Hasbro, Creative Growth and More: The Loyal Subjects on its Latest and Greatest
Jonathan Cathey, chief executive officer and founder, The Loyal Subjects, discusses the company’s licensing deal with Hasbro, its new creative director and more.
The Loyal Subjects, a brand specializing in toys, fashion dolls, plush and collectibles, has entered a multi-property licensing deal with Hasbro to serve up brands including Popples, My Pet Monster, Jem and The Holograms, Playskool My Buddy, R.O.M. and M.A.S.K. Additionally, Dina Al Rifai has joined TLS as creative director.
Marking the 40th anniversary of M.A.S.K., Jem and The Holograms and Playskool My Buddy, 2025 will be a celebration for these classic brands and their toys.
On Feb. 1, Walmart will be releasing Playskool My Buddy and Jem and The Holograms, through this retro-reimagined approach. New M.A.S.K. offerings will be released in the summer and will replicate the originals but with modern upgrades. The new Popples and My Pet Monster products will also start to be released in fall 2025. To discuss these developments at The Loyal Subjects, License Global sat down with Jonathan Cathey, chief executive officer and founder, The Loyal Subjects.
License Global: What makes Hasbro and The Loyal Subjects a good fit for licensing? What does each company have to offer one another?
Jonathan Cathey: There’s a lot of compatibility between us and Hasbro. It comes through some of the people. Our general manager and senior vice president, Ben Montano, was over at Hasbro for a long time, running the Transformers brand for around 10 years. He knows the brands well. I know the brands well because I grew up with them. Part is just nostalgia from the love that I have for those brands as well.
We’re good toy makers. We make great action figures, great fashion dolls, great plush, we can do it all and have been doing it for a long time. We’re really fan-facing, and now, as the company’s growing, the industry is starting to take notice of what we're doing. It’s the stuff that we like to work on, and I think that makes a good brand partner. We want to work on it, and we have a lot of passion for it. We want to tell those stories. We want to get them out in the market and give them that same treatment that they deserve, that has created those fans for the last 40 years, and in turn, bring in new fans. It’s not just about raising the flag for guys like me who are now 50, but we get to bring in a whole new generation of fans into this realm.
I also think we have a really good product development grip inside the company, updating it so it’s applicable to a larger swath of customers, more of a big tech experience. Hasbro is also good at that big tech experience, and even on the nostalgia side, if you look at retail, everything’s nostalgic. We’re all playing in the same pool a little bit, but we have a nice fingerprint on our product development and what we bring to the market, and it’s unique the way that we procure products. I think the brands recognize that.
Some of the brands you’re working with for Hasbro include Popples, My Pet Monster, Jem and The Holograms, Playskool My Buddy, R.O.M. and M.A.SK. How is The Loyal Subjects planning on extending these properties?
We’re starting with Walmart in spring 2025 with a great hero item: Jem, a 12-inch fashion doll with the full blown-out Samantha Fox 80’s rocker hairdo and that cool face makeup. We put the song in the bass too, so you can jam along with Jem. You just press a button. There’s a lot of detail, from the box to accessories, so that’s the hero SKU coming out at Walmart this spring.
Popples is this tactile plush. They’re these kooky kinds of characters, and they had their own TV show back in the ’80s. Saban did a good job with them originally, so we’re procuring some of that fun element and making sure we have all that intact.
M.A.S.K. is interesting; we’re aligning that release during the holiday season, and the goodwill on that brand is insane. It has been sitting inside of the garage, with people outside the garage door just banging on it, trying to rip the garage off its hinges to get at this. So that one’s cool because we’re serving super-hot nostalgia, just like it was in its original format. We’re not trying to deviate from the story or update the story.
We’re going to give it just how those fans loved it. I think we’re going to be able to bring on some new consumers. It just looks cool. The cars are cool, the functions are cool, so we’re feeling really psyched on that.
For brands like My Pet Monster, it’s another brand where the DNA of that is insane. After this announcement happened, I had a designer who used to work for us text me a picture of him when he was 3 years old with his My Pet Monster. There’s this meaningful DNA to that item that really resonates with people, so there’s a lot of power in it. In the stories that Hasbro’s told through the years and the connections they’ve made; it is powerful. We share the same passion, because we were big fans of Hasbro.
So, you’re saying that fans of the original products will get an elevated version of the properties they knew and loved back in the day.
We’re such a product-focused company. We’re saying what we’re going to deliver, and it’ll be a slam dunk that lights some minds on fire. You’re going to get a lot of what you expect from those products: those great stories, that great product procurement, that quality, because Hasbro, they’re fantastic. They make some of the best toy products in the world. Alongside us, you’re going to get a lot of that from us as well. We’re really following their lead on this, making sure that we’re going to procure those products to match those expectations as if you’re getting something from Hasbro.
There are a lot of anniversaries being marked during this licensing deal, honoring the rich legacy of these properties as well as delivering nostalgic experiences. Will you be doing any deals to mark the anniversaries, specifically?
When those milestones are there, we usually do treatments on the packaging, that honor the anniversaries. We’ll do some separate collections, maybe for something like Comic Con or some of these other fan-focused events that really circle the strength of those anniversaries, because that ties that consumer into that story and those moments in time when they participate and are being reunited with these brands.
Along with this Hasbro deal, you’ve announced a new creative director. What made Dina Al Rifai the ultimate fit for creative director, especially at this time where you’re entering this deal with Hasbro?
Dina’s someone I’ve known for a long time, and she’s just extraordinarily talented. It’s like E.T. and Elliot. Like attracts like. The Loyal Subjects has something to offer that attracts these other spirits as well, and those spirits are so strong that we’re attracted to them. It’s like chemistry in a band. The guitar player, the bass player, the drummer, the singer all get along, sing and play to the same tune. There was a lot of that going on between The Loyal Subjects and Dina, a lot of like-mindednesses. It spins my head around on how talented she is, and her love for toys.
She went to Otis for toy design, and she had cut her teeth at these great companies. She’s worked at some great companies before The Loyal Subjects, so I think the timing was just right for her to move into a new role. We were there to give her that opportunity, and we vied well. We’re on the same creative page.
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