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 In
1919, Brooklyn-born Louis Marx established Louis Marx &
Co. By offering quality at the lowest price possible, Marx
became very popular with toy buyers. By the 1930s, despite
the Great Depression, he built three new plants in the US,
including one in Glendale, West Virginia that produced toy
cars. Marx also produced and distributed toys in England from
1937 to 1967. Marx continued to grow until the start of World
War II, when the factories converted for the war effort. After
the war, Marx came back as the world's largest manufacturer
of toys. The company grew even stronger into the "Golden
Era" of the 1950s. By 1955, Marx produced over 20 percent
of all the toys sold in the U.S., and had factories in ten
different countries, including Japan, with divisions such
as Linemar. In 1979, Louis Marx sold his company to Quaker
Oats. Quaker later sold it to England's Dunbee-Combex, which
soon went bankrupt. American Plastic Equipment of Florida
resurrected the Marx name by acquiring the company's assets
in 1982, and intellectual rights in 1988. By that time, the
value of Marx toys had skyrocketed in the collector markets,
triggering a demand for the toys to be reissued. In 1995,
a new entity, Marx Toy Corporation, was formed in Sebring,
Ohio. The new company has begun manufacturing from molds built
by Marx, hoping to revive some of the earlier magic of Marx.
Louis Marx died in 1982 at the age of 85.
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