Between posting my four JoeFest ’25 articles and starting to post my Dallas-Ft. Worth G.I. Joe ’25 articles, Alan Hassenfeld died. I did not know him, and only briefly met him twice, but he appears throughout my book, and his fingerprints are all over G.I. Joe across several decades. It felt appropriate to write something about him here. This is a place where some folks come for G.I. Joe information and opinion, though there are certainly better articles on Hassenfeld from journalists, his friends, and people who worked with him.
Alan Hassenfeld is the main character of two G. Wayne Miller books, Toy Wars and Kid Number One (he is the titular Kid), and those could be the first and final word on him. I met Alan in person in November of 2020 at Barrington Books, in Cranston, Rhode Island. This was the second and last signing for Miller’s Kid Number One in which the star of the book, Hassenfeld, would be present along with the author. A modest affair, no audience, no Q&A (unlike the first event, which I had regretfully missed), just two people sitting at a table in a book store, a small stack of books in front of them.
Miller and I had had lunch a few years earlier, so I gave him a little update on my projects. Hassenfeld, I didn’t want to overload. He was the main attraction that day, and my book in-progress did not compete. This was not a networking event. What was I going to do, ask him to write the introduction to a manuscript I hadn’t finished? Actually, that’s not a bad idea. (I had contacted him a few years earlier, a very short but embarrassing story, remind me to tell you one day.) I didn’t bring my laptop to show him a sample chapter of my G.I. Joe history book. I may not have even said “I’m writing a history book on G.I. Joe.” This man had worked for Hasbro since the 1970s, it’s his last name on the company, he had been its President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board. Via his charity work this gent practically built a hospital! Because I was an Alan Hassenfeld fan and was passionate about G.I. Joe, there wasn’t really anything for me to say except that I was lifelong Hasbro kid (not just G.I. Joe, but Transformers and others, too), I had enjoyed Miller’s earlier book, and was looking forward to this one. (I had a copy but hadn’t read it yet, holding out hope I’d get to an event like this, and the copy I would read would be signed.) Because there was no line at that moment, we three got to talk for a minute. Hassenfeld was warm and spoke passionately about G.I. Joe, toys, and his company.
That’s it. That’s the time I talked to Alan Hassenfeld. But about half of the people I’ve interviewed mentioned him. Alan’s brother Stephen led the company in the 1980s, and for a time Alan did not want to lead it. But with Stephen’s passing in 1989, Alan took over and set Hasbro on a path to bigger things. The company had ups and downs, and Alan’s strengths were different than that of his brother’s. His leadership style did not work for everyone. One Hasbro alum said to me recently that “Stephen was a toy guy. Alan was a numbers guy.” It was meant as a light criticism, as there were layoffs and closures in the last few decades and a different focus on product. But it’s also hard to compare Hasbro in the 1980s with Hasbro from 1990 to about 2010. Competition, television (where Hasbro advertised), movie deals, the kid market, and the brands themselves changed. For all the lows, Alan Hassenfeld, through acquisitions and budgeting, through deals and hires, and through his charitable works, took his company to unbeliveable highs — ones not possible before his tenure on top.
Let’s rewind to September 2017. Hasbro put on a fun and slightly odd convention in Providence (read all about it here). G.I. Joe fans could pay extra to get a tour of Hasbro in Pawtucket, attend two panels back in Providence, and join the “G.I. Joe Legends” dinner, up the hill from the convention center. In attendance were designers, engineers, painters, and marketers who’d worked on G.I. Joe between 1982 and 1994, an amazing line-up organized by researcher/writer Dan Klingensmith and Derryl DePriest. At the time, I believe DePriest was Hasbro’s VP, Global Brand Management. He was also a lifelong G.I. Joe fan. During the dinner, Klingensmith was going to run two slideshows and have the “Legends” talk about their work. But there was a surprise guest: Alan Hassenfeld. This would be the first time I was ever in the same room as him, and while we didn’t speak, I did very much enjoy his remarks, which I’ve excerpted below. DePriest introduced him, and then Hassenfeld spoke for 45 minutes! This delayed dinner and somewhat squeezed the during-dinner panels, but it was still great. (Also a surprise guest: G. Wayne Miller, to whom I introduced myself.)
Alan Hassenfeld had no notes, no typed speech. He spoke extemporaneously, moving from one topic to the next in a casual way. I don’t think this edited transcript captures how friendly, genuine, smart, and funny he was, but my audio of the event is not great, and anyway, this is a blog, not a podcast. I was recording from my table and not the podium, so the space of the room, the echo of the PA system, and the occasional clinking glass or clearing of throat are present. A few words I’m unclear on. I’ve added clarifying parentheticals, and summarized a few bits to keep this focused. As this is not one of my convention reports, there aren’t 60 or 70 photographs here. Just the one above and two more. That context aside, here’s my take on remembering Alan Hassenfeld. While I did not know him, because of this loose, entertaining speech and G. Wayne Miller’s many years of fine journalistic reporting and book writing, I feel I did.
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EDITED TRANSCRIPT OF REMARKS FROM THE 2017 HASCON G.I. JOE LEGENDS DINNER
[Derryl DePriest thanks the assembled fans for their commitment to Hasbro brands like G.I. Joe, and touches on Stephen Hassenfeld and Merrill Hassenfeld’s (Stephen and Alan’s father) contributions to the company. The company’s successes between the 1950s and 1990s paves the way for the modern success that Hasbro has become.]
DERRYL DEPRIEST: Before I introduce Alan I want to talk about the amazing work that he has done beyond his contributions to the toys we love.
This man is, first of all he’s the most self-effacing gentleman that I know. But his charitable work, it takes 50 people to do what Alan does because of his passion and commitment to causes, especially to Hasbro Children’s Hospital, Alan’s cause célèbre. He really championed that and made it happen, [and] we are so proud of him for the likes of the Children’s Hospital. But your charitable work is absolutely amazing. And it continues to this day by your foundation [The Hassenfeld Family Foundation]. So your work is phenomenal. Thank you very much.
Before I get into that I have a few little items I want to talk about. So first of all, when I was hired at Hasbro it was right after the closure of the Cincinnati office. And a whole bunch of new people were coming to Hasbro [in Pawtucket]. As it turns out, they put together an interview itinerary for you. And it’s the usual, the people you would be reporting to and working with. And in my interview itinerary was Alan, the president of the company.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
And that doesn’t happen to a typical director candidate at Hasbro. But the reason why, I would say had to, I had the pleasure of interviewing with Alan was because it was G.I. Joe. And this is Alan’s baby. Alan wanted to make sure that this brand was in the right hands, with somebody who had the passion, the commitment, the care and the courage, to push initiatives through. And thank you Alan for that. And Alan actually, this is amazing, and I didn’t realize it at the time—you called me in for monthly meetings as check-ins. And I was so nervous. No, what did I do wrong? I didn’t realize how precious that was. If I go back in time, we’d talk a lot more than we did at the time. So thank you, Alan.
The other—that was the nice kind of message. The other one is not so kind. So after I started in the company we had partnered with our design team at the time. And we were putting together a plan for G.I. Joe. We said we’ve got the best idea. And this is in 2001. We said we have the best idea. We can’t wait to launch it at our management review meeting. We are going to relaunch the Joe versus Cobra fantasy fully born. Now the exclusives team had done some great work at Hasbro Direct, they had done some great work before that showed you guys really wanted Joe back.
But we said, we’re going to launch it right. We’re going to back it with, you know, everything that we can throw at it. And so we went into our line review. Alan was there, straight, center front as he always is. We said, “Alan, we have the best news for you. We are going to bring back Joe versus Cobra.” And Alan is like, he is expecting this. We probably told him, planted that seed. We said, “We’re going to do it in fall of 2003.” Remember, this is 2001. And Alan said, “Yes, you will launch it.” And he almost launched like a rocket across the table. He said, [loudly] “But you’re going to do it in 2002!”
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
Because it was the right thing. It’s the right fantasy to focus on. And the desire to bring that back has paved the way to the Paramount pictures that we have today. So the focus on the storytelling. So thank you for that, Alan. The team, we went back to work and we launched Joe. So I think that’s enough of me. I’d like to introduce Alan to come on up and tell us—
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]
ALAN HASSENFELD: My history with G.I. Joe is a little bit storied but when I talked to [CEO] Brian Goldner] today, Brian and I talk probably at least three or four times a week, he said me, “Promise me you won’t do one thing. Don’t come up with a new inventor of G.I. Joe.” So tonight I thought I’d really tell you— [ALAN HASSENFELD UNZIPS HIS FLEECE TO REVEAL A MR. POTATO HEAD T-SHIRT BENEATH.]
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS AND APPLAUDS]
–Because honestly if we hadn’t had Potato Head, maybe we wouldn’t have been able to do G.I. Joe. My history with the company was — how’d I get the job? It’s a magical word called nepotism.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
But anyway, I was shipped off to the Far East to set up our supply lines. My brother had begun really in the late sixties working in Kyūshū in Japan. We were working with a company called Sian [?] to do the G.I. Joe uniforms. And then it was turned over to me. And that’s when I spent my time in Hong Kong, in Taiwan, and then moving on to China. But the stories that we could tell.
You know, if you look at all the toys in the Hasbro portfolio today, and I laugh because a number of years ago Mattel said they had 600 years of content. We have over 6,000 years of contents if you can believe it, when you take Monopoly, when you take Play-Doh, you know, when you take Scrabble, and you begin to add up all of this content [and play time], it’s truly, truly incredible.
My first days with G.I. Joe were with my father. I think I was 14 or 15 and Dad said, “What do you think about this idea about a boy’s doll?
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
I said, “Dad, I play touch football. I play soccer. I play tennis. I love the outdoors. What is this? A boy’s doll.” Thank God I was wrong. Because G.I. Joe put me through college.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
One thing I promised my dad is that we can’t let G.I. Joe be called a doll. And it was in the early seventies that I worked with a wonderful—I know this will sound almost oxymoronic. But I worked with a wonderful man, the head of US Customs in New York. And his name was Dan Raynor. And Dan’s no longer alive. And I said, “Dan, how do we change [what] was then in the US Code, TSUS number, how do we change that because G.I. Joe can’t be a doll. G.I. Joe is an action figure.” And sure enough within a year, through US Customs in Congress, a category was created called Action Figures. Believe it or not, Joe was always, originally, lumped in with… Barbie.
I do want to honor a couple of people that some of you might have heard of, some not. But some of the originators of G.I. Joe at Hasbro, how many of you have heard of George Barton? George Barton did much of the art with Don Levine. And it was really a team. It was George. It was Gerry Pilkington. It was Don Levine. It was Bill Pressman. The guy who made all of the molds for G.I. Joe was a guy name Hughie O’Connor. And I’ll never forget—and another guy who just managed to go around everything is Jerry Einhorn. He just passed away. But those were very, very special people because it really was a unique time with my father. How close they were. They were really creating the original G.I. Joe.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]
Again, I promised Derryl that I’d try and tell a couple of stories. And I don’t know how many of you know these stories. But remember, no one believed in G.I. Joe. Everybody laughed until it finally came to the market [in 1964] and it did incredibly well. Then, as we all know, success breeds parallel marketing people.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
And there was product from a company called Mego, called Action Jackson. And Action Jackson—look, the way Mego ran their company, everything was cheap, cheap, cheap. But they still commanded a marketplace. And they had copied G.I. Joe. And we couldn’t figure a way of stopping them. And finally, I forget who it was, but one of our people, it wasn’t our lawyers or anything like that, realized that we had made a huge mistake when we first made G.I. Joe. And the G.I. Joe thumbnail, I forget if it was the right hand or the left hand—Vinnie?
VINNIE D’ALLEVA: Right hand.
ALAN HASSENFELD: Right hand. Thank you. The right hand of G.I. Joe [had] the thumbnail on the inside of the thumb, not where it was supposed to be. But if you ever sent anything to Hong Kong to be made, as Mego did, because that’s where they were incorporated, they copied us perfectly.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
They even put the thumbnail on the inside of the hand. Case closed. We won for once a legal suit.
Also I spent probably ten, 12 years in the Far East running back and forth and living over there, setting up our supply lines. And you know, there are stories that I could tell that none of you would ever believe because you wouldn’t believe that this really goes into they making of a toy. By the way, every toy Hasbro makes, they’re real. They’re human. And they do come to life at night.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
But we had a wonderful product, which was the American Jeep. And the American Jeep was a great seller, about this big. [MIMES WITH ARMS]. It was wonderful. Not like the aircraft carrier, that’s another story. But there was one problem with the Jeep, and that was it took an American flag. Now, every Jeep for G.I. Joe should have an American flag. The only problem was, this was a textile American flag. And there I am, willy-nilly shipping American flags back to America to put in the Jeep and US Customs stops it. My dad, brother, “Son. What did you do now?” “What do you mean? What’s the problem? I’m just shipping American flags to you to put them in the damn Jeep.”
The problem was, all of a sudden that year, anything that was textile came under quota. And I was buying the American flag in Taiwan. And we didn’t have quota. And the amount of quota we needed was nothing. So I will tell a true story. I went on the black market and had to spend about $500 dollars and one night in jail. [AUDIENCE LAUGHS AND APPLAUDS] The worse part, my family didn’t bail me out.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
But there are, you could go forever and a day telling, you know, incredible stories. But I wanted to spend a couple of minutes. We were not a 12-inch doll, by the way. I remember it. With boots off, G.I. Joe was 11 ¾ inches.
Why did Joe begin to have problems in the seventies? Number one what many of you children won’t appreciate, 1971 there was a dock strike and we had to air freight almost everything. The dock strike I think went from October to March, but right into the heart of the Christmas season. And we had to charter airplanes.
Remember, when you’re dealing with an 11 ¾ inch figure, your vehicles have got to be this big [SPREADS HANDS OUT] and it became very problematic. But then came 1973 and most of you also will not remember, because of the war in Israel and the signing of America with Israel, there was an oil embargo. And oil went from $3 dollars a barrel to $12 dollars a barrel. And you could say, “What the hell is–?” Remember, all of our products were made out of plastic. And plastic, one of the most important things, we need oil. We need benzene.
So all of a sudden things were getting fairly expensive. And then you had the third ingredient, which was the Vietnamese War and the pushback of many Americans concerning Vietnam. I used to go to Toy Fair. And I don’t know why my brother had the habit—and my brother was a genius. And I should say one thing about my dad. Dad died in 1979. No father ever set a better table for two sons to sit down to than my father did. And he never got the proper credit I think that he deserved. We went on and we were able through Stephen and then me and then Al [Verrechia, who had been with the company since 1965 and succeeded Alan as CEO and President], and then Brian [Goldner] to take things to a different level.
[Alan Hassenfeld refers to the 1977 to 1978 Super Joe line and takes the blame for the “defective Terrons.”]
But then we learned something. In 1978 a guy named Bernie Loomis [then President of Kenner] took a chance on something called Star Wars. Now Bernie was the best marketeer this industry I think has ever seen. He basically did a deal with George Lucas to bring Star Wars figures out. And they created a new genre, 3 ¾ inches. And remember, in that first year, Bernie didn’t sign up to Star Wars until October. He had his people create 12 figures, cardboard, put them in a package and say, “Hey. We’re going to deliver in April.” So there were 10 million Star Wars paper products that were sold at Christmas. Can you imagine being a kid and opening up a package, that says, “See you in April.”
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
If you can believe, 10 million—but anyway. So that was really the beginning of the thought process around the 3 ¾ inch figure as I remember it. But we also realized that once you were down at that size, yes, you could improve their articulation. Because the most important thing for me and Joe was the articulation. How do you get every pose that you can possibly think of. But at the same point of time it made vehicles, it made whatever we wanted to do a lot more scalable.
You know, again, I hated seeing the demise of the 11 ¾ inch. But the 3 ¾ inch I really was very, very passionate about.
[Hassenfeld refers to the pre-1982 marketing plan with Marvel Comics and Griffin Bacal to promote the G.I. Joe toy line with comic books and animated television commercials. Hassenfeld then mentions in the recent past expecting to sell 100,000 units of the Chewbacca mask, but after an unboxing video on YouTube, “the next day we’re looking at 350,000 pieces.”]
So anyway, the beauty of what we did for the 3 ¾ was it’s a combination of realizing how to market it, how to create the back story. And that’s the other thing that’s so important. Every toy, everything that we do, we’re living in a world that we have to story tell. […] Many of you probably remember Zartan.
Zartan, our copywriters [Larry Hama in a freelance job writing dossiers for Hasbro packaging] in creating this character, created him as a paranoid schizophrenic. Not good.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
My brother calls me in to talk and said, “You know, I think you should get involved in some of the dirtier things. We have a problem with Zartan. The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill [now called the National Alliance on Mental Illness] and this [other] one and [yet another] one want us to do this and this and that. You talk to them. You’re more humanistic.” So I’m talking with NAMI and all I can tell you is we ended up settling it. You know, we promised we wouldn’t make any more with that [term on the package]. And we then did a campaign. Because one of the things with mental illness back in that time was much of it was behind closed doors. People were afraid to come forward with family members or [themselves]. And so we were one of the ones that helped them basically show that the stigma, that where wasn’t a stigma for someone being bipolar [and such]. And we worked with them for about four or five years. And then during my chairmanship at the TIA [Toy Industry of America] I was able to get the TIA to adopt the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
So, you know, you take something that is bad and one of my sayings, I think this is one of my sayings, but I’m not sure—I haven’t attributed it to someone else. And I always say, problems are like ice cream cones. If you don’t lick them quickly, they may become very messy. [AUDIENCE LAUGHS] And I try and explain to other CEO’s, you know, we look at whether it’s government or whatever, if you’ve got a problem, tell the people what the problem is. Tell people how you got there, what you’re going to do to fix it and then shut up. Most of the times people will only give out ten percent of the story and then they have to come back two weeks later and two weeks later. It doesn’t work.
[Hassenfeld calls out several international partners such as Palitoy, Borass, Boladelli, Toltoys, Lili Ledi, Estrella, and more, saying “It was a wonderful family.”]
But back in 1978 we did not have a good year. Hasbro was about a $70 million dollar company. We had lost $7 million dollars. And I think we were taking in about $300,000 or $400,000 dollars at that time in royalties where they were paying us a royalty to market G.I. Joe. Because in those days we did not have any international subs or children. And I went to General Mills, who owned Kenner and Parker [Brothers] and Tonka and they owned all of these companies overseas. And they really were a juggernaut.
And I went to Bernie. And Bernie and I, the General Mills people worked out where they bought—you haven’t heard this story, have you? They actually bought the international rights to G.I. Joe. They paid us $1.6 million dollars. $1.6 million dollars in those days would have been like $50 million to us today, in the sense that it was our lifeblood. And I don’t think my brother and my dad believed that I could, that I did it. And it hurt because it was most of my job. But anyway, we then bought it back in 1985. You know, we put it on loan and they messed it up. And then sometimes you take a second bite of the apple. But it was really that cash infusion in 1978 and somewhere in my archives I have a copy of the check and everything because even I couldn’t believe it.
The only other story that I’ll tell is that going back in time, you have no concept of where we would be making these toys. But if you can remember—you know, I talked about the dock strike. The last ship, and Wayne’s heard this story, but the last ship to leave Hong Kong before the dock strike was in 1971 was the Oshima Maru. And the problem is, again, it is very hard for you to conceive that in Hong Kong there were no containers in those days. You had what were called barges, that were called lighters.
Everything was put on pallets, you know, I think this high [PUTS ARM UP], strapped together. And you would lighter your cargo. There were no berths. Everything in Hong Kong was done in midstream. So all of the loading of the cargo, all of the product that you see, all of it went from the factory to a boat. From the boat it went next to the bigger boat. And the bigger boat hoisted it up and—anyway, we had a problem because the last ship was going to make Seattle. And Seattle was our port of call at the time. And I turned to the [factory] makers of G.I. Joe at the time and I said to them, “What are we going to do. This is the last ship out. And, you know, we’ve got all these pallets to get on the boat. This is a family business. They won’t let me come home [until it’s done].”
They said, “Okay, Alan. We’ve arranged for you to go onboard and meet the Japanese captain. Here are two bottles of Black Label.” You have to know back in the seventies, if you were Japanese, Black Label was like Gucci. It was a great sign. Many times they didn’t drink it. They put it on their mantle. But anyway. I get on board. The Japanese captain doesn’t speak English. I don’t speak Japanese. We have a couple of drinks together. The next thing I know the boat is sailing on the midnight tide. The next thing I remember is at six or seven o’clock in the morning and I found myself in my hotel room. Our cargo made it onto the boat. I don’t know what happened to the captain. We didn’t correspond afterward.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
The stories that you can tell. And the last one that I’ll tell very quickly. And then if you’ve got any questions. Henry Kissinger had this wonderful saying, “do any of you have any questions for my answers.” But before I do that—we chartered through World Airways, Universal Airways a bunch of airplanes to bring the goods back home during the dock strike. And I was on one end configuring the airplanes. I had someone helping me. But we had to load—the planes would normally leave at 12 or one o’clock in the morning. And the reason for that is Hong Kong in those days had a fairly short runway and you can’t take a fully-loaded airplane and take off in midday because of the heavy air.
So we would load the airplanes at night. It’s about midnight and all of a sudden I’ve got a problem. My stomach is killing me. Tom Sullivan loaded the bellies [of the planes]. I got to load the top of the airplane and the bathrooms. I filled those bathrooms with every G.I. Joe you could—
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
And all of a sudden it was hurting back here [GESTURES TO LOWER BACK]. And I said, “Tom, you got to get me back to the hotel.” The plane was loaded. In those days in Hong Kong there were no tunnels. You took, if you were late at night, if you were, you know, out on a date or whatever, you crossed the harbor. After midnight you took what was called a walla-walla. A walla-walla is like a [small ferry boat] but with a motor.
And the guy turns to Tom and says, “Gee. Your friend has really tied one on.” I said, “Eh, Tom. It’s okay. Don’t listen to him. Don’t hit him. Just get me to the hotel.” It’s the first time I had ever had kidney stones. And I didn’t even—you know, I went back to my brother and my dad and I said, “Do I get hazardous duty pay? I have kidney stones. I’m lying in bed.”
The only other good story on the airplanes is, I’ll never forget. We were in the back hall. AID had a program in Bangladesh and [A SECOND LOCATION]. They were taking blankets from Bangor, Maine, stopping in Winnipeg, going to [that second location] and then coming back to Hong Kong. We took the [manufactured] goods [our toy product] from Hong Kong and brought them over to Seattle. Well, I get a call from my brother, “Hey, Bro.” “Hi, Bro, what’s up?” Can’t be good. He’s calling me. He said, “Yeah. We got a problem. You know, there was a blizzard in Winnipeg. And the airplane going to [that second location] with 80,000 pounds of blankets was following a follow-me truck, and the follow-me truck took the wrong turn and has gone into a snowbank.”
I said, “Okay. So what?” He said, “Well, you don’t understand. There is one, main runway. The tail is still on the runway. The rest of the plane is in the gulch” or whatever you want to call it. So we were about 48 hours delayed on that. That was also my fault. I said, “How could it be my fault? I didn’t do anything.” But anyway, I honestly, I could tell one story after another about Joe.
DERRYL DEPRIEST: There is one I think the folks would like to hear…. [Hasbro] launched G.I. Joe at the factory with Harold, which remains our partner to this day, right? But G.I. Joe was a very comprehensive launch. So what did you do to get Harold on board. Were they new to us?
ALAN HASSENFELD: No. They actually—we had first worked with Harold on a windup Snoopy figure. One of the things that they asked me to make. I won’t go into. I just follow instructions. They made—and again, I don’t know if any of you remember, [but Deluxe/Topper] made probably one of the first major, competitive products to Barbie. They made something called the Dawn Doll. The Dawn Doll sold millions and millions and millions. But more than anything else, Harold was so professional in the articulation of the Dawn Doll and helping us. And it was a wonderful man who has passed away now, George Block and the man who ran all of his engineering was D.S. Chang.
And under D.S. was his son, Stanley. Now Stanley majored in husband veterinary. Don’t ask me how he got in the toy business! [AUDIENCE LAUGHS] The way they actually launched is I remember George coming to me and saying, “This is an awesome project.” I said, “George, I tell you what, let’s talk about this. I want to do something for your factory for all of the things that you’ve done for us. And so the way we launched and finalized on price and everything was I took about 100 of his factory workers on what was called a launch picnic. We chartered a boat and we went to Lantau Island [in Hong Kong]. And no, we didn’t get drunk. I don’t do that.
And it just was, it’s been a marriage that was heaven. But I think in all my days at Hasbro, other than our culture, our ethic, I believe our integrity, the thing that I’m most proud about, if you look at how much we buy from Asia today, about 70 to 75 percent of it are with people that we’ve worked with for 35 or 40 years. Now, most of our partners, and I don’t call them suppliers. They’re our partners. And I have words for people when they’re called suppliers. Most of our partners in Asia will say, “Alan, we don’t make money on Hasbro.” And I say, “Yeah, I know, but we don’t make money either in the retail market.”
Have you ever met a retailer that basically claims they make a profit? So we’re trying to still figure out to this day and if any of you can figure it out, who makes money in the toy industry. [AUDIENCE LAUGHS] But four or five of our partners are—one of them is probably one of the wealthiest people in the world today running Cheung Kong and Hutchison. Anyway, it’s a great group of people. And I respect the Chinese greatly. I know we have issues with them. But any time you can try and understand what they want and what you want and sit down and begin a dialogue you can solve any problem.
It’s when you put stakes in the sand and you make people think that you can’t sit down and dialogue, that you have problems. But Joe wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for the great ingenuity of many of our partners in the Far East. I mean, anybody remember Eagle Eye? The thing in the back of the neck and [his eyes went back and forth]. And the flocking machine. Now, the problem with the flocking machine is the Chinese do not really love the letter L. So it was always the focking machine. [AUDIENCE LAUGHS] And people would say, “Stop swearing.”
[Alan Hassenfeld takes two questions from the audience as the salad course is served, and talks about Palitoy and having regular brand meetings with international partners.]
I’ll close by saying if there ever was a lucky person it was me. There is no better business in the world…. I’m the only person in the room that never grew up. I still think demonically like a seven year-old. And I must tell you this, probably there are very few people that enter Santa’s kingdom that we want to call the world of toys, that ever want to leave it. There is just a fascination about using your imagination to create whatever you want.
But anyway, enjoy! Thank you for being as passionate as you are.
[In a surprise move, Alan Hassenfeld then pulls from a large envelope an original Don Stivers Adventure Team painting that makes Derryl DePreist gush. Hassenfeld refers to having the carry such art by hand to Hong Kong.]
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Alan Hassenfeld’s joy in recalling these adventures made for a lovely dinner, and totally encapsulated and enhanced the HASCON experience. I appreciated those oddball specifics — the heaviness of air at takeoff time, squeezing product onto a plane rather than a container ship, and references to others who worked with him at Hasbro and abroad. Maybe you had to be there. For more, read Toy Wars and Kid Number One.
While I only briefly spoke with Hassenfeld one time, and sat near him as he held court this other time, for as long as I’ve been aware of Hasbro (and longer), he’s been out there. I always assumed if I could finish my book a little sooner, get it done a little faster, I might tell him about it, or ask him to write the introduction. That he’s gone is sad. My condolences to Alan Hassenfeld’s family and friends, and to the many people who knew Alan, who worked for and partnered with him.
Next: we return to our regularly scheduled summer blogging season with a big report on the DFW G.I. Joe and Action Figure Show, held in late June 2025.
A Real American Book! 