Hasbro released its first quarter 2002 numbers today, and the toy and game giant narrowed its loss to $17 million, an improvement over the unexpectedly large $25 million loss in the first quarter of 2001.

Our Top 10 Cool lists, which rank the best-selling products in pop culture stores, are dominated by franchise properties (with a few surprises) in our rankings for March 2002.

Expectations are high for Free Comic Book Day, the comic industry promotional event happening on May 4, the day after the Spider-Man movie opens.

We heard from a buyer for another specialty retail chain, who told us that while Gamestop was 'notorious' for breaking street dates, in this case his chain had also been shipped earlier than necessary to make the street date.

Non-sports trading cards can be a successful product category, so we sought out a couple of retailers that we were told do an especially good job of merchandising and promoting entertainment cards to find out their secrets.

Len Katz founded The Joker's Child almost 15 years ago. Located in Fairlawn, New Jersey, the store carries a wide variety of comic and movie-related merchandise.

Last week a couple of signs appeared that indicate that the major marketing phenomenon of the late 1990s is showing further signs of erosion.

Sabertooth Games, publisher of the Warhammer 40,000 CCG, has announced that Keith Strohm has joined the company as Director of Communications.

Two #1 products repeated in February, a testament to the strength of some recent releases and the weaker competition scheduled for this normally weak month.

A spokesperson for Wizards of the Coast has confirmed to ICv2 that the company has laid off 50 employees today at its headquarters in Renton, Washington.