and last year, these users battled more than 26  million times.  Through our partnership with Nelvana,  d-rights and TakaraTomy, we set out to manage  BEYBLADE as a long-term battling brand with  continuous innovation. Leveraging global television  programming and innovative play patterns, we  are excited to be entering the next phase of our  strategy with new, innovative play patterns.  The NERF brand, which has grown fourfold  over the past five years, delivered $410 million in  revenue in 2011, essentially flat with 2010, driven  by strong growth from international markets. The  NERF team continues to deliver great innovation  for the brand and we have several major new  initiatives planned for 2012.  2011 also marked the fi rst year under our long- term partnership with Sesame Workshop. Together,  we are building a year-round global brand and we  are creating play experiences around a number  of SESAME STREET characters, including ELMO,  COOKIE MONSTER, and others, which engage  children and help them learn.  marketing spend more on the consumer, by pricing  our product to refl ect our innovation and by  strengthening our partnerships with our retailers,  we believe we can deliver better performance in  the U.S. & Canada business. Our Games and Puzzles category performance  was also disappointing last year, contributing to  the weakness in the U.S. During the year, under  new leadership, we outlined a multi-year plan to  drive innovation and excellence in gaming, with  the goal of stabilizing this business in 2012 and  delivering growth in 2013 and beyond. We are now  focusing on a core set of gaming brands. We have  demonstrated in recent years that when we drive  innovation in our gaming brands, we have delivered  growth. But similar to the change we made in our  toy business a few years back, we must focus our  development and marketing resources on select  gaming brands that we view as having the greatest  global potential.  An example of the successful execution of this  approach is MAGIC: THE GATHERING. The team at  Wizards of the Coast has done a tremendous job  of taking this brand, which totaled less than $100  million in revenues in 2008 and was declining, to  where it is today - the largest brand in our Games  and Puzzles category, the largest game brand in  the U.S. and more than double its size versus just  three years ago. It demonstrates that with new  leadership, strong consumer insights, innovative  game play, and the integration of face-to-face and  digital play, gaming brands can thrive. While our recent investments in establishing  our global presence enabled us to deliver very  strong growth in our international business and  overall solid revenue growth for Hasbro during  the fourth quarter and full year 2011, we did not  meet our expectations for growth in the U.S. and  Canada segment, including in the Games and  Puzzles category. When we look to our success  internationally, we know - and you can see - that  our innovation, marketing and brands are very  successful. While our performance in the U.S. and  Canada segment was in line with the industry’s  overall decline of 2%, we believe we can do better.  We have appointed new leadership in the U.S. and Canada business, naming Wiebe Tinga  President. Wiebe is a proven Hasbro executive  with 24 years of experience leading global  sales and marketing teams. He and his team are  implementing an approach that is similar to how  we go to market internationally. By focusing  We also are working to better leverage the  nearly one billion gamers in the marketplace today  - that is five times the number of gamers from just  a few years ago. However, we recognize that we  can’t grow our gaming business in the future the  same way we had grown it historically. To better  leverage today’s technology and digital play, we are  working with great partners, including Electronic  Arts and Activision, to develop Hasbro brands into  digital games. We are also teaming with Jagex  and NetDragon to bring TRANSFORMERS MMO  U.S. & Canada Execution Hasbro Gaming annual report 2011