2 Roundwood Avenue, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Middlesex. UB11 1AZ
How easy? The company had a five year lifespan and only one address. That's pretty easy and I need an easy company to write about because, if everything goes to plan, I'm on the last day of a two week holiday in Japan and I won't have time to write anything significant [1].
Hasbro Interactive Ltd was created on 28 December 1995 when an off the shelf company called Capitalbid had its name changed. The aim of the new company was to create games based on existing Hasbro intellectual property. Hasbro, as a toy company, had previously dabbled in the UK software market by licencing the rights for various board games and toys to software companies. Ocean's Transformers was an early one. It's hard to find other examples because of the fragmented toy market; to give an obvious example, versions of Monopoly and Risk are credited to Parker Brothers until 1991 when Hasbro brought out Tonka Toys, the then owner of Parker Brothers. Action Force is another. The 1987 Virgin game is credited to Milton Bradley International, even though they were a subsidiary of Hasbro after 1984.
The first thing to do, as always, is try and get a sense of what games were released in what order. The Mobygames entry for Hasbro Interactive is frankly a bit of a nightmare because of all the assorted corporate takeovers (of which, more later) but it's clear Monopoly, Risk, Cluedo, and Battleship were all released in 1996. That's good. All nice and simple. The Mobygame records include pictures of the boxes. I might as well just double check what address they give on the back.... Oh!
Caswell Way, Newport, Gwent, NP9 0YH
Once again Satan does something unspeakable in my kettle. An address in Wales? Fiddle-de-de! This was supposed to be easy and quick. Why do Hasbro Interactive games carry an address in Wales, 123 miles from where they were based in Uxbridge?
It looks like Hasbro, the parent company, operated over a split site. The customer service and shipping was all handled from Wales while the head office was (and still is, it's just moved a little) in Uxbridge. When it came to putting an address on the game boxes it obviously made sense to use the address of an already established customer service team. In Wales. I wouldn't mind but I was actually right next to Wales earlier this year (I drove across the Severn bridge and everything). I now have little chance of getting back there any time soon. Damn. It's a shame because according to Streetview, visitors to the Newport site are welcomed by this jaunty sign.
Anyway, let's return to the Uxbridge and when I write Uxbridge please mentally add "(and Wales)" and assume my soul dies a little more each time.
2 Roundwood Avenue, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Middlesex. UB11 1AZ
Hasbro Interactive had a strict remit to exploit the intellectual property of the Hasbro Inc. toy company and their associated subsidiaries. And boy did they do it; Monopoly, Mr. Potato Head Saves Veggie Valley, Battleship, Boggle, Cluedo, Risk, Scrabble, Tonka Construction, Ultimate Yahtzee. That, according to Wikipedia, is the 1996 line up. Its a very odd and seemingly dated selection. 1996 was the year of Tomb Raider, Super Mario 64, Wipeout 2097, and Civilization II. Who was buying a computer version of Boggle? And yet Hasbro Interactive was a success and did the same again in 1997. Then, when the company did expand their remit, what do they do? Licence Frogger from Atari.
To answer my own question "who was buying a computer version of Boggle?" The answer was people who thought their kids or grandkids would like to play to play Boggle on a computer. Or Monopoly or Cluedo. The name recognition was worth it's weight in gold.
Frogger fell into the same sweet spot. It was brought by some of the people who were also playing Tomb Raider but it was mainly brought by people who remembered playing it the first time around, and wanted to play it again or play it with their kids. The game later got a massive boost in America when the Seinfeld episode The Frogger aired on April 23, 1998. The Frogger was the nineteenth episode of the ninth series of Seinfeld, a point where the series was being watched by around 38 million viewers each week. There's a post by former Hasbro executive Tom Dusenberry, over on Linkdin, and he recalls:
I received a call from #1 TV show Seinfeld’s Executive Producer, Larry David, asking for permission to create an entire Seinfeld episode on Frogger. We asked that NBC provide us with the Seinfeld TV show air date so that Jim Adams, Jon Leach, Russell Serbagi, Joan Ransey, Linda Wolf, Terri Schiek, Steve Pease and our sales team could load Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Comp USA, GameStop, Target, ToysRUs and other game retailers. This kept Frogger at the top of the game charts and Frogger was a steady seller until we successfully launched Frogger II...We acquired the Atari business after the success of Frogger
Frogger sold something like 4 million copies worldwide. It was a massive success even before the Seinfeld episode which was why Hasbro brought the Atari rights for the bargain price of $5 million. The acquisition also fitted with the direction of Hasbro as a company in the nineties. They don't really seem to have been in the business of making toys at the time. Their Wikipedia entry says this:
In the US, Hasbro's growth since 1980 was from acquisitions and the leveraging of the new assets. New product development was not as successful except for film and TV tie-in product lines with Jurassic Park and Barney. Thus, US sales were stagnant in the early 1990s, falling from 1993 to 1995.
Starting in 1984, Hasbro operated under the same growth by acquisition philosophy that gripped Infogrames; 1984, Hasbro brought the Milton Bradley Company who owned the rights to Game of Life and Twister. Then across 1988 and 1989 they brought out Coleco. 1991, saw them buy Tonka Corp who owned Parker Brothers (Monopoly) and Kenner Products. Hasbro Interactive followed in the footsteps of their parent company. They made three purchases just in 1998; Atari in February, Avalon Hill on 4 August, then MicroProse on August 14. The following year they brought educational software company Europress [2].
It worked. The company brought itself a portfolio and was very successful. The problem, from my perspective, is that Hasbro Interactive seem quite anonymous because all the titles I'm interested in were released under the MicroProse banner. I've previously been critical of companies like Infogrames coming in and erasing the Ocean and Gremlin brands but I can see why they do it. It's not just about the synergy (ugh). It's about making people aware your company exists and is doing good stuff. Hasbro carried on ploughing their furrow of board game adaptions, educational software, and games for young children. I'm sure there are plenty of people who have fond memories of playing Action Man: Mission Xtreme but it was never on my radar.
Hasbro Interactive was a huge sucess until it suddenly wasn't. Overall the year 2000 was a bad one for Hasbro, there's an archived report from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, dated 2005 (I think). It contains some fascinating stuff in it about Hasbro's unrealistic ambitions for Hasbro Interactive. Essentially, the parent company saw revenues double in 1997, from $35 million to $86 million, and then to $196 million in revenue, with profits of $23 million. Suddenly there was talk of Hasbro Interactive being a $1 billion revenue company in 1999. Following the Europress acquisition in 1999 there was even talk about Hasbro Interactive buying up Electronic Arts. Instead, the 1999 accounts closed with a $74 million loss on $237 million in revenue. Then 2000 was a bad year for Hasbro itself as the Tuck School of Business described:
It was also a difficult year for Hasbro as a whole. Several major product lines fell short of expectations, including Star Wars, Furby, and Pokemon. With fewer resources available, debates between business unit heads about appropriate uses of capital became much more contentious. Hasbro’s stock price dropped from $37 in the spring of 1999 to $11 by the middle of 2000. For the first time in more than two decades, Hasbro would lose money in 2000.
In December 2000, Hasbro decided to sell Hasbro Interactive to Infogrames for $100 million.
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| August 2026 |
That's where the non Wales bit of Hasbro Interactive was based, 2 Roundwood Avenue, Stockley Park in Uxbridge. The picture was taken at the ungodly time of 8.45am on a Sunday morning. It was hot and I woke up very early and the idea of driving 45 minutes to the outskirts of London didn't seem totally insane. It turns out there was a Cafe Nero on the park who were happy to sell me a sausage bap and a coffee. This seemed like an adequate reward. I've been to Stockley Park before, when I wrote about Activision, although they didn't arrive in the area until 2006 [3].
Landmark House, Hammersmith Bridge Road, London W6
When Infogrames took over they did everything that Hasbro didn't. MicroProse became Infogrames Chippenham and Hasbro Interactive became Infogrames Interactive on 31 January 2001. Their address was changed at the end of the year to Infogrames business address which was here.
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| February 2024 |
The building was pulled down in 2019 so that's a photo of an empty space in Hammersmith. Yes, I am allowed to vote, why do you ask?
The business review in the 2000 company accounts says:
On 6 December 2000, a preliminary agreement was signed for the sale of Hasbro Interactive Inc. to Infogrames Entertainment SA. This transaction involved the sale of various subsidiaries including Infogrames Interactive Limited, formerly named Hasbro Interactive Limited.
The sale of Hasbro Interactive Inc. to Infogrames Entertainment SA was approved by shareholders and completed on 26 January 2001. The name of Hasbro Interactive Limited was changed to Infogrames Interactive Limited at this date.
Immediately after acquisition the company ceased trading in the marketing, sale and distribution of games. games This entailed ceasing to trade with a number of customers, making staff redundant and providing for certain other closure costs.
Infogrames Interactive ceased trading in 2001. Infogrames Chippenham was closed in 2002. Infogrames themselves (by now called Atari, it's complicated) sold the digital rights to Hasbro games back to Hasbro in 2005; welcome to late-stage capitalism.
If you live in Newport please take a picture of the Hasbro building and send it to whereweretheynow@gmail.com before my soul withers completely. Leave a comment and/or follow me on Bluesky @shammountebank.bsky.social
[1] The bulk of this article was written about a month in advance, hence the "if everything goes to plan" comment. I didn't want to taunt the gods with my hubris. I've seen The Odyssey. I am happy to confirm live, as it were, that everything did go to plan and I am sitting in the bar of the Hotel Gracery, Shinjuku, writing this bit on my phone.
[2] This was the remnants of Europress Publishing, who had once released games under the banner of Database Software.
[3] Whisper it very softly but I toyed with the idea of not going back to Stockley Park. During the preliminary research for this article I scoped out Stockley Park on Streetview and had a sneaking suspicion the Activision building (3 Roundwood Avenue) and the Hasbro building (2 Roundwood Avenue) were identical. It turns out they are not. They are just very, very, very, very, very similar.
[4] Obviously this isn't true. The rights had value in themselves and were sold on as part of the process of dissolution (which is why you can buy MicroProse games today). However, this makes for a lovely end to the article so I'm playing my poetic licence card.
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