Hasbro

About

Hasbro Inc. (the portmanteau of their previous name “Hassenfeld Brothers”) is an American toy, board game, and animation production company. The company has owns several popular franchises such as Transformers and My Little Pony.

Early History

The company was founded as Hassenfeld Brothers and sold mostly school supplies in the mid-1920s.^[3] The company became a toy manufacturing company by the 1930s with the introduction of plastics.

Franchises

Transformers

Transformers is a toy franchise which involves sentient robots who have the ability to change shape. The robots come from the planet Cybertron, which had been ravaged by civil war between two factions, the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons.

My Little Pony : Friendship Is Magic

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a Canadian/American cartoon series, developed for television by Lauren Faust with Studio B Productions. Fans outside the show’s target demographic, especially teen and adult male fans, have come to be known as “bronies”. Female fans of the show may also be referred to as “pegasisters.” The shows following has created hundreds of fan-service websites such as My Little Brony, Equestria Daily, /r/MyLittlePony.

Connect Four

Connect Four is a tabletop game created by Milton Bradley and Hasbro in which two players take alternating turns placing a checker into a vertically-suspended grid. The first player to connect four of their checkers vertically, horizontally, or diagonally wins. The game’s cover art has been parodied online in the mid-2010s.

Scrabble

Scrabble is an American board game which involves players attempting to create words using only the wooden letter pieces left on the board by other players and the seven wooden letters they have pulled at random. Popularity of the game has lead to online multi-player versions such as the Zynga owned “Words With Friends” app^[11] or Wordament. DeviantArt also host over 12,000 fan art submissions related to the game.^[12]

Nerf

NERF (Non-Expanding Recreational Foam) is a line of foam toys created by Reyn Guyer. Guyer brought the original foam volleyball to the Parker Brothers in 1969.^[31] Parker Brothers eventually sold NERF to the Tonka Corporation, which was shortly thereafter acquired by Hasbro. NERF also launched a line of water guns and foam guns in the late 80s and early 90s including the Super Soaker the Nerf Blaster.^[32]

DeviantArt^[34] has over 18,000 fan art submissions tagged NERF.^[34]

The term “nerf”^[36] has grown popular with online gamers as well. The phrase can be used to describe the effect on a weapon due to the developers reducing the amount of damage dealt by the weapon. Gamers will complain that the weapon has been “nerfed”^[37] and no longer deals an useful amount of damage.

Magic The Gathering

Magic the Gathering (or MtG for short) is a popular trading card game in which you play as a powerful wizard who casts spells to fight the opposing wizard.

Hasbro and Wizard Of Coast have collaborated on September 1st, 2011,^[5] to launch new comic book series based on Magic The Gathering universe.

G.I. Joe

G.I. Joe is a series of action figures developed by Hasbro in the 1960s.^[10] The term “G.I. Joe” originally was a WWI reference to the US soldiers, and as such the line originally featured the “Action Marine,” the “Action Pilot,” the “Action Sailor,” and the “Action Soldier.”

In 1982, the line was re-imaged to appeal to the international market. The figures were given a backstory through a series of cartoons and comics that helped promote the toy line. This featured an ongoing struggled between the “G.I. Joes” and their evil counterparts “Cobra Command.” At the end of each of the 1980s cartoons was usually a PSA featuring one of the Joes featuring the line “Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.”

Mr. Potato Head

Mr. Potato Head was Hasbro’s first successful toy line. The line consisted of a potato shaped plastic figure that could hold multiple parts in its hollow body. These included arms, legs, eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. The product became an iconic toddler’s toy and was featured in the 1995 Pixar film Toy Story movie. DeviantArt currently holds over 2,000 submissions tagged Mr Potato Head.^[19]

Risk

Risk is a board game that was released in 1957.^[6] The game is a war game that involves conquering a basic map representation of the world. The game’s popularity later lead to competitor derivatives such as the board game Settlers of Catan^[7] which involves similar gameplay. Popular computer versions of the game have also been released over the years. These include the multi-platform video game series Sid Meier’s Civilization^[8] and the internet-based flash game Warlight.^[9]

Fandom

As of October 2014, Hasbro’s Twitter account^[24] has gained over 63,000 followers and its Facebook page^[20] has gained over 250,000 likes. Deviant Art^[35] has over 470,00 fan art submissions tagged Hasbro.

The Facebook pages for its IPs Monopoly, My Little Pony, and Transformers have 11.5 million,^[21] 794,000,^[22] and 33.8 million^[23] fans respectively as of October 2014. The company currently has 5 different YouTube accounts it maintains which include: HasbroStudiosShorts,^[25] HasbroUK,^[26] Transformers,^[27] HasbroEpisodes,^[28] and HasbroCareers.^[29] These channels collectively obtained thousands of subscribers as well as millions of views. Hasbro also previously assisted in the maintenance of The Hub YouTube channel where it had 51,170 subscribers with 54 million views.^[30]

Search Interest

External References