Download or read book Toy Wars written by G. Wayne Miller and published by Crown Business. This book was released on 2012-11-21 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the real toy story, an unprecedented behind-the-scenes journey through a world of influence, fantasy, and multimillion-dollar Hollywood deals, a world where the whims of children make millionaires and topple titans. This is also the story of an unusual man. Alan Hassenfeld, the chief executive officer of Hasbro, never intended to run a Fortune 500 company. A free spirit who dreamed of being a writer and exploring Asia, he was content to remain in the shadow of his older brother Stephen, a marketing genius who transformed a family firm established by immigrant Jews into powerhouse and Wall Street darling. Then tragedy struck. Stephen, and intensely private man, died of AIDS, a disease he had not acknowledged he had, even to his family. Alan Hassenfeld was named CEO, just as Hasbro was facing a daunting onslaught of challenges. Toy Wars is about Alan's struggle to balance the demands of the bottom line with his ideals about the kind of toys children deserve, as well as the ethical obligations of management. Wayne Miller, an award-winning journalist and novelist, was granted unprecedented access to Hasbro, the maker of G.I. Joe, Star Wars toys, Mr. Potato Head, Batman, Monopoly, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, and countless other favorites. For five years, he sat in on design sessions, marketing meetings, and focus groups, and interviewed employees in every part of the company. He witnessed a major corporate restructuring; crucial deal with Dreamworks SKG; a hostile takeover bid by archrival Mattel; the collapse of a $45 million virtual reality game; and the company makeover of G.I. Joe, Hasbro's flagship product and one of the most popular toys of all time. Toy Wars is filled with many colorful characters, including: Hollywood moguls Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, whose kid-friendly movies can translate into licensing gold for toymakers Mighty Morphin Power Rangers creator Haim Saban, who tapped into a popular Japanese TV series and made it a worldwide television and merchandising phenomenon Mattel CEO Jill Barad, the second-highest-paid woman in corporate America, who promotes and defends Barbie with the zeal of a religious crusader Hasbro executive Al Verrecchia, the loyal second in command who did not let friendship or tradition stand in the way of a dramatic restructuring Larry Bernstein, arguably the best toy salesman ever, a riotous raconteur whose divisional presidency crumbled when he was unable to meet Hasbro's profit goals Rich in family drama and written with sly wit, Toy Wars is a deeply compelling business story, a fascinating tour through a billion-dollar industry that exerts tremendous influence on the lives of children everywhere.
Download or read book The Ultimate Guide to Vintage Star Wars Action Figures 1977 1985 written by Mark Bellomo and published by Krause Publications Incorporated. This book was released on 2014 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Showcases and details the rare, popular, forgotten, and beloved figures coveted by fans the world over.
Download or read book Little Cold Wars Wargaming the Cold War Using Toy Soldiers written by John Curry and published by . This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Possibly the sort of wargame H.G Wells might have developed if he had been a child in the 1970s. But perhaps not. Written by Tim Gow (shown left) and Bertrand Plastique, the book recreates battles from the era of the Cold War. Based on the original ideas of H.G. Wells, this book brings the original toy soldier rules up to date to recreate wars from the time of the Cold War onto the wargamer's table top or preferably, his lawn. The rules grasp the essentials of Cold War combat; movement, close assault, direct fire, artillery and air support. They also include additional rules to cover the complexities of engineering, smoke and the wider air battle. They do so in a style reminiscent of Little Wars, just with tanks and aircraft. These rules are straightforward, but comprehensive toy soldier rules that allow the wargamer to experience the battles, actual and potential, from those days.
Download or read book Star Wars the Vintage Collection Archive Edition written by Rich Alot and published by . This book was released on 2021-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive guide to Hasbro Star Wars: The Vintage Collection 3.75-Inch Action Figures and Toys released between 2010 -2019.
Download or read book Star Wars Super Collectors Wishbook written by Geoffrey Carlton and published by American Quilter's Society. This book was released on 2002-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the release of Star Wars, Episode II, in theaters this spring, a new collecting frenzy will begin for Star Wars collectors everywhere. Not only will there be new merchandise crowding store shelves, but vintage collectibles are sure to skyrocket in value. Star Wars collectibles have been around since the year before the release of the first movie in 1976. Fans and collectors need a trustworthy source for all of these items, and Star Wars Super Collectors Wish Book will fulfill their destiny. There is no other book on the market that even comes close to this oneits loaded with over 23,000 listings and almost 9,000 color photographs! Values are given for loose and mint-in-package movie and character items: cookie jars, puzzles, costumes, action figures, playsets, cups, vehicles, posters, trading cards, micromachines, and thousands more. The book is divided into broad categories for easy location of items, unlike other guides on the market that leave you guessing. In both quantity and quality, this guide is unparalleled and surpasses all others. Though massive, its format makes it a quick, easy-to-use reference. Trust the force to guide you toward Star Wars Super Collectors Wish Book!
Download or read book Star Wars Vintage Action Figures written by John P. Kellerman and published by . This book was released on 2005-05-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Irwin Toys written by James T. McCallum and published by London : CG Pub.. This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irwin Toys The Canadian Star Wars Connection is the first book ever published on the subject of rare Canadian Star Wars toys. Canadian expert collector James McCallum has assembled pictures and the history of some of Star Wars rarest toys. The book details uniquely Canadian Star Wars Toys. With more than a decade of experience in dealing with Canadian Star Wars toys, McCallum shares with us not just the details of the toys themselves, but also how and why they came to be; their availability in the collecting world; and of course, their current market vales; and all done with full colour pictures!
Download or read book Star Wars The Ultimate Action Figure Collection written by Stephen J. Sansweet and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2012-11-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here at last is the complete and definitive collection of the more than 2,500 Star Wars® action figures produced over the last 35 years. Fans and collectors can finally trace the evolution of each character in toy form from the time of their first appearance through the designs of today, with pages of amazing and inventive variations crafted to tell the stories of Luke Skywalker, Darth Maul, and literally hundreds more. Compiled by Stephen J. Sansweet, owner of the world's largest private collection of Star Wars memorabilia, the book also showcases and details the rare, popular, forgotten, and beloved figures coveted by fans the world over, drawing figures from the feature film, video game, and cartoon realms of the vast Star Wars universe.
Download or read book The Ultimate Guide to G I Joe 1982 1994 written by Mark Bellomo and published by Krause Publications. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide to the guts-and-glory of G.I. Joe identifies every figure with all its weapons and gear, every vehicle with all the easy-to-lose pieces and every accessory related to Hasbros stellar team of soldiers. Use The Ultimate Guide to G.I. Joe to expand your knowledge about Joe and the team, or Cobra and his cronies, and to identify and assess the value of any of the series 350 action figures and 240 vehicles and accessories.
Download or read book Kid Number One written by G. Wayne Miller and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having escaped religious persecution in Eastern Europe in 1903, Alan Hassenfeld's grandfather and great-uncle arrived in America as penniless teenage immigrants - refugees who went from hawking rags on the streets of New York City to building what became the world's largest toy company, Hasbro. Alan's father, Merrill, brought Mr. Potato Head and G.I. Joe to consumers and his only brother, Stephen, made Hasbro a Fortune 500 company and Hollywood player. Alan was the free spirit who wanted to write novels, date beautiful women and travel the world. He never wanted to run Hasbro, and no one ever believed he would - or could. And then Stephen died, tragically of AIDS. "Kid Number One," as Alan liked to call himself, was suddenly chairman and CEO. Silencing the skeptics, he took the company to greater heights - and then almost killed it with a series of bad decisions including Hasbro's acquisition of rights to POKéMON. Putting ego aside, Hassenfeld gave his long-time lieutenant Al Verrecchia command and set in motion a plan whereby he would leave the corner office. Verrecchia saved the company, and after renewed success, he himself retired, leaving Hasbro in the hands of current CEO and chairman Brian Goldner, so highly regarded that he was brought onto the board of CBS. With his fortune, Hassenfeld could have sailed into the sunset on a yacht, but instead, he went to work expanding the long family tradition of Tikkun Olam - "repairing the world" - begun by his grandfather and great-uncle, who, grateful to have survived, tirelessly helped immigrants and needy citizens of their new country. Alan Hassenfeld's philanthropy has helped build two children's hospitals, establish numerous educational and health programs, train young doctors and scientists, resettle refugees, promote peace in the Mideast and more. For decades, he also has been a highly visible advocate for national political and ethics reform, despite personal threats and the scorn of crooked politicians. Kid Number One: A story of heart, soul and business, featuring Alan Hassenfeld and Hasbro, weaves these stories into a seamless, dramatic narrative that begins with the slaughter of Jews in 1903 Poland and continues to today -- when in an era of unchecked narcissism and greed, Hassenfeld, like Bill Gates, serves as a model for what people of great wealth can do when they put self aside. Kid Number One also chronicles the history of American toys -- and not just such Hasbro classics as Monopoly, Transformers and Star Wars, but also Mattel's timeless brands including Barbie and many lesser-known toys by companies large and small, many no longer in existence. Granted exclusive and unprecedented access inside a $5-billion toy and family-entertainment company and one of America's leading if largely unknown philanthropies, G. Wayne Miller, author of the best-selling Toy Wars: The epic struggle between G.I. Joe, Barbie and the companies that make them, is uniquely qualified to tell this tale.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies written by Frederick Luis Aldama and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 745 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comic book studies has developed as a solid academic discipline, becoming an increasingly vibrant field in the United States and globally. A growing number of dissertations, monographs, and edited books publish every year on the subject, while world comics represent the fastest-growing sector of publishing. The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies looks at the field systematically, examining the history and evolution of the genre from a global perspective. This includes a discussion of how comic books are built out of shared aesthetic systems such as literature, painting, drawing, photography, and film. The Handbook brings together readable, jargon-free essays written by established and emerging scholars from diverse geographic, institutional, gender, and national backgrounds. In particular, it explores how the term "global comics" has been defined, as well the major movements and trends that will drive the field in the years to come. Each essay will help readers understand comic books as a storytelling form grown within specific communities, and will also show how these forms exist within what can be considered a world system of comics.
Download or read book Convergence Culture written by Henry Jenkins and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2008-09 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “What the future fortunes of [Gramsci’s] writings will be, we cannot know. However, his permanence is already sufficiently sure, and justifies the historical study of his international reception. The present collection of studies is an indispensable foundation for this.” —Eric Hobsbawm, from the preface Antonio Gramsci is a giant of Marxian thought and one of the world's greatest cultural critics. Antonio A. Santucci is perhaps the world's preeminent Gramsci scholar. Monthly Review Press is proud to publish, for the first time in English, Santucci’s masterful intellectual biography of the great Sardinian scholar and revolutionary. Gramscian terms such as “civil society” and “hegemony” are much used in everyday political discourse. Santucci warns us, however, that these words have been appropriated by both radicals and conservatives for contemporary and often self-serving ends that often have nothing to do with Gramsci’s purposes in developing them. Rather what we must do, and what Santucci illustrates time and again in his dissection of Gramsci’s writings, is absorb Gramsci’s methods. These can be summed up as the suspicion of “grand explanatory schemes,” the unity of theory and practice, and a focus on the details of everyday life. With respect to the last of these, Joseph Buttigieg says in his Nota: “Gramsci did not set out to explain historical reality armed with some full-fledged concept, such as hegemony; rather, he examined the minutiae of concrete social, economic, cultural, and political relations as they are lived in by individuals in their specific historical circumstances and, gradually, he acquired an increasingly complex understanding of how hegemony operates in many diverse ways and under many aspects within the capillaries of society.” The rigor of Santucci’s examination of Gramsci’s life and work matches that of the seminal thought of the master himself. Readers will be enlightened and inspired by every page.
Download or read book Media and Cultural Studies written by Meenakshi Gigi Durham and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together a range of core texts into one volume, thisacclaimed anthology offers the definitive resource in culture,media, and communication. A fully revised new edition of the bestselling anthology inthis dynamic and multidisciplinary field New contributions include essays from Althusser through toHenry Jenkins, and a completely new section on Globalization andSocial Movements Retains important emphasis on the giant thinkers and“makers” of the field: Gramsci on hegemony; Althusseron ideology; Horkheimer and Adorno on the culture industry; RaymondWilliams on Marxist cultural theory; Habermas on the public sphere;McLuhan on media; Chomsky on propaganda; hooks and Mulvey on thesubjects of visual pleasure and oppositional gazes Features a substantial critical introduction, short sectionintroductions and full bibliographic citations
Download or read book Official Gazette of the United States Patent and Trademark Office written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Communicating Marginalized Masculinities written by Ronald L. Jackson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For years, research concerning masculinities has explored the way that men have dominated, exploited, and dismantled societies, asking how we might make sense of marginalized masculinities in the context of male privilege. This volume asks not only how terms such as men and masculinity are socially defined and culturally instantiated, but also how the media has constructed notions of masculinity that have kept minority masculinities on the margins. Essays explore marginalized masculinities as communicated through film, television, and new media, visiting representations and marginalized identity politics while also discussing the dangers and pitfalls of a media pedagogy that has taught audiences to ignore, sidestep, and stereotype marginalized group realities. While dominant portrayals of masculine versus feminine characters pervade numerous television and film examples, this collection examines heterosexual and queer, military and civilian, as well as Black, Japanese, Indian, White, and Latino masculinities, offering a variance in masculinities and confronting male privilege as represented on screen, appealing to a range of disciplines and a wide scope of readers.
Download or read book A Million Little Bricks written by Sarah Herman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toy of the Year, Toy of the Century, Greatest Toy of All Time . . . there aren't many titles that haven’t been bestowed on LEGO toys, and it’s not hard to see why. From its inception in the early 1930s right up until today, the LEGO Group’s history is as colorful as the toys it makes. Few other playthings share the LEGO brand’s creative spirit, educative benefits, resilience, quality, and universal appeal. The LEGO name is now synonymous with playtime, but it wasn’t always so. This history charts the birth of the LEGO Group in the workshop of a Danish carpenter and its steady growth as a small, family-run toy manufacturer to its current position as a market-leading, award-winning brand. The company’s ever-increasing catalogof products—including the earliest wooden toys, plastic bricks, play themes, and other building systems such as DUPLO, Technic, and MINDSTORMS—are chronicled in detail, alongside the manufacturing process, LEGOLAND parks, licensed toys, and computer games. Learn all about how LEGO pulled itself out of an economic crisis and embraced technology to make building blocks relevant to twenty-first-century children and discover the vibrant fan community of kids and adults whose conventions, websites, and artwork keep the LEGO spirit alive. As nostalgic as it is contemporary, A Million Little Bricks will have you reminiscing about old Classic Space sets, rummaging through the attic for forgotten Minifigure friends, and playing with whatever LEGO bricks you can get your hands on (even if it means sharing with your kids).
Download or read book Building a History written by Sarah Herman and published by Grub Street Publishers. This book was released on 2012-07-09 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of these beloved bricks and the people who built an empire with them. From its inception in the early 1930s right up until today, the LEGO Group’s history is as colorful as the toys it makes. Few other playthings share the LEGO brand’s creative spirit, educational benefits, resilience, quality, and universal appeal. This history charts the birth of the LEGO Group from the workshop of a Danish carpenter and its steady growth as a small, family-run toy manufacturer to its current position as a market-leading, award-winning brand. The company’s growing catalogue of products—including the earliest wooden toys, plastic bricks, play themes and other building systems such as DUPLO, Technic, and MINDSTORMS—are chronicled in detail, alongside the manufacturing process, LEGOLAND parks, licensed toys, and computer games. Learn all about how LEGO pulled itself out of an economic crisis and embraced technology to make building blocks relevant to twenty-first century children, and discover the vibrant fan community of kids and adults whose conventions, websites, and artwork keep the LEGO spirit alive. Building a History will have you reminiscing about old Classic Space sets, rummaging through the attic for forgotten minifigure friends, and playing with whatever LEGO bricks you can get your hands on (even if it means sharing with your kids).
