Sales of Spiderman and Transformers toys helped Pawtucket-based Hasbro's sales defy Wall Street predictions.

Transformers is expected to generate more sales through the summer, analysts and company executives said, but its real impact may be as a mark of how Hasbro has changed its approach to product development.

“We’re really in the intellectual-property business,” said Alfred J. Verrecchia, Hasbro’s president and chief executive officer. The three-year effort to bring Transformers toys to the screen as building-size mechanical beings is a brand-building method Hasbro plans to repeat with other toy lines.

Since 2000, Hasbro has refocused its efforts on its core toys and games, moved electronic-toy development into its Tiger product line, bought back digital gaming licenses, struck deals for mobile-phone games, sold game licenses to slot-machine makers and created a theatrical production on one of its toy lines, Littlest Pet Shop.