Kenner

Kenner Products was a toy company founded in 1947 in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was purchased by Tonka in 1987 and both were purchased by Hasbro in 1991. It was in charge of Transformers, and Hasbro's other boys' toys brands, from 1995 until 2000, when its Cincinnati offices were closed and all Kenner brands were moved back to Pawtucket, Rhode Island and merged under the Hasbro name.

When Transformers was transferred to Kenner, Generation 2 somewhat suddenly stopped production, and in January of 1996, Beast Wars hit toy store shelves.

In Europe, multilingual packaging came in two versions during Beast Wars: French/Dutch/German and English/Spanish/Italian. Both versions sported Kenner logos just like those toys' United States counterparts did, with the English/Spanish/Italian version also sporting a small GiG logo, as the latter company was still handling distribution in Italy by that point. With the release of Fuzors and Transmetals, Kenner's name was replaced by Hasbro logos (whereas the United States versions of those toys still featured Kenner logos), and the GiG logo was dropped entirely, since Hasbro's Italian branch had taken over distribution by that point.

External links

• Kenner at Wikipedia
• Kenner history
• Hasbro's corporate history (includes information on the Tonka/Kenner buyout)
• Kenner's Ohio offices close for good (from the Cincinnati Enquirer)