The Origin of the Hasbro Toy Line, Army Ants

I worked at Hasbro Toys, as a member of the Art Department, from 1983 to 1989.

As an artist in the Art Department I worked as a package designer, but I also designed

logos, the look of package lines and some final package illustrations. During my years

there, I worked on every Boys Toy that was released during that span.

I was in my early to mid 20’s and my strongest asset was my ability to draw.

Because of that, I also drew and inked countless B&W line illustrations for the Hasbro style guides.

But, because I was needed to do my assigned design work during the day in the office,

I had to create those illustrations during my nights at home, after hours and weekends and charge

Hasbro extra, as freelance work.

By late 1996 the Marketing Department (the department responsible for the creating the toy lines)

knew of my work. They knew of my abilities and art style and knew I was a bit of a workaholic.

At this time, Mattel Toys was having a success with the small collectible toy line they’d licensed

from Japan and brought to America called M.U.S.C.L.E. Hasbro wanted to create a small figure

collectible toy line as well, and the Marketing Department came up the idea of Army Ants. Two

different groups of Ant Soldiers of two different colors with a “squishy” back end abdomen.

The Marketing Department met with me and despite the fact that I wasn’t a designer in R&D (the

department that designed all the toys) they felt that my cartooning style was the look they wanted

for these characters. During our discussions, they said they wanted 40 different characters, with

different specialities and different weapons, that would be attached to each Ant character, It was

also decided that one army would have 6 limbs, like real ants have and the other army would have

just 4, giving the two squads a distinctive look (along with their different colors).

There was only one obstacle for me to work on designing all 40 of these ants. Like I said earlier,

I was needed to work on my package design work each day. I was able to work on the Army Ants

logo, package design and some package illustration each day but I couldn’t do any of the Army Ants

toy figure designs while in the office. So like my Style Guide line work illustrations, I had to do all

the figure design drawings after hours and on weekends. I put in A LOT of hours during those days!

I was given leeway on the looks of the characters (for example, I designed the Blue Army Ants faces

to look like the animated insects in the old Raid Insect Spray commercials because I really liked that

look). I was also given a lot of leeway on creating the different characters and worked closely with

Copy Writer Carl Fritz for the names of all the soldiers. I would tightly pencil front, back and side

drawings of each character and after approval, they’d be sent to the sculpture department to

sculpt each Ant, from my drawings, several sizes up.

I’ve often been asked what my favorite toy to work on was, during my stint at Hasbro. There are

so many to choose from. Transformers, Inhumanoids, Air Raiders, G.I. Joe, COPS & Crooks,

Visionaires, Battle Beasts, but my answer has to be Army Ants. It was the only toy where I worked

on every aspect of the product (I even directed the photo shoot used to create the cross sell images)

which was very unusual for one person to get that opportunity, especially for a large toy company like Hasbro.

I’ll finish this origin story with this. One day, I was at the toy store Child World (the toy chain that closed

in the early 90’s). It was important for us to periodically visit toy stores, to scout the competition.

While there, I saw a little boy walk up and take an Army Ants blister card and asked his mom if she

could buy it for him. When she said yes he smiled and was very happy. It’s not often when you can

see the culmination of your work in the hands of a happy child. A moment like that makes all the

hours and hard work worthwhile.

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