(Re)Building a Better Toymaker: A Treatise

The toy industry shrank 7% globally in 2023 and I find myself both dreadful and hopeful for the coming season of change. Among toymakers, there were few winners last year. Spin Master closed the year down nearly 6%. Mattel similarly couldn’t quite make up for a soft year with stellar holiday Barbie sales, ending down 1%. Hasbro suffered the worst of it, resulting in a staggering 15% drop. However, bright spots shined for Jazwares, Tonies, Moose Toys and a pantheon of mid-sized and smaller toymakers who weathered the storm without significant injury. Change is coming, it’s unavoidable. But amidst the chaotic start of 2024, I hope the best lessons are learned from a tough year that impacted all of us, some more deeply than others. Will more layoffs solve the problem? Cost cutting and reduced quality standards? Share buybacks and dividends? Perhaps toymakers should abandon playthings entirely and refocus on entertainment or digital gaming, as if those arenas are more suitable for combat?

I’m in a hopeful mood. I smell spring in the air. Let’s ponder the best moves a toymaker could choose in the season of change. Let’s ask: How can we (re)build a better toymaker?

1: Own Your Core, Screw the Extracurriculars

The grass is always greener, or so toymakers would like to believe as they shift focus toward entertainment and away from their core competencies of toys and games.

Prior to joining Hasbro in 2014, I worked closely with various parts of the organization as an outside consultant and contractor. It was during one such project that I began to understand the aspirations of the company’s leadership more fully. Secluded in Hasbro’s 1011 executive building, just a Nerf dart’s shot away from the 1027 Newport Avenue address where most US-based staff toiled, I once found myself seated at a large boardroom-sized table with a lengthy paper tome staring back at me. One side of the room was all windows overlooking the weird little indoor grotto that all such C-Suite offices bordered. A meter or so from the head of the table stood a desk. Seated at that desk, hard at work on something or other, sat Brian Goldner, Hasbro’s longtime CEO who tragically would pass away only a few years later. Even before I flipped open the first watermarked script page of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Brian interrupted. “What do you think so far?” he asked. Those who met the man merely once knew him as gregarious and inclusive, an excited leader who treated those around him with respect. This moment was my first meeting with Hasbro’s buoyant CEO, though he chatted as if we were old friends. I probably spent two hours in his office (from which the script did not under any circumstances exit) and Brian interjected almost continuously. “Did you get to this part yet? What did you think of Devastator? Is there too much ‘NEST’ stuff?”

Brian Goldner’s excitement was palpable, and with good reason. Revenge of the Fallen’s predecessor, Transformers (2006) starring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, and a dozen CGI robots achieved over $700 million at the box office and reignited interest in the venerable toy brand. While onlookers might note that Brian never lost interest in the toy and game side of his business, the Transformers film series marked early achievements in his quest to transform Hasbro itself from toymaker to a branded entertainment company more comparable to Disney. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was just the first Hasbro co-produced film to carry the Hasbro Studios banner, followed quickly by G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Just a year later, Hasbro and Discovery Communications announced a collaborative relaunch of the ailing Discovery Kids network as The Hub. That joint venture included various Discovery properties as well as Hasbro-owned content such as My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Littlest Pet Shop, Transformers, and Pound Puppies.

For my company, Hasbro’s new adventures in entertainment offered ample exciting opportunities to collaborate. My team and I helped craft marketing materials, pitched product concepts, re-energized retro packaging. Some of the most exciting work, conducted in partnership with Hasbro’s internal Intellectual Property Development Team, included brand, character, and story guides. These “brand bibles” were to act as steppingstones for the advancement of Hasbro toy and game properties toward their impending future as story-based entertainment.

Hasbro’s successes proved mixed. Subsequent iterations of Hasbro and DreamWorks’ successful Transformers franchise reaped box office approaching $6 billion dollars, but a trio of ill-conceived G.I. Joe films accumulated just $700 million. Director Peter Berg’s Battleship film, featuring rising star Taylor Kitsch, barely broke even, achieving dubious immortality with 6 Golden Raspberry Awards nominations. My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) ticket sales hit $61 Million, nearly 10x its shoestring $6.5 Million budget; the desired effect of increased toy sales didn’t follow, so My Little Pony would go through a dramatic rebranding before another movie hit Netflix exclusively.

Television success evaded Hasbro almost completely. An exciting Tonka relaunch as The Adventures of Chuck and Friends aired on The Hub in 2010, but accompanying toys failed with a thud when reaching retail shelves. The Hub network lacked availability in most markets, despite early boasts from Hasbro that it would reach over 60 million homes, so kid and families had no reference for these new toys. The Hub’s fate came into question as early as 2011 when Discovery Communications issued a debt filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission indicating the channel’s actual value might be far lower than previously believed due to miniscule viewership figures. Advertising, a network’s chief revenue center, never took off for The Hub; the network was seen as a conflict of interest for Hasbro’s many toymaking competitors. Damning reports came in, including one from AdWeek, claiming the network failed to earn more than $9 million annually. Come 2014, Discovery reacquired a controlling stake in The Hub, now rebranded as Discovery Family, citing stiff competition from Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and particularly streamers like Netflix. Hasbro’s stake in Discovery Family remained through 2022, though corporate leadership signaled “changes” in the cable industry landscape.

“Change” put too mild a label on what Hasbro faced as it attempted to reconfigure itself for branded entertainment rather than toys and games. The network option didn’t work. In fact, many onlookers saw The Hub joint venture as a mistake from the get-go, pointing to the impending, predictable disruption from an onslaught of streaming services. Still, Hasbro doubled down on its Disnification quest, acquiring Canadian entertainment company eOne in 2019. The $4 billion investment in entertainment proved just as ill-conceived as previous efforts, especially when the Covid-19 Global Pandemic brought entertainment production to a standstill. Just five years after acquiring eOne, Hasbro sold the majority of the company’s assets to Lionsgate for $500 million, a fraction of Hasbro’s acquisition cost.

Whether a victim of poor timing or faulty strategy, Hasbro’s expensive entertainment investments impacted daily decision making for toys and games. Combined with ever-climbing manufacturing costs, entertainment placed near-impossible pressure on Hasbro’s more prosperous consumer products business to cover costs. Extravagant forays like Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves failed to broadly resonate with audiences or ignite toy sales. Come 2023, Hasbro’s new CEO Chris Cocks signaled a shift away from entertainment, while championing the success of Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering core product offerings. Hasbro would continue to invest in more strategic, brand-relevant entertainment, but redouble efforts on its core competencies, said the CEO. Saddled with such defeat and baggage, can Hasbro reengage where it matters and reinvest in toys and games?

Let’s not pick on Hasbro too much. Mattel seems to be enroute to the same ill-fated strategy as Hasbro. Truly, no one could have expected Mattel and Warner Bros. Pictures to execute Barbie (2023) and its marketing campaign so perfectly. Having signed Greta Gerwig, acclaimed director of Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019), and superstar actress Margot Robbie, Suicide Squad (2016) and I, Tonya (2017), the studio and the toymaker somehow succeeded in leaving their high caliber talent alone to craft an exciting and important film concerned with themes of womanhood and materialism. Audiences responded by gobbling up movie tickets, amounting to over $1.4 billion at the box office, and toys, which spiked particularly in Q4 2023 as Mattel caught up with demand.

Can Mattel catch lightning in another half dozen bottles when Hot Wheels, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, Polly Pocket, and Matchbox films hit theaters? The cultural phenomenon Barbie generated should not be ignored. The Barbie film is a genuine achievement of quality and vitality Hasbro failed to muster over dozens of films. But placing outsized expectations on a brand like Hot Wheels to scale Barbie-like heights? That’s a plastic bridge too far.

The toy-entertainment one-two punch isn’t a new maneuver, having played heavily into the success of 1980s and 1990s properties like The Masters of the Universe, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Power Rangers. Those properties launched successful toy lines and hotly watched TV series. The key is being true to your core. As a toymaker, entertainment should lend itself to toy, and likewise the opposite. Is there a single aspect of those above listed properties that isn’t carefully crafted to both provide entertainment and make kids crave the toys? A more modern example is Spin Master and Nickelodeon’s Paw Patrol. Say what you will as a parent forced to watch endless episodes, but Paw Patrol perfectly gathers enticing characters and scenarios through a toyetic lens that begs kids into the fantasy. It isn’t just that vehicles and playsets are centrally visible in each episode, it’s that those purchasable items are central to the storylines. Kids know exactly how to engage in Paw Patrol fantasies even before the toys reach their hands. As of this writing, Spin Master has confirmed a green light on a third Paw Patrol film. In contrast, when My Little Pony relaunched in 2021 with products tied to My Little Pony: A New Generation, slavish adherence to entertainment resulted in dull toys and disengaged kids. Gone was the beloved hair grooming play pattern, replaced by small, articulated figurines made to perfectly represent the new characters kids barely knew. My Little Pony needs another reset.

Eliminating distractions to your toy and game business doesn’t mean ignoring entertainment potential. Spin Master’s multi-focus structure allows for collaboration between consumer product, entertainment, and digital units in a way the other toymakers haven’t mastered. Also, entertainment isn’t the only distraction toymakers should be wary to avoid. Spin Master offers a great example of growth strategies aimed not at removing competition, but at bolstering its adjacencies. We’ve all seen toymaker acquisitions obviously aimed at removing players from competition. Acquiring Melissa & Doug provides Spin Master with a new area of complimentary business. There might be adjacencies in distribution, but there’s almost no overlap between Spin Master’s existing product offerings and that of Melissa & Doug. Hasbro’s 1999 acquisition of Wizards of the Coast was a similarly inspired choice.

2. Know Who’s Important to You

Having recently exited Hasbro alongside 1,000-plus colleagues, I can tell you there’s plenty of internal frustration over the company’s transformation, but also lots of passion to help right the ship. A key aspect that gets lost in frustrated discussion is that Hasbro’s leadership have a fiduciary duty to act in the corporation’s best interests. When corporate leaders claim to be “acting in the best interest of the company’s future,” they probably believe they’re telling the truth. Whether each is a soulless, power-seeking psychopath or not cannot be surmised on their corporate actions alone.

I’d argue that no fiduciary responsibility should be so important as to eclipse basic humanity. Or, I’d argue that basic humanity is cornerstone to fiduciary responsibility. When corporate leaders choose to enact layoffs and restructuring, they very well might be working in the corporate best interest, but they are acting despite basic human decency. It’s not even up for debate. How, as human beings, can we argue that large-scale corporate layoffs are an acceptable action, knowing the tremendous detrimental impact on real human beings? 

 The impact on human beings is palpable. Studies cited by Harvard Business Review indicate layoffs are traumatically harmful to those impacted, requiring years to recover. Suicide risks increase up to 3x. “Displaced workers have twice the risk of developing depression, four times the risk of substance abuse, and six times the risk of committing violent acts including partner and child abuse,” Sandra J. Sucher and Marilyn Morgan Westner write. Excluding the mental and social impacts, healthy people effected by layoffs are 83% more likely to develop hypertension, heart disease, and arthritis.

Past recessions and mass layoffs tell us that those who lost their jobs will see a 20% drop in lifetime earnings when compared to those who did not lose their jobs.

Let’s say you’re prone to look at such situations through a shareholder’s eyes: layoffs even negatively impact the companies themselves.

The findings of two decades of profitability studies are equivocal: The majority of firms that conduct layoffs do not see improved profitability, whether measured by return on assets, return on equity, or return on sales. Layoffs are especially hard on the performance of companies with a high reliance on R&D, low capital intensity, and high growth. Market response to layoffs was also less positive than might be expected, with three-day share prices of firms conducting layoffs generally neutral.              

Layoffs, such as those conducted by Hasbro in 2023, can permanently impair trust between employees and corporate leaders. “Survivor” guilt among those not effected by a layoff impairs performance. The sentiment that fellow employees were wronged unnecessarily makes retained staff fearful that they could lose their jobs at any time. Further, employees complain that workloads increase following layoffs.

Attacking Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks and his leadership team distracts from the obvious truth that they are behaving identically to those who came before them. A fellow ex-Hasbro (or Hasbeen, as the button reads) told me once how highly he thought of Hasbro’s previous CEO, Brian Goldner. When asked why, my friend said “Just the little human things about him. When I was out with my family at a restaurant and Brian happened to be there, he came over to say hello.”

I’m not sure we should applaud corporate leaders for basic acts of humanity. Humanity should be a defining characteristic of anyone placed in a role under which other humans must gather. Brian Goldner did have the rare, showy trait of humanity among corporate leaders. His graciousness and warm smile eased the minds and hearts of thousands of employees beneath his leadership. However, Brian Goldner presided over annual layoffs throughout his position as CEO. Like Cocks, he never declined his $15 million salary as CEO and Chairman of Hasbro’s board. Mattel also has a rich history of layoffs, to be fair. Even Funko, home to the still-hot POP! product line cut 30% of its staff in 2023. Layoffs are a fact of life for many Americans. But knowing, as surely these corporate leaders do, that layoffs don’t do a bit of good, shouldn’t they lay off on the layoffs a bit?  

When trust erodes between employer and employees, companies suffer. Resentment and fear are poor motivators. It’s as simple as that. If leaders must act in the fiduciary best interests of a company, evidence suggests that the livelihood and success of one’s employees is paramount to those interests. How can a toymaker claim to focus on its customers when it demonstrates poor intentions toward its employees? Shitting where we eat is cave person behavior.

3. Culture First, But No Pep Rallies

Boeing’s journey from revered exemplar of engineering quality to profit-seeking corner cutter has, for lack of more apt comparison, been akin to horrifically watching a 737-Max airplane crash in slow-motion. It’s the definitive modern example of the excesses of rampant capitalism and its impact on human lives. Downed airplanes, missing door plugs, foolhardy mismanagement of quality… Clearly, something changed dramatically following Boeing’s merger with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Industry observers concur on the causes of Boeing’s plight. As Boeing shifted from its core as an engineering-led maker of airplanes to focus instead on profitmaking, a disaster fomented. McDonnell leadership instituted tremendous cost-cutting efforts and share buy backs while quality assurance nosedived. Shareholders and corporate leaders made bank while airplanes fell from the skies and people lost their lives.

Toy and game makers should refocus on their core interests and rededicate to the culture of innovation and ingenuity necessary for their success. Too often leaders pretend “culture” is the sum of tools high schools use to combat rebellion. Pizza parties and sock hops do not a culture make. Everyone loves a good celebration. Fraternization with fellow employees is socially rewarding and can positively impact career growth (given a corporate framework for opportunity). Pizza tastes good. Pep rallies alone, however, do little to motivate a unified workforce to perform its best work.

Culture, real culture, runs much deeper. At a toymaker, a culture of decency and collaboration is key. But just as important is a culture of inventiveness and risk taking. Larger toymakers can easily forget what their small and midsized competitors relearn every day: If toys is a fashion-based industry, continuous reinvention and the hunt for new WOW must be prioritized at all costs. Without innovation, kids and parents lose interest to the crowded landscape of digital and electronic diversions.

Pivotally, toymakers must embrace the necessity of a Chief Creative Officer or, better, plant their preeminent creative leader in at the very top as CEO. Broadcast to employees, customers, and investors that a business reliant on innovation must be led by an innovator.

Early in my toy career, while exiting comics publishing, I found my toymaker clients’ corporate structures baffling. If the business is toys, why are the toy people relegated to glorified gofer roles? At almost every major, modern toymaker, designers, and engineers –the imagineers of playthings— answer to marketing professionals with often far less experience or perspective regarding play and kids’ behavior. Zooming closer, individuals with limited historical reference for past industry successes, novice understanding of product cost and supply chain, a vision of kids’ taste wholly reliant on their own spawn, and copious experience marketing shampoo should not be a key decisionmaker at a toy company. Weight must be given to the creative vision holders who live and breathe toymaking. Toymakers make and marketers market, an outsider might assume, but I’m not arguing for full creative stewardship. A symphonic resonance between design/development and marketing disciplines is key to a toymaker’s success. Parity of viewpoints results in positive conflict, yielding great toys.  

The toy industry requires marketing professionals as interested in toys as its designers and engineers. Experience marketing apparel, cosmetics, or fast food can provide fantastic outside perspective, but nothing can replace a deep education in toys and a deep passion for play. The very best marketers I’ve had the pleasure of working with exhibit fascinating creativity and the capacity for game changing innovation. As an example, for the 2020 release of Deadpool’s Head, I found myself paired with a truly brilliant marketer who loved toys as much as I did. Becky Nuger, then a Hasbro Brand Manager covering Marvel items, exhibited the kind of enthusiasm and excitement a designer craves. Becky immediately bought into the controversial, delicate nature of the initiative. She boldly offered feedback and original ideas, always to the betterment of the shared vision. She both defended our vision and sought compromise when necessary. When it came time for Becky to craft her marketing plan, she once more defied expectations by inviting collaboration from the design and development team. What promised to be a difficult gate process –due to the R-rated character and our embrace of character-authentic content— resulted instead in a perfect symphony of marketing, design, engineering, and content. I’ve worked with many wonderful marketers. What unifies the best of them is a willingness to collaborate as equals and a drive to launch not just innovative product, but innovative marketing as well.

A bit of brighter news for Hasbro –a company I still very much love and root for—was the 2023 hiring of Tim Kilpin as Hasbro’s president of toys, licensing, and entertainment. Tim might have presided over the business while me and many others lost their jobs, but his presence bodes well for the future of Hasbro’s toy business. Each time I have had the pleasure of seeing Tim speak I find myself enveloped in his love of toys. He strikes me as a wise marketer hungry to collaborate with creatives. Short term aside, I wouldn’t bet against his vision for a transformed Hasbro, should he have the opportunity to implement it.  

Comfort with risk and innovation improves the function of every discipline within a toymaker. At a toymaker, marketing and sales roles require innovation equal to their traditionally creative counterparts on design and engineering. Creativity and ingenuity must be core qualifications for every role from junior designer to CEO. Once a company truly embraces its nature as a creative pursuit, it begins inspiring its employees, shareholders, and audience. Plant that heartful and soulful approach so it digs its roots deep.

4. Simply Make WOW Toys

We all took the bad medicine. As children, we all suffered the stinging, humbling defeat that comes in little clear plastic cups. Be it exhaustion, humility, or better judgement, we relented, tipped it back and gulped the foul-tasting elixir. But for the struggling toymakers looking to turn their businesses around in 2024 and beyond, the medicine is surprisingly tasty. There’s no aftertaste and the only side effect is a beaming smile and a rush of excitement.

Take the good medicine, dear toymaker, and just make wow toys. It really does cure what ails you.

In the modern industry landscape, making great, exciting toys is treacherously difficult for toymakers to achieve. Manufacturing costs have skyrocketed. New shipping challenges, from blocked waterways to Houthi rebels, cause delays. Is there still a chip shortage? An unchanging choir of mass-market retailers applies pricing pressure while sending new product straight to clearance, siting inventory challenges.

But the lesser-spoken challenges are perhaps much more postmodern and dystopic for the industry. Creating wow might just be impossible for many toymakers under the leaden weight of corporate bureaucracy. Or, at least, nearly impossible. Thousands of wow ideas are passionately pitched and cautiously well received within the hallowed halls of American toymakers. Passionate inventors struggle daily to sell in the brilliant ideas that could drop jaws tomorrow.

There is a myriad of reasons why exciting items never make it past internal review at any toymaker. Perhaps cost challenges were obvious instantly. Perhaps someone with good intel knows the Walmart buyer hates green. Maybe teams are already overwhelmed by their significant workloads peddling endless brand extensions to disinterested kids. Seasoned brands require constant feeding, lest cash cows become albatrosses.

But too often the primary reason why major corporations fail to innovate is simply the bureaucracy itself.

Imagine for an instant that you land your dream job as a junior designer or engineer at a toymaker. In times past, you might have stumbled into a world of creative chaos, boiling and roiling, onward and upward for all. That isn’t always the experience a new designer finds at a large toymaker anymore, for better or worse. Instead, they find a rigorously guarded bureaucracy that treats great ideas like any other ball in a pinball machine. You find a machine designed (and redesigned) over the past century for efficiency, or something resembling it. And, maybe most importantly, you find a corporation, not Santa’s toy shop.

That’s the key distinction: As an operation scales, sometimes the mere fact of it being a business acts as a timebomb thwarting innovation. Operational excellence and shareholder value aren’t inexorably tied to startling product innovation. It takes dedication and a keen understanding of the industry to guide a giant through positive change. It takes a creative change maker, a role as terrifically endangered as any beast on Earth.

Today, it’s ridiculously hard it is to yank great ideas to completion within large bureaucracies. Ridiculously hard, but not impossible. Take, for instance, the story of how FurReal Friends got its start, twenty-four years ago. Remember, this was before the feature plush category really existed; these items predominantly found placement in the late, great Youth Electronics aisle. A motley crew of Hasbro engineers and designers led by Richard Maddocks and Leif Askeland pitched the idea of doing lifelike, pet-themed robotic toys as follow up to the company’s tremendously successful Furby. Hot on the heels of selling over 40 million Furby units, one might be forgiven for expecting Hasbro executive leadership to immediately greenlight the endeavor. Instead, the team received a collective shrug and whatever the pre-smartphone era used in place of a thumb down emoji (probably an actual thumb pointing downward).

But the story didn’t end there. Clandestinely, the team built an initial prototype capable of performing some desirable features. When next presenting to the Powers-That-Be, the FurReal Friends pitch wowed with a realistic cat model capable of moving just like a real cat. Finally, those highly paid purported strategy setters for the company got the idea. In 2002, FurReal Friends started its nearly two-decade reign atop toy sales; not a year went by without at least one FurReal Friends pet ranking among the industry’s top-ten selling items.

There are countless similar stories that offset the slow, incremental innovation that stalls big toymakers. Elsewhere, innovation culture is more central to corporate success criteria. I’m not particularly enlightened to the internal philosophies at Moose Toys, but their “throw it at the wall” methodology seems to work stickily. Be it new iterations of Little Live Pets, unboxing trendsetters like Magic Mixies, or WOW excursions like Akedo Warriors, Treasure X, Beast Lab, Heroes of Goo Jit Zu, Shopkins, and Cookeez Makery, Moose fills its product lines to brim with exciting, often startling, items kids demand. Perhaps a biproduct of having few long-lived brands of their own, Moose readily tops itself each season on its way to market share growth. Commendably, WowWee never relents on its steady stream of innovative, highly complex offerings from tiny Fingerlings to huge robots like Dog-E. Jazwares delivers compelling plush offerings like Squishmallows while running laps around other action figure makers with excellent action figure offerings at compelling price points (Star Wars Micro Galaxy Squadron gives big value at approachable price points; kids can grow their galaxy without dwindling mom and dad’s Galactic credits). Tonies disrupted the preschool toy space with the introduction of a $99.99 console and $14.99 content-laden figures at which an experienced manufacturer would have balked.

Perhaps alone among the toy industry juggernauts, Spin Master seems to have retained its central drive for exciting toys. The disruptive manufacturer of Hatchimals hit that drum again and again with subsequent brand extensions and Present Pets (all great products), but Bitzee demonstrates a commitment to embrace trends and out innovate the competition. Even Paw Patrol, which one might expect to be long-in-the-pup-teeth at this point, regularly launches massive, exciting playsets that win with kids on Christmas morning.

Foster an atmosphere in which new ideas stand ample chance of survival. Generate a structure that both enables on-the-ground decision making as well as openness to the unknown. Champion your change makers and reward the left field. Just because your line plan worked moderately well for a season does not mean that plan is permanent. As a rule, I’ve always found that the best products are those that were neither simple nor easy to produce. Easy doesn’t grow a business. Easy doesn’t turn heads. Easy just perpetuates the long, slogging slide of toys into irrelevance.

I’m proud to say I’ve spent much of my toy career embarking on difficult adventures. Some quests ended in glory, and many ended in some degree of failure. Still other quests failed even to launch or sputtered on the path. It’s never been easy, trying to discover the next wow, but when we stop trying and embrace a status quo of rising costs and worsening quality, sameness and plainness, and brand-buttressing panic, kids and parents notice.  

If we’re not inspired to play, neither will they be.

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After over 17 years in the toy and game space, Brian Torney still aims to shock and surprise with each new concept, product or initiative introduced! In his previous design leadership role on Hasbro’s Spark R&D team, he focused on break frame, high tech, attention-getting innovation for key brands including Marvel, Furby, Play-Doh, Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, My Little Pony, Power Rangers and more. Prior to Hasbro, he led Kunoichi and Other Door, two premiere design studios serving toy and kids entertainment clients including Nickelodeon, Mattel, Lego, Hasbro, McDonald’s, LeapFrog and more.

Recognized as a strategic thinker, unique storyteller, experienced technology-forward designer and visionary inventor, Brian combine those rare attributes in his quest to transform the toy industry to better match the imaginations of kids and fans around the world.