Marx Toys

Louis Marx founded a toy company in 1919 that became the largest and most successful toy company in America. The most memorable are probably all the miniature battle sets, forts and army men, cowboys and wagon trains, or cavemen on dinosaur mountain. Long before games like Warhammer, you could set up a battle on your table making up your own rules as you went.

Marx made a great profit but wasn’t greedy. He believed his boxes should always be no more than the cost of a family meal, and that toys should be fun and spark imagination— not be oppressively “educational”. He gave many toys away to hospital and other charities for free.

Marx knew how cruel people were and became much like a real life Willy Wonka, conducting business as somewhat of a paranoid recluse. Afraid of being ousted by a Machiavellian subordinate, he refused to have any assistants. He conducted all business from beyond a telephone and allowed no employees into his office. He never visited the factory floors.

When he became too old to continue running the company, he was unable to name a successor and tragically sold the company to a cereal manufacturer who gutted production, discontinued the military themed lines, and ran everything into the ground. Hundreds of workers, many who had worked there for over 30 years lost their jobs. The final factory shut down in 1982.

You can still often find Marx soldiers in antique malls and thrift stores. They are just a little larger and a lot more detailed and better made than the green army men you can buy now. The material sometimes feels a little rubbery rather than hard plastic. There’s a usually little M or the word Marx underneath the base.