When was hasbro started

She was discontinued in and Maxie was introduced in , strategically sized to wear Barbie clothes and accessories. She was also discontinued in That same year they also acquired the rights to Scrabble. They also expanded internationally that year by establishing operations in Greece, Hungary, and Mexico.

Looking also to expand company acquisitions internationally, Hasbro bought the Japanese Nomura Toys Ltd. At the same time they bought majority stock in Palmyra, a Southeast Asian toy distributor. Internationally, Mattel had regained the number one toy company status with their acquisition of Fisher-Price in Two years later they approached Hasbro about merging, but after several months of negotiations the merger idea was abandoned.

Laramie Corporation, the makers of the Supersoaker line of water guns, was added to Hasbro in Soon to follow were electronic versions of Risk, Battleship, and Playskool preschool games. This adds the Cap Candy and Koosh brands to their products.

Continuing to acquire companies, Hasbro bought Tiger Electronics in , which added the interactive toys Furby and Poo-Chi as well as hand-held electronic toys and the Lazer Tag products. To close out the 21st century, Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast in This brought in the genre of the collectible card game such as the Pokemon game cards, and the role playing Dungeons and Dragons products.

Restructuring in meant selling Hasbro Interactive and Games. Toys to Pawtucket, Rhode Island; and focusing on traditional toy lines such as Mr. Potato Head, Monopoly and G. Continuing their focus on media links to their toy lines, Hasbro Studios was established to produce shows based on their Transformers, My Little Pony, and G. Joe toy lines. These shows are featured on The Hub, a cable and satellite television network joint venture which Hasbro and Discovery Communications launched in Skip to content Home Assignment How did Hasbro get started?

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The feud was resolved in , 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 and , while its annual number of new products was cut by one-half. Hasbro also refocused on simpler toys, such as Mr. 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 s, when the electronics boom turned bust and shook out many competitors. Perhaps the most important event in Hasbro's revival was the return of G. The U. 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. 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.

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 Stephen Hassenfeld turned over the position of president to his brother, Alan, while remaining CEO and chairman. Flush with newfound strength, in 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 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 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 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. In the s, Milton Bradley pioneered games with tie-ins to television shows--Concentration was an early favorite.

Among Milton Bradley's later successes was the "body action" classic Twister, which was published in 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 , 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. MB's strength in boardgames and puzzles complemented Hasbro's plastic toys and stuffed animals. The new Hasbro Bradley Incorporated immediately challenged Mattel's position as the nation's leading toymaker. In Hasbro Bradley became Hasbro, Inc. If Hasbro's and Milton Bradley's product lines merged well, their chief executives did not.

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 mids. Having done so, it then attempted to dethrone Mattel's Barbie, queen of the fashion doll market. While Jem posted strong initial sales, her popularity quickly faded and she was retired the following year. In 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 In addition to the Cabbage Patch dolls, which had fallen from their peak of popularity during the 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. The younger Hassenfeld continued the acquisition trend of the s, as Hasbro acquired Tonka Corp.

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. In the late s, Alan Hassenfeld had spearheaded an effort to increase Hasbro's international sales, primarily by taking toys that failed in the U. So it was not surprising that as chairman he would push to increase Hasbro's international presence.

He did just that in , 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 by purchasing Nomura Toys Ltd. More than 46 percent of the company's operating profit was attributable to operations outside the United States in One international setback came in when Hasbro lost out to arch-rival Mattel in a bid for J.

Spear, a U. While international results were improving, Hasbro began to show some weaknesses on the domestic front.