Hasbro: Fabric Scraps, the First Action Figure and the D&D Profit Flip

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Hasbro began in late 1923 in Providence, Rhode Island, when brothers Herman, Hillel and Henry Hassenfeld, Polish Jewish immigrants from Ulanów, founded Hassenfeld Brothers to sell textile remnants. They used the scraps to line pencil cases, and when their pencil supplier started competing with them, they began making pencils themselves. During World War II they rescued Jewish refugees from their hometown and gave them jobs on arrival. By the 1940s they had moved into modeling clay, doctor and nurse kits and plastic, and in 1952 they bought George Lerner's Mr. Potato Head, which at first came without a potato. Under Merrill Hassenfeld, the 1963 Flubber putty was recalled after children developed rashes, but in 1964 the company coined the term action figure for G.I. Joe, which made up two-thirds of sales by 1965.

The 1970s brought lawn darts later banned by the government, a needle-shaped Hypo-Squirt water gun, oil crisis costs and a feud between toy chief Stephen Hassenfeld and his uncle Harold, who split off the Empire pencil division in 1980. Stephen cut product lines by a third, revived G.I. Joe in 1982 with Marvel Comics and a cartoon, licensed the Transformers from a 1983 Tokyo toy show, bought Milton Bradley in 1984 and grew sales from about $100 million to over $1.4 billion by his death in 1989. Alan Hassenfeld bought Tonka, Parker Brothers and Kenner, and in 1999 paid $325 million for Pokémon toy rights and $325 million for Wizards of the Coast. Brian Goldner, the first CEO from outside the family, turned Hasbro toward film and TV starting in 2008.

• By 2021 Wizards of the Coast earned more operating profit than Hasbro's whole consumer toy segment.
• The rebooted My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic drew a cult following of adult fans called bronies.
• CEO Chris Cox beat a 2022 proxy fight by Alta Fox, which wanted Wizards spun off.
• In 2024 Hasbro laid off 20 percent of its workforce and sold Entertainment One.
• Hasbro is moving its headquarters from Rhode Island to Boston and in 2026 released Blooms, a Play-Doh kit for adults.