Making the world transform. (Well, apart from Japan, these guys handle that.)

Hasbro is an American toy company based in Rhode Island. They, along with the Japanese company TakaraTomy, are the creators and proprietors of the Transformers brand. They're probably why you're here.

Overview

History

Siamese twins at home.

Origins

Hasbro was originally founded in Providence, Rhode Island in 1923 as "Hassenfeld Brothers" by Henry, Hillel, and Herman Hassenfeld, three Jewish brothers who had emigrated from Poland to the United States 20 years before escaping religious persecution. The company originally sold textile remnants, but soon moved into manufacturing pencil boxes and school supplies. In 1935, the Hassenfeld Brothers started manufacturing pencils themselves, which became a steady source of income for the company for the next several decades. In the late 1930s, they also began manufacturing toys, and in 1944, one year after Hillel Hassenfeld had died, the remaining two brothers introduced a new trademark under which they sold their toys: "Hasbro".

In 1952, Hasbro first rose to fame with a little toy called Mr. Potato Head, which had originally been created by George Lerner and subsequently purchased by Hasbro. 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, after both Herman and Henry had died, Henry's son Merrill, who had been put in charge of the company, had an even greater success when an inventor named Stanley Weston sold a new toy he had created to Hassenfeld Brothers for a mere $100,000, a doll-like figure of a soldier he dubbed an "action figure". Donald Levine, Hasbro's then head or research and development, named the figure G.I. Joe, after a 1945 war movie titled The Story of G.I. Joe. The success of this toy caused Hassenfeld Bros. to grow to become one of the largest toy companies in the USA. In 1968, the company would adopt its toy branding as the new name for the company itself, thus becoming "Hasbro Industries, Inc.".

1980s and 1990s

Through a series of importing licenses and spin-offs, G.I. Joe ultimately led 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. At that time, Hasbro was employing the services of Marvel Comics and the advertising agency Griffin Bacal, who helped them come up with new marketing strategies and background stories for their toylines, including the revamped G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero and The Transformers.

In 1984, Hasbro also bought out a competing toy company named Milton Bradley (MB), which resulted 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 distribute the initial wave of Transformers toys to be released in Europe before the merger was completed. Later in the '80s, Hasbro would go on to release other toy brands such as Visionaries, My Little Pony, Inhumanoids, Robotix, Jem, C.O.P.S, and Battle Beasts—the latter eventually becoming closely (if strangely) related to Transformers.

In 1991, Hasbro bought out former competitor Tonka, and thus gained ownership of the names and character rights to Transformers 1980s toy-aisle rival GoBots. Since by that point in time Tonka already owned another former Hasbro competitor, Kenner, this acquisition also added Star Wars to Hasbro's portfolio. In the same year, Hasbro consolidated most of their international markets: before this point, Hasbro subsidiaries such as the aforementioned Milton Bradley had still been responsible for distributing Transformers toys in some countries (even though the toys' packaging had sported the name "Hasbro" since 1986). Those subsidiaries were officially restructured and given the parent companies' name in an attempt to establish "Hasbro" as a worldwide household name.

In 1995 Hasbro transferred control of the Transformers franchise to its Kenner subsidiary, then phased out the Kenner brand in 2000.

2000s and beyond

In the new millennium, Hasbro, following Marvel's example, intends to reinvent itself as an "entertainment" company by starting a media producer, Hasbro Studios. 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 movies were both released in 2009, and movies based on the successful board game Monopoly and Kenner's old Stretch Armstrong toy have also been confirmed. Hasbro believes that its new "the movie of the toy" strategy will be more lucrative than the old "the toy of the movie" concept, which involves hefty licensing fees.^[1]

In 2018, Hasbro partnered with Saban Brands as the master licensee to create Power Rangers toys. Later, on May 1 of the same year, Hasbro bought the rights to the Power Rangers franchise and other brands (My Pet Monster, Popples, Julius Jr., Luna Petunia, Treehouse Detectives) from Saban for an estimated of $522 Million.^[2] The deal was finalized a month later on June 12, making Power Rangers a wholly owned property of Hasbro.^[3]

2019 saw Hasbro further their ambitions in becoming a media powerhouse, as they announced the purchase of Entertainment One, a Canadian media production/distribution firm, for $4 billion on August 22, 2019,^[4] with the acquisition completed December 30 that year.^[5] eOne would later absorb Allspark's media operations^[6] on October 9, 2020, becoming Hasbro's media production arm. This gave Hasbro control of the wildly successful Peppa Pig and PJ Masks franchises (whose sheer value likely spurred Hasbro).... and, thanks to other acquisitions, the library of gangsta-rap powerhouse Death Row Records, which people were very confused by. In a strange case of irony, thanks to other mergers and spinoffs, eOne had bought Alliance Films and subsequently began using their logo fanfare; the original Alliance Communications had worked with Hasbro in the mid-1990s for the Beast Wars animated series.

On October 12, 2021, Brian Goldner, who was chief executive officer at the time, passed away due to a long battle with prostate cancer only two days after stepping down for indefinite medical leave. Rich Stoddart filled in as interim CEO^[7] until Chris Cocks was officially appointed into the position in January.^[8]

In 2023, a successor to both Allspark and Entertainment One was launched as Hasbro Entertainment was formed in the wake of Hasbro's plans to sell off Entertainment One's assets in late 2023.^[9]

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!

The Fandom's relationship with Hasbro is as paradoxical and confusing as our relationships with our parents. 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:

• Slapping fans in the face.
• Getting things all wrong.
• Screwing up Takara's toys.
• Being lazy.
• Trying to make money.
• Ruining everything forever.

When they found the time to create and maintain a successful, celebrated franchise that was the basis of 41 years of obsession and happiness for exactly the same fans is unknown.

BotCon

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HasCon

In 2017, Hasbro decided to organize HasCon, their own fan convention for every brand they own or license. As that year's edition attests, HasCon is more focused towards children and casual fans than traditional conventions. To Transformers fans, this came after Fun Publications' TF fan club and convention license expired the previous year. This caused a good degree of discomfort among the community, especially since HasCon was decidedly different from BotCon and there is currently no replacement for FunPub's fan club. However, the Generations Selects toyline (consisting of redecos representing more obscure characters) can be seen as a spiritual successor to the BotCon-exclusive Timelines toyline.

Hasbro Pulse and the era of fan streaming events

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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 (responsible for the distribution in continental Europe), the United Kingdom, France, Australia, New Zealand, China, and Asia (responsible for the portions of the region that aren't China or Japan).

Notable Hasbro personnel

A complete list of all Hasbro personnel past and present profiled on the Transformers Wiki can be found here.

1980s

• George Dunsay
• Henry Orenstein

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1990s

What's all this about? This article on a real person associated with the Transformers brand is a stub and is missing information. You can help Transformers Wiki by expanding it.

2000s

• Andrew Frankel
• Mark McCall
• Steve Bono
• Samantha Lomow, Global Brand Leader, Vice President of Marketing and Design for Transformers
  • Samantha Lomow was responsible for establishing the identity of the Transformers brand in the 21st century, overseeing the revitalization of the property through the Unicron Trilogy amongst a variety of other successful brand launches through the 2000s. She is now President of Global Brands at Foot Locker.
• Aaron Archer, Vice President of Intellectual Property Development, Creative Director of Transformers
  • Widely known as the mastermind of the Unicron Trilogy, Aaron Archer also oversaw the rocky beginnings of the toylines for the live-action film series, the Animated franchise, and the founding of the Generations brand. He is presently a freelance designer and illustrator.
• Eric Siebenaler, designer and freelance concept artist
  • Eric Siebenaler was the design lead on the fan-favorite Animated franchise under Archer and later the contributor of a significant portion of the design work for the Cyberverse franchise in the 2010s. He is currently employed as a character designer at an independent art studio.

2010s

• Brian Goldner, Chief Executive Officer
  • Brian Goldner helmed the company from 2008 to 2021 and is best known as the primary steward of the live-action film series as well as the force behind the company's various in-house entertainment initiatives such as the Hub. He passed away from cancer in October 2021.
• John Warden, Senior Design Manager for Transformers
  • John Warden was the design lead responsible for the dramatic expansion of the Generations brand throughout the Prime Wars and War for Cybertron trilogies. After some time away he briefly returned to the Transformers team as Director of Product Design where he oversaw the development of the Age of the Primes toyline, amongst others.

Current Hasbro team

Corporate leadership

Executives

• Chris Cocks, Chief Executive Officer
• Eric Nyman, Chief Operating Officer
• Alfred J. Verrecchia, Chairman of the Board

Transformers division

Marketing

• Kelly Rose, Director of Global Brand Strategy & Management

Global Brand Development

• Ben MacCrae, Associate Manager
• Delaney Norris, Associate Manager
• Nate Purswell, Manager

Design

Toys

• Michelino Paolino, Senior Design Director, creative lead (overall)
• Lynsey Urban, Engineering Manager
• Brian Parrish, Design Manager, creative lead (non-collector product)
• Mark Maher, Senior Designer and deco artist, creative lead (Generations)
• Evan Brooks, Designer, creative lead (Studio Series)

Concept work

• Aaron Gray, Concept Designer
• Ken Christiansen, concept artist
• Emiliano Santalucia, concept artist
• Marcelo Matere, concept artist
• Dan Khanna, concept artist
• Mark Maher, concept artist

Packaging

• Christina Murphy, Senior Designer
• Mario Carreiro, Senior Designer
• Marcelo Matere, packaging artist
• Guido Guidi, packaging artist
• Amy Bence, packaging artist

Copywriting

• Amanda Granato, Brand Writer

Product photography

• Studio DTW
• Matthew Cohen

Video Distribution

Home video

Hasbro has produced some home video releases as part of their marketing strategies. The earliest of these were VHS tapes of Beast Wars packed with Beast Wars toys. Subsequently, two different Beast Machines tapes, along with another Beast Wars tape, were produced as giveaways for KB Toys promotions wherein you would get a free tape for purchasing Beast Machines toys. The promotions were not terribly successful, leading to leftover tapes being disposed of in various ways including being sold by themselves. The last VHS tape bundled with a toy held the first two episodes of the Go-Bots cartoon and came with a Speed-Bot toy. Since then, Hasbro has produced a variety of pack-in DVDs.

Releases

VHS

• Beast Wars: Transformers — Aftermath & Coming of the Fuzors (Part 1) (1998, packed with Airazor or Razorclaw)
• Beast Wars: Transformers — Aftermath (1999, UK exclusive Claw Jaw pack-in)
• Beast Wars: Transformers — Coming of the Fuzors (Part 1) (1999, UK exclusive Spittor pack-in)
• Beast Wars: Transformers — Bad Spark & Code of Hero (1999)
• Beast Machines: Transformers — The Reformatting & Master of the House (1999)
• Beast Machines: Transformers: Battle for the Spark — Sparkwar Part I: The Strike (2000)
• Go-Bots — Typhoon Twister & Arctic Oil Spill (2003, packed with the Video Go-Bot edition of Speed-Bot)

DVD

Transformers: Beast Wars 10th Anniversary

• Beast Wars: Transformers — Equal Measures (with Cheetor)(2006)
• Beast Wars: Transformers — A Better Mousetrap (with Rattrap)(2006)
• Beast Wars: Transformers — The Spark (with Rhinox)(2006)
• Beast Wars: Transformers — Spider's Game (with Predacon Tarantulus)(2006)
• Beast Wars: Transformers — Possession (with Waspinator or Optimus Primal vs. Megatron)(2006)
• Beast Wars: Transformers — Code of Hero (with Dinobot)(2006)

Others

• Transformers: Cybertron — Hidden (2006)
• Optimus Prime vs Megatron: The Ultimate Battle (2006)
• Transformers Animated — The Battle Begins (2008)
• The Transformers — More than Meets the Eye (2008)
• Transformers: Prime — Masters & Students (2011)

Streaming video

Hasbro Studios

Hasbro Studios is a subscription Roku app that features many Hasbro shows, including many Transformers titles.

Hasbro Studios Free

Hasbro Studios Free is a free-with-advertisements Roku app that features many Hasbro shows, including many Transformers titles. The shows in the app are also available on the Tubi website and its apps.

Fiction

Marvel The Transformers comics

After Donny Finkleberg's adventures as Robot-Master, he got a job packaging toys for Hasbro. Darn 'n' Blast #308

Dreamwave Generation One continuity

Hasbro had many signs indicating its presence in San Desto. Extermination

2005 IDW continuity

A Toys"R"Us store in Times Square sold Hasbro products. All Hail Megatron #1 Brandon, a young resident of Amarillo, Texas, wore a Hasbro T-shirt when a giant robotic Tyrannosaurus rex rampaged through his city. Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again!

Timelines

Flamewar collects Hasbro memorabilia.

Notes

• Hasbro isn't all about selling toys and making money. According to Transformers live-action movie writer Roberto Orci, some at Hasbro argued against updating some returning characters in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, so that parents would not have to buy the same toy twice for their children just because of a minor change or modification to the characters' designs.^[10] (We will just point out now that they still did that.)
• According to Hasbro Australia representatives and designer Eric Siebenaler, all of the Transformers toys jointly developed between Hasbro and Takara/TakaraTomy are manufactured at factories contracted to the Japanese toy company. This means Takara is indirectly responsible for whatever quality control problems you have been having with your toys, so you can stop complaining about it being entirely Hasbro's fault.
• Hasbro is the patron of the Hasbro Children's Hospital. See here for how the fandom contributed to it in 2010.
• In 2008, Hasbro purchased all rights to the library of Sunbow programming based on the toy company's brands, including the American Generation One Transformers cartoon and international rights to most of the televised Japanese Generation One canon.
• Hasbro owns Allspark, formerly Hasbro Studios, a media company which includes Allspark Animation, producer of the Prime, Rescue Bots, Robots in Disguise (2015), Cyberverse and Rescue Bots Academy cartoons, Boulder Media Studio, the animation studio for Cyberverse and Rescue Bots Academy, and Allspark Pictures, co-producers of the Bumblebee film. This represents a more direct involvement in producing media affiliated with its brands.

Questionable brand decisions

Time to buy a new toy, kids!

• In the early days of the Generation 1 line's run, Hasbro was entirely focused on "product" and viewed the attached fiction as a mere marketing tool. As a consequence, they viewed "characters" as easily replaceable, and their strategy at that time can be summed up as "new toys, new characters". Hasbro certainly didn't anticipate the audience to actually become attached to the characters featured in the television show, and were utterly surprised by the fan backlash after nearly all of the 1984–85 cast had been graphically killed off in the animated movie and replaced by newly introduced characters. Hasbro now recognizes that this move was a mistake that hurt the brand.^[11] In Hasbro's defense, though, it needs to be pointed out that this wasn't a flawed approach unique to them, as the importance of recognizable characters for the public image of a brand was a novel concept to the toy industry as a whole at that time. Hasbro have learned their lesson, and now mostly kill relative nobodies, and rely a lot more heavily on recurring, recognizable characters across their various toylines and the corresponding fiction. (At least as far as some people are concerned, they now veer too much towards the other end of the spectrum, with a perceived over-reliance on certain, seemingly omni-present characters.)

• Around 2001, Hasbro's corporate executives were eager to make the move to multilingual packaging for the United States market to save money, forcing that decision upon their Transformers staff. Although representatives were prepared with responses to fan complaints about how ugly and uninformative it was, the design team eventually managed to convince their higher-ups how ugly it was, so the US packaging returned to normal by 2005...^[12] until 2015, that is, with the Robots in Disguise line, the Cyberverse toyline and the Prime Wars toylines and War for Cybertron Trilogy portion of the Generations line heralding the return of multilingual packaging to US retail once more, with cost-cutting once again being the primary driving factor.

• At times, Hasbro has been willing to allow the broadcast of clearly incomplete or poorly-constructed advertising media.

Ouch.

• Hasbro often have their official promotional toy stock photography done by people (both internal and outsourced third party photo studios) who have a tendency to display the toys in awkwardly mistransformed states and awkward poses, sometimes so glaringly incorrect that the photos could be viewed as detrimental representations of Hasbro's products... yet they are used in official advertising, including Hasbro's public website and even on the toys' packaging. Reportedly, Hasbro tries to send a member of the design team (at least an intern) along to the photo studio to transform and pose the toys properly whenever possible these days. Hasbro has also abandoned the "hand-painted early prototype" stock photos (which used to be printed on the toys' packaging) in favor of CG renders, which has eliminated incorrect transformations at least for this stage of stock images. The "near-final sample" stock photos still occasionally suffer from this problem, though.

Excuse me, what?

• As the toys became more and more complex, Hasbro's official toy instructions became less and less helpful. Written directions were omitted entirely in favor of pictures-only instructions with the launch of the Armada line in 2002, and those pictures-only instructions have a tendency to omit useful steps, are sometimes unclear on vital details, and might occasionally be based on early prototypes that differ from the final toy, thereby including transformation steps that aren't possible with the toy in hand. Universe Sideswipe even recycled the instructions from his mold-mate Sunstreaker, even though Sideswipe was supposed to use an alternate transformation as compared to Sunstreaker. Over the years, Hasbro have made various attempts to improve the instructions: For a while, they replaced the line-art with gray-scaled photos of prototypes, which didn't always improve matters; these days the instructions use CAD renders of the toys. Another approach was to simply make the toys less complicated (which was also a cost-cutting measure), much to the chagrin of many a fan.

• In the lead up to the 2007 live-action movie, to deal with the expected international audience for both the movie and the accompanying toys, Hasbro started to redirect visitors of their official Transformers website to localized versions of the site based upon their IPs. However, it was obvious that Hasbro's interest in their international markets was rather marginal, as demonstrated by the fact that many of these international localised sites were rarely updated, if at all; and if they were, the updates were still marginal, and the product lists remained incomplete. To the frustration of non-American fans, clicking any links to the US version of the site resulted in the user being automatically redirected to their outdated localized versions. Even bugs that allowed users to circumvent the redirect were eventually "fixed" in favor of an even more aggressive redirect. This was finally resolved for good in 2009, with the addition of a US-specific URL path that doesn't redirect anyone anywhere anymore. As of 2019, the redirect is back. You want our website in English? Based on your IP, you're based out of Germany. Here, enjoy our incomplete German site. No English for you, kiddo!

• The somewhat more "mature" tone of the live action movie series up until Bumblebee, especially the crude and often sexually-themed humor, has been the center of much controversy. In particular, a lobbyist group named the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood repeatedly tried to lobby the Federal Communications Commission into tightening regulations for marketing movies rated "PG-13" and associated merchandise to children.^[13] Hasbro themselves appear to be still undecided about their official position regarding the more "mature" tone of the movies and its ramifications for the brand's public image, having left several questions to this effect unanswered.^[14][15]

See also

• Discovery Family

References

External links

• Hasbro's official website
• Hasbro's official Transformers website