Hasbro

• 1. Introduction

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  Hasbro purchased its first breakout toy, Mr. Potato Head, from inventor George Lerner in 1952. The company behind that purchase had started just three decades earlier, selling textile remnants in Providence, Rhode Island. It moved through pencil cases, modeling clay, and doctor kits before becoming primarily a toy company by 1942. Today, that same company owns Monopoly, Transformers, Magic: The Gathering, and Dungeons and Dragons. How did three Polish-Jewish immigrant brothers build one of the world's largest toy companies? And why, in 2023, did it post a full-year loss of $1.49 billion?

  Late 1923 is when the company formally begins, in Providence. The deeper answers start in Ulanów, Poland, the town the Hassenfeld brothers left behind but never forgot.

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• 2. Brothers from Ulanów

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  Herman, Hillel, and Henry Hassenfeld were immigrants from Ulanów, Poland. They incorporated Hassenfeld Brothers in Rhode Island on the 8th of January 1926, three years after setting up the original business. Hillel soon left to pursue a separate textile venture, leaving Henry in charge. When the brothers' pencil supplier began making pencil cases, Hassenfeld Brothers responded by making their own pencils rather than finding another supplier. Hillel died in 1943, and Henry formally became CEO, with his son Anthony Merrill taking the presidency.

  Jacob Klapper, a Holocaust survivor born in Ulanów, recalled a promise he was told about upon arriving in the United States. Hassenfeld Brothers had committed to employing any survivor from that town, no questions asked. The brothers spent the war years helping to rescue and employ fellow Jews from Ulanów. The company entered plastic manufacturing during the same period to support its expanding toy line.

  Henry died in 1960, and Merrill Hassenfeld assumed leadership of the parent company. Merrill's brother Harold separately ran the Empire Pencil subsidiary. When Merrill died in 1979, Harold refused to recognize Stephen Hassenfeld's claim to the chairman and CEO roles. The dispute ended in 1980 with the spin-off of Empire Pencil, at the time the nation's largest pencil maker. Harold traded his Hasbro shares for Empire Pencil shares, and Stephen took sole command.

  Stephen's first major move was to cut the existing product line by one-third and new products by half, between 1978 and 1981. That discipline kept Hasbro out of electronic games, a market that went bust in the early 1980s.

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• 3. Hit Toys and Misfires

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  G.I. Joe arrived in toy stores in 1964 as a figure deliberately labeled an action figure rather than a doll. The term was chosen to make the product marketable to boys who would not want to play with dolls. In G.I. Joe's first two full years, 1964 and 1965, the line accounted for two-thirds of all Hassenfeld sales.

  By 1969, the Vietnam War made military toys a difficult sell. Hasbro redesigned G.I. Joe to be adventure-oriented rather than combat-focused. Rising plastic and crude oil prices eventually ended the line in 1975. Hasbro revived G.I. Joe in 1982 with Marvel Comics, reframing the character as the leader of an anti-terrorist special forces team.

  Transformers grew from Hasbro's interest in two Japanese toy lines, Takara's Diaclone and Micro Change, in 1983. Hasbro licensed both and launched Transformers alongside a children's animated television series two years later. Stephen Hassenfeld posed with the new toys for a People magazine cover. My Little Pony had launched a year before the Transformers deal, in 1982.

  Jem, a 1986 fashion doll built around a dual identity as a rock musician and record producer, posted strong early sales. She was gone from the market by 1987. Hasbro followed with Maxie in 1988, a Barbie-sized blonde doll designed so that Barbie clothing and accessories would fit. Maxie lasted until 1990. Decades later, a My Little Pony revival on The Hub became that cable network's highest-rated program and drew a significant following among teens and adults.

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• 4. The Acquisition Machine

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  Milton Bradley was America's fifth best-selling toymaker when Hasbro acquired it in 1984. Hasbro ranked sixth at the time. The merger brought The Game of Life, Twister, Easy Money, and Playskool into the company. On September 10 of that year, the combined entity briefly became Hasbro Bradley. Milton Bradley chief James Shea Jr. became chairman, but the executives soon clashed. Shea left after a few months, and the company reverted to its previous leadership structure.

  Stephen Hassenfeld died in 1989, having grown the company from $104 million in annual sales to over $1.4 billion. Alan Hassenfeld succeeded him as chairman and CEO. Tonka Corp cost Hasbro $486 million in 1991 and came bundled with Parker Brothers, the maker of Monopoly, and Kenner Products. Hasbro had already absorbed bankrupt Coleco for $85 million in July 1989. Wizards of the Coast cost $325 million in 1999, adding a catalog built on trading card and role-playing games. Avalon Hill became one of its divisions.

  Alan Hassenfeld expanded Hasbro internationally in the late 1980s by a counterintuitive method. He sold toys that had failed in the United States in foreign markets, for as much as four times the original price. International sales grew from $268 million in 1985 to $433 million in 1988. By 1995, that figure had reached $1.28 billion and represented 45% of total sales. In 1992, Hasbro purchased Nomura Toys Ltd. in Japan and majority ownership of Palmyra, a Southeast Asian toy distributor.

  In 2019, Hasbro paid about $4 billion for Entertainment One. The deal added Peppa Pig and PJ Masks to a catalog that already stretched across board games, action figures, and role-playing games.

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• 5. Criticism and Controversy

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  In the 1970s, Hasbro introduced two toys that became public relations disasters. One was Javelin Darts, designed to resemble the ancient Roman plumbata. On the 19th of December 1988, the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned lawn darts from sale in the United States. Multiple deaths had resulted from the sharp metal tips. The other recalled toy was The Hypo-Squirt, a water gun shaped like a hypodermic needle, which the press called a junior junkie kit.

  A workers' rights group investigated several of Hasbro's Chinese suppliers in 2007. At a factory in China's Guangxi Province, investigators found that 1,000 junior high school students had been employed. They also documented unsafe conditions, mandatory overtime, verbal abuse, and sexual harassment. Hasbro hired independent auditors to conduct unannounced visits. Reports then emerged that factory managers had been coached beforehand to deceive the auditors.

  In November 2012, a six-year-old Irish girl wrote to Hasbro complaining about the lack of female characters in the board game Guess Who?. Her mother posted the letter exchange on a blog, and it drew press attention. That same month, 13-year-old McKenna Pope launched a Change.org petition calling on Hasbro to make a boy-friendly version of the Easy-Bake Oven. She also asked for boys to appear on the packaging. Within a week, over 30,000 people had signed the petition.

  In late 2022, Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast drew backlash from Dungeons and Dragons fans. Leaked information suggested the companies planned to revoke a longstanding open game license and replace it with far stricter terms. The legality of the proposed move was publicly debated. In 2023, Wizards of the Coast hired Pinkerton employees to retrieve an unreleased Magic: The Gathering set. The set was called March of the Machine: The Aftermath. A YouTuber had purchased it from a local game store and published the cards online ahead of the official release date. In 2015, Lorraine Markham separately sued Hasbro in the U.S. District Court in Providence. She sought a declaration that her husband Bill Markham was the sole creator of The Game of Life.

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• 6. The Wizards Within

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  The year Brian Goldner became CEO of Hasbro, a News Corporation affiliate website named him CEO of the year. Goldner was the first person from outside the founding Hassenfeld family to hold the position. During his tenure, Hasbro partnered with Discovery on The Hub, a cable television network that launched on the 10th of October 2010. Goldner died on the 12th of October 2021, after a seven-year battle with cancer.

  At the 25th of February 2021 Investor Event, Hasbro disclosed that net revenue had fallen 8% to $5.47 billion. Pandemic-era retail shutdowns were part of the explanation. Within those results sat a notable outlier: Wizards of the Coast had posted revenue of $816 million, up 24% from 2019. Both Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering had recorded their best years. Industry observers noted that Wizards' operating profit exceeded the total operating profit of Hasbro's entire consumer products segment by more than $112 million.

  Alta Fox Capital Management held a 2.5% stake in Hasbro. In 2022, the fund pushed to spin Wizards of the Coast out as a separately listed public company. The fund believed the move would create more value for shareholders. Hasbro's board defeated that challenge in June 2022. Chris Cocks was named CEO on the 5th of January 2022. He had been the president and chief operating officer of Wizards of the Coast.

  In December 2023, Hasbro announced the layoff of 1,100 employees, representing 20% of its entire global workforce. CEO Chris Cocks framed the cuts as part of a plan to save between $350 million and $400 million by 2025. The company reported a full-year loss of $1.49 billion for 2023. Hasbro set a further target of cutting $750 million in total costs by the end of 2024. On the 27th of December 2023, the company completed the sale of Entertainment One to Lionsgate for $500 million.

  On the 8th of September 2025, Hasbro announced it would leave Pawtucket after 63 years. Its global east coast headquarters would move to 400 Summer Street in Boston, with the transition set to complete by the end of 2026.

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