of the largest toy companies in the USA. In 1968, the company would change its name to "Hasbro Industries, Inc."

Through a series of importing licenses and spin-offs, G.I. Joe would ultimately lead to the Microman and Diaclone toylines by Japanese toymaker Takara, which in turn would lead to Hasbro's release of the original Transformers toyline in 1984.

In 1984, Hasbro would also buy out a competing toy company named Milton Bradley (MB), which would result in the merged company briefly assuming the name "Hasbro Bradley, Inc." After the merger was completed, the company changed its name into simply "Hasbro, Inc." Milton Bradley's European facilities would also be used to manufacture the initial wave of Transformers toys to be released in Europe before the merger was completed. (See also: Generation 1 Europe (toyline).) Later in the '80s, Hasbro would go on to release other toy brands such as Visionaries and Battle Beasts--the latter eventually becoming closely (if strangely) related to Transformers.

In 1991, Hasbro bought out former competitor Tonka. In 1995, Hasbro temporarily transferred control of the Transformers franchise to its Kenner subsidiary (which had previously been a subsidiary of Tonka), then phased out the Kenner brand in 2000.

In the new millennium, Hasbro, following Marvel's example, intends to reinvent itself as an "entertainment" company. Instead of merely commissioning animated TV shows as advertising vehicles for their toys, Hasbro licenses its brands to Hollywood studios, which turn them into big budget blockbuster movies, using the toys' established household names as a marketing appeal. 2007's Transformers movie was the first of those feature films. The sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and a G.I. Joe movie are both scheduled for a 2009 release, and a movie based on the successful board game Monopoly has also been confirmed.


Hasbro today

Employees

Corporate

Boys' Toys

Girls' Toys

Transformers Brand

Marketing
Design

Hasbro's regional offices

Hasbro has smaller offices all around the world, who are not involved in the production of toys, but rather take care of the customer relationships and marketing in their local regions. Known locations of local offices include Denmark (covering the whole nordic region), Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Australia and New Zealand.


Relationship with fandom

Hasbro showed they love the fans by giving a tour of their offices during BotCon 2007. Hasbro showed they hate the fans by including this!

Fandom's relationship with Hasbro is as paradoxical and confusing as our relationships with our <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholism" class="extiw" title="wikipedia:Alcoholism">parents</a>. They are an incredible source of joy and happiness, as well as the focal point of rage and blame for pretty much everyone in the Transformers community. To much of the fandom, Hasbro's actual involvement in the Transformers franchise is rarely acknowledged when not negative. Many view their activities to consist entirely of:


When they found the time to create and maintain a successful, celebrated franchise that was the basis of 25 years of obsession and happiness for the exact same fans is unknown.


Questionable brand decisions

  • Hasbro now recognizes that abruptly and graphically killing off nearly all of the 1984-85 cast in the animated movie was a mistake that hurt the brand. They've learned their lesson, and now mostly kill relative nobodies. <sup id="cite_ref-0" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-0" title="">[1]</a></sup>
  • Hasbro was eager to make the move to multilingual packaging, and its representatives were always prepared with responses to fan complaints about how ugly and uninformative it was. Then those representatives themselves noticed how ugly it was, so the packaging returned to normal.
  • At times, Hasbro has been willing to allow the broadcast of clearly incomplete or poorly-constructed advertising media.
  • Hasbro often have their official promotional toy photography done by people (both internal and outsourced third party photo studios) who have a tendency to display the toys in awkwardly mistransformed states, sometimes so glaring that the photos could be viewed as really bad representations of Hasbro's products... yet they are used in official advertising, including Hasbro's public website and even on the toys' packaging.

Trivia

Footnotes

<ol class="references"><li id="cite_note-0">[#cite_ref-0" title="">↑</a> <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2007-06-28-transformers-main_n.htm USA Today: "Transformers: From Toy Story to Serious Art?"] <li id="cite_note-1">[#cite_ref-1" title="">↑</a> <a href="http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/showpost.php?p=2186879&postcount=171 Roberto Orci posting at TFW2005.com]</ol>

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