Bill Sanders (1940-1990) a famous award winning advertising executive, and two friends/collaborators (former Hasbro marketing executive and freelance toy designer Joe Hyland (1935-2001) and his wife Barbara Hyland advertising executive and freelance toy designer) went to Hasbro with a idea of a new doll line, to compete with Barbie. Bill thought Barbie was boring and no fun.

Hasbro had Sunbow Production, Inc. develop a cartoon to promote the Jem dolls. It started as fifteen (seven minute) segments on a show with several boy cartoons in the "Super Saturday" show, or "Super Sunday" show, airing in October 1985. Because of the black lash against animated shows developed to sell toy lines, Hasbro purposely had the show released around six months before the doll line came out. Hasbro was hoping that would it look like the cartoon came first.

When Hasbro had to give "M" a new name. Jem came from the Jemstar earrings M wore. The name of the band became the Holograms. The idea for the name came from the Holographic image that changed an ordinary girl (Morgan or Misty) into "M". And during this time the male band became three females ... Kimber, Jade and Aria. The names changed to Kimber, Aja, and Shana. One name for Roxy and/or Stormer at this time was Rue.

Eight dolls, three playsets and twenty-four fashions started the doll line.

Those 15 "Super Sunday" segments were put together into a 90-minute movie "Truly Outrageous!" in 1986 and shown to kick off the new "JEM" animated series. At the same time those 15 segments where extended and included as the first five part episode of Jem. The five part episode started airing in April of 1986. 4-1/2 minutes was added to three "Super Sunday" segments to fit the new Jem episode running time. "Starbright" soon followed in, July 1986, as 3 part episode. Between April of 1986 and the March of 1987 Jem had 26 full episodes.

Three new Jem dolls, three new Holograms added to the "New Look" Holograms, two new Misfits added to the reissued Misfits, Synergy, three Starlight Girls along with three new playsets, four playset attachments, a waterbed and twice as many fashion where added to the line. (1987)

"Glitter'n Gold" was the new doll theme and the 26th episode, with the same name, aired in March 1987 -- it was the first look at the new 1987 fashions and dolls, with the exception of Raya and Jetta. After the summer break, Raya and Jetta made their first appearance in September with "Talent Search" part 1 and 2. Jem was now being aired Monday through Friday. Between September of 1987 and the May of 1988 Jem had 39 full episodes.

Jem was starting its third year when Hasbro pulled the plug.  New dolls where developed but Hasbro decided to stop the line, and the dolls were never released.

There would have been at least four new Jem dolls:

• Rockin' Romance Jem - 4004,
• American Beauty Jem - 4007,
• Hollywood jem - 4009, and
• Jem 4010

Two new Holograms:

• Astral - original name was Magic
• Regine - original name was Paris, and
• Video and Danse would have been reissued with long hair.

A new group the Stingers - assortment number 4012:

• Riot - original name was Chaos -- a male,
• Minx - original name was Fiasco,
• Rapture - original name was Jazz,

Most of these new dolls appeared in the show sometime in the fall and winter of 1987/1988, along with some of the new fashions for 1988. Pizzazz (Red Dress) and a new Misfit Graphix were out on hold for the 1988 line, and Graphix never appeared in the show. New mix match outfits, along with many other new fashion sets were planned for 1988.  Some of the new dolls and fashions. A new Rio was also developed, "Rio O' Boy".

Jem seemed to have some popularity, and sells where not bad. But basically Jem was not selling as well as Hasbro expected her too. So the line only had a two year run. The high prices, the larger size then Barbie, and the "scary" Misfits where all stated reasons for Jem's demise. Even though Hasbro took most of these into account when the developed the 1988 line. The dolls were to be sold without the cassettes and doll stand, and for a lot less, the Misfits where replaced by the Stingers. New cheap fashions where being designed to compete with Barbie's cheap outfits ... the twelve and a half inch size stayed the same. But Jem was not alone, Hasbro had to cut many lines in 1988 due to massive downturn in toy sales.

A new reason for Jem's demise as surfaced from Hasbro -- the size of the boxes. It seems that the 14-1/2” tall doll boxes was a big issue to retail stores in most areas. Doll aisles were set up to hold the 11-3/4” Barbie boxes. Because of the larger size, one of two things happened – either the dolls would be sat on their side, or one shelve would have to be removed and the other shelves adjusted to accommodate the larger boxes. These are not issues that customers would see, but store would see the display as looking sloppy and reflecting badly on the store or see it as loosing valuable shelf space. A retail outlet would see taking out the shelf as a loose of revenue -- overstock and backroom storage is seen as a negative in retail.

Hasbro, or more importantly Stephen Hassenfeld, saw that Jem had some marketing issue, and wanted to fix them. When Stephen found out that he was dying, he decided to cancel the line. Stephen felt like he did not have enough time to fix all the issues with Jem, and was afraid that Hasbro, under his brother Alan Hassenfeld, would not fix them after he was gone. The decision was to black out Jem completely, so it was like she never existed. All posters, dolls and anything Jem related were removed from Hasbro. Any remaining merchandise, included Rockin’ Romance Jem, were shipped over seas.

Stephen Hassenfeld passed away on June 25, 1989.

March 2010 Updated/Correction: By the time the doll line was canceled the show was already rapping up. Hasbro was canceling all the Sunbow shows to save money -- Jem was the last one to be canceled, finishing out the 65 episode syndicated contract. The Jem show might have even gotten a longer run thanks to the doll line being canceled. Hasbro promised the vendors they would continue the show after the line was canceled to help move (1987) product from store shelves. If Jem doll line continued into 1988 more then likely Hasbro would have broken the contract with Sunbow dropping the show in Oct of 1987.

G. I. Joe and Transformers had hit the 65 episode mark.

• G. I. Joe was canceled at 21 episodes after the first 65 -- just 5 episodes shy of another 26 episode contract ( two13 contracts) after the original 65 episode contract = 86 of 91
• Transformers was canceled 46 episodes after the first 65 -- just 6 episodes shy of two 26 episode contracts (four 13 contracts) after the original 65 episode contract = 111 of 117

Hasbro contracts with Sunbow were for 65 episodes followed by 13 or 26 episode contracts beyond the first 65.

A smaller doll called Maxie ended up replacing Jem. Maxie was a high school girl, with her high school friends. The line was the same size as Barbie and the fashions could be swapped with Barbie fashions. This line only lasted three years.

Maxie was not a true replacement for Jem because Hasbro originally was going to release both Jem and Maxie in 1988. Maxie was a copy of the European doll Sindy, which Hasbro just got the rights to produce for Europe in 1987. Maxie was going to have a band in the fall 1990, but Hasbro canceled Maxie before the dolls hit the stores. This Maxie band would have featured Jem instruments in new colors.

• Rockin' Pretty Bianca - a blue Roxy guitar,
• Rockin' Pretty Maxie - a purple Shana guitar,
• Rockin' Pretty Ashley - a blue "Show Me The Way" Video Madness tambourine, missing the Jem logo,
• Rockin' Pretty Carly - a light green Kimber keyboard

I have to wonder if Maxie was canceled when Hasbro got the contract to produce the New Kids on the Block dolls. That included two sets of dolls and a stage playset.