Hasbro and Lego (Ep. 22)

Gamecraft · May 7, 2025 · 44m

Mitch and Blake look at two of the largest toy companies in the world, Hasbro and Lego, and discuss their divergent but ultimately very successful forays into the games business as licensors of intellectual property.

Your hosts discuss how both Hasbro and Lego tried to enter the games business directly as developers and publishers of digital games in the late 1990s, how they had very different experiences of success and failure, and how both decided to exit the business in the early 2000s only to return as licensors rather than publishers later in that decade. Mitch tells the story about why…