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.

Usually it starts with a hint of the new line in the Pre-Toy Fair Catalog. But not in 1986, Hasbro actually excluded Jem and released limited number of the 1986 Pre-Toy Fair Catalogs just to make Mattel think Hasbro was dropping the Jem line -- it didn't help, or Mattel was not fooled, as Mattel continued the release of Barbie and the Rockers. (source)

Barbie’s sales had been low for most of the 70s and 80s, so Hasbro thought they could take her place as the number one selling fashion doll. Jem wasn’t the number one selling doll, but thanks to Jem, Barbie and the Rockers put Barbie back on top with externally high sales.

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 playsets (one new playset), updated roadster, 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.

Glitter'n Gold was originally the Hollywood Jem/glamour theme and was put on the Toy Fair cover as a least attempt to get the sales Hasbro was expecting for Jem. Hasbro was disappointed with the 1986 sales of Jem, but did not want to give up on her, and look like they completely failed. The 1987 orders for Jem did not meet Hasbro’s expectations so even though Jem was sold in 1987, all development stopped on the doll line around Feb/March of 1987 – Hasbro basically knew Jem was over at that point.

Rock’n Curl was designed on the fly to release a cheaper doll quickly.

It seems like Hasbro still was not ready to completely give up. I’m sure the popularity of the cartoon made Hasbro feel they still had a chance. It looked like Hasbro was going to pick up where they left off before the Toy Fair 1987 shutdown of the line. Two new lower price Jem dolls, lower price Holograms, and Matching Medley (Mix & Match) fashions were revealed in the 1988 Pre-Toy Fair Catalog. The Stingers and Hollywood Jem was waiting in the wing, but fashion assortments were not included – Hasbro shut development down in March 1987, before the themes could be expanded. A Stinger fashion assortment was never started and the Hollywood Jem assortment never made it to the prototype stage. On Stage Fashions, Flipside Fashions, Smashin’ Fashions, Rio Fashions, Glitter’n Gold Fashions and Music is Magic fashions were not developed, so we wouldn’t have seen new updated fashions for our favorite assortments either.

The International/World Tour fashions never made it past the marketing departments approval; Graphix was dropped pretty early on.

American Beauty Jem would have been Hasbro’s attempt to add red to the line. The color red was considered too risqué for a doll line, so the American theme was away to work the color into the line.

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. Pizzazz (Red Dress) and a new Misfit Graphix were put 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".

Hasbro made Jem to expensive to compete in the marking place. Hasbro expected Jem to make over $30 million a year, but the sales were not there – not when the customer had a cheaper alterative to choose from. Hasbro made Jem too realistic, too articulate and with flashing earrings and/or a cassette tape, the costs were too high. The fact that Jem was not sculpted to fit Barbie’s clothing did not help either.

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 stores 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.

not confirmed: 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 the 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 brought in by outside investors who had their own staff develop the line. Hasbro prototyped the dolls and fashions and produced the line. Except for the use of some Jem’s fabrics and accessories, Jem (and the designers that worked on Jem) had very little to do with Maxie’s development.

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

Maxie was quickly followed by the New Kids on the Block dolls. That included two sets of dolls and a stage playset.