After watching a strong earnings report from Mattel (NYSE:MAT) utterly fail to move the stock earlier this week, Hasbro (NYSE:HAS) investors must be feeling nervous about their own company's report, due out Monday. If an earnings beat, 19% growth in sales, and 270 basis points worth of gross margin improvement aren't enough to win Mr. Market's favor, just how high will Hasbro have to jump to clear the bar?

After the news comes out, we'll have time a-plenty to dissect it. But in these few hours before we begin obsessing over Hasbro's short-term progress, let's take a moment to review what investors think about it as a long-term investment. Our tool in this endeavor: Motley Fool CAPS, where we poll more than 27,000 investors for their views on well over 4,000 companies, Hasbro among them. Here's what Fools have to say about the company.

Up or down?
175 investors have submitted ratings on the company. The verdict: We're already tired of this toy.

Overall, nearly nine investors out of 10 rate the company likely to outperform the market going forward. Among the very best investors -- those designated as "All-Stars" on CAPS -- approval climbs to 92%. Yet all that enthusiasm translates into just three stars for Hasbro on CAPS.

Which is nonetheless one star more than Mattel boasts, and puts Hasbro near the top of a heap of unloved toymakers:

Toys and Games companies

CAPS Rating

Jakks Pacific (NASDAQ:JAKK)

*****

International Game Technology (NYSE:IGT)

****

Hasbro

***

Mattel

**

LeapFrog (NYSE:LF)

*

Topps (NASDAQ:TOPP)

*

FortuNet (NASDAQ:FNET)

*

Wall Street vs. Main Street
From one perspective, the people who supposedly know the most about investing -- Wall Street analysts -- look a lot more optimistic than you average CAPS bear. The single analyst who's got a real opinion of the stock rates it a buy. That said, the vast majority of analysts who follow the stock (eight of 'em) rate it a hold.

Funny, that. Because if you examine the stock's performance over the last 52 weeks, you'll see that it has, in fact, beaten the market's returns by better than 32 percentage points.

Brass tacks
And what are the thoughts behind these ratings?

Bull pitch
Hasbro bulls tend to rely on two, not necessarily contradictory, theories for their optimism: They either think the stock is a nice, cheap, safe recession hedge, or a growth story just waiting to monetize its incredible stable of old and new toy ideas.

Bear pitch
Hasbro bears are an endangered species in CAPS Land. About the only substantive bearish pitch to be found happens to be ... mine! And even I'm of two minds: "I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, I love the company and expect it may play the role of safe haven in a recession. On the other, the valuation is whack. 18x free cash flow for a 10% grower? No way. Sell and wait for cheaper days."

Who said that?
To learn the identities of the Fools who penned these words, and explore the plethora of additional financial data we've put together on the company, just click here.

Hasbro is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor pick.

Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of any company named above. You can find him on CAPS, publicly pontificating under the handle TMFDitty, where he's currently ranked 250th out of well over 27,000 raters.