http://bostonglobe.com/business/2013...DrM/story.html
I'm not surprised. Brian Goldner is an idiot and the company has been faltering under his "leadership". They killed off GI Joe, sold Transformers to the worst film director out there and despite those movies somehow being successful, Hasbro gets so little from them with Bay, Murphy, etc pocketing most of that money. The films made 3 bil worldwide and Hasbro is still in trouble? MLP is a runaway success of a show but hasbro barely cared to make toys based on that cartoon and only got around to it 2 years after the show began, which really hurt the toy sales. "Pink sells" is all this company can see for lines aimed at girls, but it's not true. Marvel is barely doing well thanks to movie lines piling up in stores, Star wars is really only kept alive thanks to SW fans and face it, the company hasn't had a new IP in almost 20 years. The best they've done lately is dig up a couple of old, forgotten brands. Transformers isn't what it was and they're actually getting their butts handed to them by 3rd party companies. They lost money on the Battleship film, and they keep driving their old customers away with their "the fans don't matter" attitude(see my sig).
Bad 4th quarter? 2012 was actually a really lousy year for Hasbro seeing as their 1st and 2nd quarters were also poor. The 3rd was their only positive for the year. At the rate they're going the company might end up in bad trouble- I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of their acquired companies get sold off to competitors this year and brands scaled back big time.
Meanwhile, Mattel is on top thanks to Monster High.