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O scale is a scale commonly used for toy trains and rail transport modelling. Introduced by German toy manufacturer Märklin around 1900, by the 1930s three-rail alternating current O gauge was the most common model railroad scale in the United States and remained so until the early 1960s. In Europe, its popularity declined before World War II due to the introduction of smaller scales.
Louis Marx and Company was an American toy manufacturer in business from 1919 to 1980. Its products were often imprinted with the slogan "One of the many Marx toys, have you all of them?"
The A. C. Gilbert Company was an American toy company, once one of the largest in the world. Gilbert originated the Erector Set, which is a construction toy similar to Meccano in the rest of the world, and made chemistry sets, microscope kits, and a line of inexpensive reflector telescopes. In 1938, Gilbert purchased the American Flyer, a manufacturer of toy trains. The Gilbert Company struggled after the death of its founder in 1961 and went out of business in 1967. Its trademarks and toy lines were sold to other companies.
American Flyer is a brand of toy train and model railroad manufactured in the United States.
Standard Gauge, also known as wide gauge, was an early model railway and toy train rail gauge, introduced in the United States in 1906 by Lionel Corporation. As it was a toy standard, rather than a scale modeling standard, the actual scale of Standard Gauge locomotives and rolling stock varied. It ran on three-rail track whose running rails were 2+1⁄8 in apart.
The Ives Manufacturing Company, an American toy manufacturer from 1868 to 1932, was the largest manufacturer of toy trains in the United States from 1910 until 1924, when Lionel Corporation overtook it in sales.
A toy train is a toy that represents a train. It is distinguished from a model train by an emphasis on low cost and durability, rather than scale modeling. A toy train can be as simple as a toy that can run on a track, or it might be operated by electricity, clockwork or live steam. It is typically constructed from wood, plastic or metal. Many of today's steam trains might be considered as real ones as well, providing they are not strictly scale or not enough detailed ones in favor of a robustness appropriate for children or an inexpensive production.
Dorfan was an American toy company based in Newark, New Jersey from 1924 to 1934.
The Hafner Manufacturing Company was a maker of tinplate clockwork-powered O gauge toy trains, based in Chicago, Illinois, from 1914 to 1951. It was formed when its founder, William Frederick Hafner, a co-founder of American Flyer, left the company in favor of creating his own company.
A toy soldier is a miniature figurine that represents a soldier. The term applies to depictions of uniformed military personnel from all eras, and includes knights, cowboys, American Indians, pirates, samurai, and other subjects that involve combat-related themes. Toy soldiers vary from simple playthings to highly realistic and detailed models. The latter are of more recent development and are sometimes called model figures to distinguish them from traditional toy soldiers. Larger scale toys such as dolls and action figures may come in military uniforms, but they are not generally considered toy soldiers.
Lionel Corporation was an American toy manufacturer and holding company of retailers that had been in business for over 120 years. It was founded as an electrical novelties company. Lionel specialized in various products throughout its existence. Toy trains and model railroads were its main claim to fame. Lionel trains have been produced since 1900, and their trains drew admiration from model railroaders around the world for the solidity of their construction and the authenticity of their detail. During its peak years in the 1950s, the company sold $25 million worth of trains per year. In 2006, Lionel's electric train became the first electric toy inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. In 1969, they sold their model train lines to General Mills, but continued to operate until 1993 as a holding company for their toy stores. Its model trains are still in production as a separate company.
All Metal Products Company was an American toy company founded in 1920 and based in Wyandotte, Michigan for most of its history. It produced inexpensive pressed metal toys under the Wyandotte brand name, and was the largest manufacturer of toy guns in the US for several decades in the 20th century. The company's slogan was "Wyandotte Toys are Good and Safe." To keep costs down, the company used scrap and surplus raw materials whenever possible, often manufacturing their toys from scrap metal obtained from local auto factories.
Schuco is a German manufacturing company founded in 1912 by Heinrich Müller and the businessman Heinrich Schreyer in Nuremberg Germany's toy capital since early days. The company's specialty was making toy reproductions of cars and trucks in tin, plastic and die-cast. The company went bankrupt in 1976 but was reorganized in 1993 and then totally independent again by 1996.
Louis Marx was an American toy maker and businessman whose company, Louis Marx and Company, was the largest toy company in the world in the 1950s. He was described by some as an experienced businessman with the mind of child.
Nutty Mads are monochromatic, injection-molded polymer plastic toy figures originally manufactured in 1963–1964 by the Marx Toy Company. Comically grotesque and minutely detailed, the series was a contemporary of the stylized Kustom Kulture graphics of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, as well as the of comic art of popular magazine cartoonists Basil Wolverton and Don Martin.
A wind-up toy is an automaton toy powered by a clockwork motor.
A tin toy, or tin lithograph toy, is a mechanical toy made out of tinplate and colorfully painted by chromolithography to resemble primarily a character or vehicle.
J. Chein & Company was an American toy manufacturer in business from 1903 through the 1980s. It is best remembered today for its mechanical toys made from stamped and lithographed tin produced from the 1930s through the 1950s.
Mettoy was a British manufacturing company founded in 1933 by German émigré Philip Ullmann and was later joined by South African-born German Arthur Katz who had previously worked for Ullmann at his toy company Tipp and Co of Nuremberg. The firm made a variety of lithographed metal wind-up toys. Both Jewish, they moved to Britain following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933.
Ferdinand Strauss Company was an American toy company, founded in the early 1900s, based in New York, New York, that made inexpensive toys, including wind-up mechanical toys, out of lithographed tin. One of its early mechanical products was Trixo the climbing monkey. In later years, Strauss would be known as "The Founder of the Mechanical Toy Industry in America".
References
- Matzke, Eric. Greenberg's Guide to Marx Trains, 2nd Edition. Greenberg Publishing Company, 1985. ISBN 0-89778-026-4
- Stephan, Elizabeth J. Collecting Toy Trains, 5th Edition. Kraus Publications, 1999. ISBN 0-87341-769-0
- United States Congress, House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee No. 5. Interim Report of the Antitrust Subcommittee (Subcommittee No. 5) of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Eighty-fourth Congress, Second Session, April 24, 1956. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956.
- W. Graham Claytor Jr., Paul A. Doyle and Carlton Norris McKenney. Mar 1, 1993. Greenberg's Guide to Early American Toy Trains, Carlisle & Finch, Hafner, Dorfan. Greenberg Publishing Co,Inc. ISBN 0-89778-230-5.
