30 Years Ago – The Toy Industry Changed Forever!

Imagine a toy industry where Mattel rules with mega-brands, NERF, Monopoly, Risk, Clue, Ouija, Trivial Pursuit and other classic Parker Brothers games. This almost happened 30 years ago on May 7, 1991. On this date, Hasbro officially acquired Tonka, Kenner Toys and Parker Brothers Games. Hasbro and Mattel offered the same price to acquire the three businesses, but Hasbro offered all cash whereas Mattel offered half cash and half Mattel stock. Hasbro won…

It was a strange time for me personally - Parker Brothers senior management team was opposed to a Hasbro acquisition and outwardly rooted for Mattel. We were told that Mattel would be great for the Parker Brothers employees, and if Hasbro acquired us, most of us would lose our jobs. As it turned out, and what often happens after an acquisition, the senior team members lost their jobs and the rest of the employees remained and flourished.  

Days before 1991 Toy Fair, it was announced that Hasbro had won the bidding war and were the new owners of Parker Brothers. I was working at the NYC Showroom when the acquisition was announced, and missed the formal Hasbro introduction to the Beverly MA Parker Brothers team. The following day, I was told to go to the NYC Showroom for a meeting. Little did I know that my life was about to change forever!

In walked Alan Hassenfeld and Barry Alperin, the mastermind and the brains behind the biggest acquisition in toy industry history! Alan was different from the toy executives that I knew. He was young, warm, caring, clearly loved games (especially Boggle!) and was very focused on making Hasbro great. Barry Alperin was the definition of “class.” Barry was smart, engaged and eloquent in explaining the strategic benefits of the Hasbro and Parker Brothers partnership. To my surprise, Alan asked me to take him through the product line and we had a fun, easy-going, interactive product discussion. I was excited about the positive comments from Alan. Two days later my long time mentor, Dave Wilson, Senior Executive at archrival Milton Bradley, reached out to me to say how pleased he was that we were “on the same team again.” Now I was really excited!

I remember the Parker Brothers 1991 Toy Fair as a confluence of mixed emotions and uncertainty. The Hasbro deal was newly announced but not finalized. We experienced questions about our future, who would be leaving, who would Hasbro bring in, how do we interact with Milton Bradley, etc. It was an odd time, as a few employees were embracing Hasbro, while many were networking for new toy industry job opportunities.

Over the next several months, many of the Parker Brothers management exited. Former Milton Bradley marketing executive and current Parker Brothers SVP, Larry Bernstein, left to lead the Mattel Games business. Parker Brothers VP of Inventor Relations, Chris Campbell, left to lead the Tyco Games business. Back in 1991, Milton Bradley was the biggest game company. Michael Meyers was the legendary R&D leader, Bill Dohrmann was inventor favorite and SVP of Marketing, and Ron Weingartner was the top Games Inventor Relations executive in the industry. This put Parker Brothers in fourth place from a game inventors point of view…

With all of the uncertainty, the game inventors were fleeing Parker Brothers. As it turned out, I saw a unique opportunity and pursued filling the recently vacated Parker Brothers Inventor Relations position. With little fanfare, I moved from Marketing Services into the Inventor Relations job. The job turned out to be magical! Parker Brothers still faced the challenge that the established game inventor community was focused on Milton Bradley, Mattel Games and Tyco Games, and had little interest in presenting innovative ideas to Parker Brothers. Now I had an opportunity to develop game innovation and creativity while establishing relationships and making deals with the talented global game inventor community. 

Based on the fact that most established inventors were showing us all the prior rejected ideas, my associate, Chris Conger, and I established a “scorched earth” strategy to seek out and focus on non-traditional, out-of-the-box game inventors of the future. Luckily, this strategy worked as we had invention success with Dan Klitsner, Brian Clemens, David Hoyt, Cathy Rondeau, Bruce Lund, Tim Moodie, Charlie and Maria Girsch, Chris Taylor and Chris Wiggs, Elliot Ruddell, Boaz Coster, Suzanne Robinson, Mary Danby, Rick Polk, Robert Schwartzman, Norm and Arlene Fabricant, and other inventors. We also developed a very successful relationship with Japanese inventor groups through our product licensing agent partnership with Sandy Strichard. Sandy led deals with Sente, Tomy, Bandai, Konami and others. We found success with Meyer Glass with 11 inventor deals in four years including licensing what is now a classic game, Catch Phrase. Our Israeli inventor relationship was fruitful as evidenced by Omri Rothchild and Roni Raviv’s success with, Ele-Fun.

The success that Parker Brothers realized from 1991 to 1995 could not have been achieved without the collaboration between the inventors and (I believe) the best R&D team in games. Under the creative leadership of Jim Tinguely, game development leadership of Jim Henderson, and quality leadership of Bill Barrasi, Parker Brothers games were consistently publishing the highest quality, top of the charts, fun games.

The Parker Brothers Game Design team was loaded with talent: true superstars Rene Sorano, Jack McMahon, Nancy Babson, Doug Harrison, Hansan Ma, Larry Harris, Scott Frisco, John Reale, Chris Down and more. Our game development and quality teams were just as loaded with talent including Kevin Gillespie, Frank Ventura, Darrel Marino, Tom Haskins, John Sutyak, Bob Welch, Mark Rappaport, George Dys, Ed Margolis, Steve Droney, Bob Russo, Ron Daley and more. The Parker Brothers Graphics team was led by Steven Strumpf with talented art designers Ted Beck, Karen Schmidt, Jim and Lisa Engelbrecht, Karen Hubbard and copywriter, Susan Nash. The collaboration between the Parker Brothers R&D team and the game inventors allowed for creativity to spark and delivered breakthrough game innovation. 

As Hasbro had grown fast via acquisition, it became obvious that there were no toy and game industry inventor relations standards, or even Hasbro inventor standards. As a company, the four major divisions, Hasbro/Playskool, Kenner, Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers had vastly different inventor relations terms. Steve D’Aguanno, Howard Bollinger, Mike Meyers and I worked for over a year on addressing the professional inventor/company relationship in terms of an industry standard. We sought out inventor/agent input from inventor legends, Tom Kramer, Eddy Goldfarb, Theo Coster, Ned Strognin, Jim Becker, Bert Meyer, Len Fuhrer, Howard Morrison, Gordon Barlow and other successful inventors. As I have learned recently, most of the inventor standards that the industry developed together in the 1990’s remain in effect today.

30 years later it can be said that Alan Hassenfeld’s acquisition of Parker Brothers was one of the greatest successes in toy industry history. The brands NERF and Monopoly are mega global brands and games like Clue, Boggle, Risk, Ouija, Trivial Pursuit and others remain classic money making games. The legacy of the great Parker Brothers Games and the NERF brand will be enjoyed by millions of people for years to come!

About the writer

Tom Dusenberry worked at Parker Brother and is the former CEO of Hasbro Interactive, Games.com and Atari. He is currently the owner of Dusenberry Entertainment and has been successfully consulting and partnering with digital games, toy and traditional games businesses for over 20 years. Contact Tom at [email protected]