Former Hasbro Employees Speak Out On Corporate Culture And Inner Workings Of the Toy Company

As a companion piece to yesterday’s bombshell news that Hasbro will fire about 20% of its total workforce in 2023 I would like to point you to a podcast hosted by YouTube channel 3POA. Now this podcast is from early 2023, after the initial round of layoffs was announced and does not talk about the current layoffs, but the things said by two former Hasbro employees are certainly still valid 10 months later.

3POA talked about the layoffs and inner working of Hasbro with two ex Hasbro employees, Bobby Vala, of Valaverse, creator of the Action Force toyline, who used to work on the GI Joe team as a designer at Hasbro (and was fired in 2018) and Rick Laprade, who was Hasbro’s social media manager and also responsible for content creation, who was let go during the pandemic. The podcast is on the long side, 92 minutes, but if you want to get an insight on how it is to work at Hasbro and what the company culture is like it will be highly informative and maybe even shocking here and there. Click through for a few highlights from the podcast!

Bobby Vala and Rick Laprade on the 3POA podcast

I will not summarize the video in full, since it’s quite packed with stories and anecdotes, so what follows are just a some of the highlights!

The most surprising, to me, detail was shared by Bobby Vala, who is a former Hasbro designer and he worked, among other things, on GI Joe Classified. According to him Hasbro does VERY little actual designing in house these days, and most designers work more like managers who oversee and maybe add small details to sculpts made by 3rd party studios. Bobby named Gentle Giant who, at least when he was with Hasbro, did a ton of the action figure sculpts. Bobby specifically talks about one prominent GI Joe designer who was let go earlier this year, Corey. According to Bobby Corey hardly ever designed anything anymore even though he is an extremely talented designer. Corey’s higher ups would, according to Bobby, just do a google image search of some character they want to get made, send the pics to Corey, who would then outsource things and mostly just manage that. And Bobby further stated that almost no designer even draws concepts anymore, even that is outsourced.

Social media manager Rick and Bobby both also talked about the company culture: according to them people tend to live in fear of getting fired, rumors make the rounds two to three months in advance. And you get no prior notice, no warning. Rick was in the midst of creating new content and had various ongoing projects when he got an email from upper management with an appointment for a meeting. He immediately contacted his own boss and inquired if he should worry, since this is highly unusual, but the boss told him “you’re safe, don’t worry”. Only he wasn’t safe, he was fired that day. And he was the ONLY social media manager Hasbro had at the time, the sole person responsible for handling that aspect, including the community aspect of Pulse and other things.

According to Bobby Vala when yet another round of layoffs is happening all the managers and employees hide in their offices that day. The managers hide because they do not want to see the consequences… and the employees hide because few want to see former colleagues dissolved in tears, carrying their boxes with their stuff through the long Hasbro hallways, escorted by security as if they are felons.

Rick had also a few things to say about if upper management actually cares about fans, this question was raised in the super chat. And he put it very bluntly: “no”. According to Rick they do not care about the existing fanbase at all, all they care about is if the stuff moves, they do not care who buys it, as long as anyone buys it, fans mean nothing to upper management.

Rick furthermore shared an anecdote about clueless brand managers. Now Rick didn’t drop a name but he talked about his first meeting with a new Hasbro Star Wars brand manager and that brand manager said things like “My favorite Star Wars movie is the one with the space teddy bears”. Which, if you believe Rick, just showed how totally clueless the person was and how little they actually knew about the brand they are supposed to manage. Now as I said, he didn’t drop any name, but the only big change the brand management team had was when Steve Evans moved to another team and Patrick replaced him. But this is just speculation.

Listen to the podcast for a lot more things. And remember, ex employees do not necessarily have positive things to say about the company that fired them, but both Bobby and Rick do not come across as vindictive in the podcast. They paint a picture of a company where the people in charge do not care one bit about fans, where brand managers and other managers tend to be pretty clueless about the things they are supposed to manage and where the actual fans working at Hasbro, the sculptors and designers tend to sculpt very little, with much of the work outsourced to 3rd parties. Where shareholders come before customers. Where you never know when the hammer drops next and if you’ll bet let go without notice or warning.

Click here to watch the full 92 minute podcast, it is worth your time if you want to gain an insight on what working for Hasbro is like, as reported by two former Hasbro employees.

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