IMEX World of Bricks

A History of Halsam

Halsam Products Co. was founded in 1917 by brothers-in-law Harold Elliot and Sam Goss, Jr. Hal married Sam's sister Hazel. Hal was also involved in the Goss family business, the Goss Co. In 19??, Sam Goss, Sr. had invented the high-speed rotary printing press (still used in the majority of newspapers to this day, the company was later sold to Rockwell). Hal Elliot was active in the Goss Co. and sat on their board.

After WWI, Sam approached his father about entering the business. Sam Sr. persuaded his son to find market other than the printing business, which was prone to flucuations and turmoil.

Sam Jr. settled on manufacturing toys and bought a woodworking company in Muskegon, Michigan. The company was already making wood blocks. Halsam relocated a brand new factory at 4114 Ravenswood in northern Chicago fully funded by Sam, Sr.. Sam Goss, Jr. also sought his father's engineering expertise. The first great idea behind Halsam was that manufacturing wood blocks could utilize the same technology as the rotary printing press: raw material (wood) put into one side of a machine and finished goods (blocks) rolling out the other side. Young women would then assemble the loose blocks into sets as they came down the shoot from the machine.

The machine was developed by Sam Sr. and Hal Elliot in conjunction with Bill McCloud. This early move to automation allowed Halsam to quickly dominate the toy block market especially the long established Embossing Company. The original machine was a "cantankerous" behemoth that required much maintenance to keep it running.

In the late 1940s or early 1950s, Nils Paulsen, a Swedish engineer employee by Goss Co. developed two new machines; one for the 1 5/16" blocks (the Halsam "200 line") and one for the 1 3/4" blocks (the Halsam "300 line"). The newer units were much faster and produced better quality blocks with less maintenance. It has been estimated that approximately 30,000 blocks would be inside the machine at any one time at various states of finishing.

Halsam was always on the cutting edge of the toy business. Besides utilizing state-of-the-art automation, they were the first Disney licensee back in 1937 Halsam forged relationships with major department store retailers, TV advertising, unique promotional techniques (Happy Halsam comic) and were early participants in the consolidation into what is now Hasbro.

Halsam was also a founding member of the TMA, Toy Manufacturers of America. In fact, Sam and Hal remained close to the other toymakers; Louie Marx, Herm Fisher, Tootsietoy, Playskool. These men were friends and colleagues more than competitors. This integrity was evidenced in many ways. Halsam was once approached by JC Penny to knock-off the popular Lincoln Logs. Montgomery Wards had the exclusive on the Lincoln Logs and it was phenomenally successful. Halsam refused to copy the logs, but this relationship eventually led to the square Frontier Logs.

Other tales of their management style include Sam Goss' policy about closing the factory early on hot days. Goss would remove his tie and loosen his shirt and walk through the factory, signaling to workers that they could leave for the day. He was known to all as just "Sam."

Halsam maintained a high quality workforce. Derived largely from a German population on the north side of Chicago, their European toy-making heritage and craftsmanship.

The consolidation began in 1955, when Halsam acquired rival blockmakers, the Embossing Co. of Albany, New York. At the time, the company was then owned by Bill Thompson. The Embossing Company had opened the first showroom (#440) in the Toy Building in NYC and Halsam was happy to utilize this marketing tool. The Embossing Co. also specialized in larger dominoes, popular in Texas (for the game of Texas 42).

After acquiring Embossing Co., Halsam moved their factory to 3610 Touhy Ave from the original building at 4114 Ravenswood.. The partners bought nine acres and built on four or five, selling the rest to another company. The new facility had magnificent offices. Kip shared his with Nils Paulsen. Nils did much of the R&D and was responsible for the Skyline sets and probably the Notchies. The Skyline set used Berylium-Copper molds that were unstable. The slot parts did not always fit together well. Bill recalled setting up a display at Marshall Fields where they made a 6 foot tall Empire State building. It was a big hit at Christmas and then they moved it down to the Toy Fair.

They were pioneers into plastic toys with their Elgo (ELliot+Goss) division. Beginning with bakelite dominos and checkers, they improved their products through the use of plastic-injection molding. In 19__, a small Danish company named Lego came to Chicago to meet with Halsam officials. It seemed that Lego also made plastic building bricks and was set to begin marketing in the United States. Because the products and the company names (Elgo and Lego) were so similar, the Danish officials wanted to avoid and unpleasantness. Sam's son, Bill Goss (the first to speak with Lego officials), remembers the Lego executives as upstanding and forthright. Lego paid Halsam a sum of $25,000 to square itself and clear the way for their arrival in America. The rest, they say, is history.

Several of the Goss and Elliot children worked in the family business. Kip Elliot helped launch the American bricks product line. As a child, Kip had spent several years in Britain in the 1940s. Hal Elliot was sent to help reorganize the Goss Co. Kip had discovered England's diverse architectural toys, especially the Mini-Brix block set. The toy was made from rubber and became his favorite toy. Once back in the US and working at Halsam, Kip introduced the American bricks product to the company. It was a natural addition and could be made with the wood checker machines. He was also involved with implementing the new block machines of the early 1950s.

During WWII, Halsam made products for USO and US military. They were thus allowed access to scarce raw materials, like wood and plastics.

Eventually, the arrival of discount chains foreshadowed the sweeping changes ahead for the toy industry. Dixie Bedding of Chicago (their regular sales sagged in the Fall months, so they sold toys then), Bargain Town USA (later to become ToysRus).

In 1962, Playskool purchased Halsam. Playskool was founded by two teachers who approached Manny Fink (who was in the lumber and cattle business). Other "Northsiders" in the Chicago toy community were Tinker Toys (orig. Toy Tinkers).

For the next year Playskool maintained both operations. Gradually, the Halsam production lines were moved into the Playskool factories and most of the Goss/Elliot children were let go. Bill Goss stayed on with the company as VP of Sales and Marketing.

Bill Goss eventually left Playskool and accepted a sales position with Sandberg, a new toy company owned by Bob Roels (another former Halsam employee)

Playskool was bought by Milton Bradley.

EXTRA NOTES

Sam Goss (invented rotary printing press)
Sam Goss Jr. (founded Halsam with Harold Elliot) in charge of production
Sam Goss III
Bill Goss
Sister
Harold Elliot (married Hazel Goss, sat on Goss board) in charge of sales

Arthur Sewell (son-in-law of Sam Goss, Jr. was 2nd husband of Goss' daughter)

Bill Heck
Pat Rooney
E. M. Rooney
Fred Rebe (pres. of Playskool)

Embossing Co. was founded by Hyatt Brothers (Charles, John Wesley, and Isiah). The Hyatt Co. produced blocks from 1860's on. Patent for embossed blocks Oct. 1865.

Source: http://toyhistory.com/Halsam.html 

Hilary Fisher Page and Kiddicraft
 

Anyone who has followed brick history, or who perhaps has studied British educational toys, by now surely knows the connection between Hilary Fisher Page’s Self-Locking Building Brick and The Automatic Binding Brick, but aside from this fact there is remarkably little information about Page or Kiddicraft, his pioneering toy company. 

Hilary Fisher Page (also known as Harry) was born on 20 Aug 1904 in Sanderstead, Surrey. He was the first child of Samuel Fisher and Lillian Maude Page. His sister, Vivienne, was born several years later. 

As a child he showed an interest in making toys and inventing his own games. His father, who worked in the lumber trade, once bought him two tons of scrap wood from a local sawmill. This wood pile apparently kept him busy for several years and further sparked his interest in building toys. When asked years later how he became a professional toymaker he answered that “...he had an intelligent father who in his childhood gave him the opportunity to develop his own ideas for making toys.” 

Page received his secondary education at the Shrewsbury Public School, in ‘School House’ under headmaster Canon Sawyer. Shrewsbury, one of England’s oldest boys’ boarding schools, counts Charles Darwin and Michael Palin of Monty Python among its notable alumni. He was admitted in 1918 and graduated after the summer term in 1923. Records show that while there he was an excellent rower. It was also here that he began to show his entrepreneurial side. He was very interested in photography and soon set up a business developing photos for the other students. 

After his education was finished he, like his father, worked in the timber trade for several years and in 1929 he married Norah Harris, a long-time neighbor of the family. They had one child, Jill, on 8 May 1932. 

Kiddicraft

In 1932 Page, along with several partners, including Warwick Allpass, a friend from Shrewsbury, decided to go into the toy business. Using Page’s savings of 100 UKP, they opened a small toy shop called “Kiddicraft” at 6 Godstone Road, Purley, Surrey. At first he imported wood toys from Russia, such as stacking rings and matryoshka nesting dolls and later began to introduce his own designs. The business was a struggle and he ended up in bankruptcy court. A period he described as “most difficult.” The bankruptcy was finally discharged in 1937. 

Nevertheless he continued to work on new toy designs and, perhaps most importantly, began to seriously study early childhood play. Or more specifically “…he used to spend the whole of every Wednesday in a different nursery school, sitting on the floor and playing with the children, to find out exactly what type of toys would be of the greatest interest to them.”(1) The application of child psychology to toy design, while now commonplace, was revolutionary at the time. The result was a range of toys designed around specific stages of childhood development, a philosophy he described in his first book - Playtime in the First Five Years (Watson & Crossland Limited, 1938). 

Bri-Plax

Page had become increasingly unhappy with the use of wood as a material for children’s toys: 

“...For generations we have tried to find some type of paint or enamel which cannot be sucked or gnawed off, in view of the fact that practically every toy or plaything given to a baby or a young child goes straight to his mouth.” (2) 

And he felt that plastics would offer a safe and hygienic alternative: 

“Mothers are becoming much more hygienically minded and they realize that every baby’s toy should be thoroughly washed in hot soapy water once a day. This can be done with toys molded from urea. Dust and germs cannot cling to the bright shiny surface, and the range of bright colors is most attractive and interesting to the child.” (2) 

Throughout the early and mid-1930s he experimented with molding plastic toys, mostly using the thermoplastic urea-formaldehyde. His partners, however, felt that plastics were simply too risky for the company. Especially a company already in a difficult financial position: 

“When I decided to start using plastics for Kiddicraft ‘Sensible’ toys in 1936, my co-directors were certain that I should ruin the business with this new-fangled material, and that persuaded me to form a new company, British Plastic Toys Ltd.” (3) 

In 1937 he introduced a line of plastic “Sensible Toys’ under the name Bri-Plax. Many of these new designs, such as the Building Beakers, Pyramid Rings, or Billie and his Seven Barrels, were based on the Russian toys he had previously imported. But there were also new designs, such as the Interlocking Building Cube, which would be awarded a British patent in 1940. (4) 

These new “Sensible Toys” became popular with British mothers for exactly the reasons Page had envisioned and the company expanded with a new warehouse in Kenley, Surrey. But whatever success he was beginning to enjoy with the business it was at the expense of his personal life. The stress of the last decade had deteriorated his marriage and he and Norah were separated shortly before the war. 

World War II

All of Kiddicraft’s production ceased with the beginning of the war. As part of the British war effort Page toured the US from 1940-42 lecturing and broadcasting on ‘Children in Wartime’ and promoting trade relations between the US and UK. While in Chicago he met Oreline, a US citizen, and they were married in Baltimore on 23 July 1941, shortly after finalizing his divorce from Norah. 

Page and his new wife returned to England in 1942 on the first convoy to cross the Atlantic. Back home he toured England lecturing to the troops on behalf of the Ministry of Defence. During this time he also published his second book, Toys in Wartime (US Dept. of Labor Children’s Bureau, 1942), which showed mothers how to create their own playthings given the extreme shortage of good educational toys. 

In 1945, as raw materials became available, Page again began marketing his toys. By this time his partners clearly saw the potential of plastics and the toys were marketed under the name Kiddicraft “Sensible Toys.” Advertisements in the trade magazine, Games and Toys, announced that their “Plastic Educational Toys, in pre-war form, are now available again in limited quantities.” 

Post War Kiddicraft

In 1946 Oreline and Hilary adopted twin baby girls, Geraldine and Vivienne, who were born in late 1945. 

After the war the use of plastics exploded. Soon consumer goods, including toys, made of thermoplastics became commonplace. But by this time Page had a 10 year lead in the field and his post war “Sensible Toys” became very popular in England. He completely rebuilt the company and introduced not only all of the pre-war designs but many new toys as well. Sales steadily grew over the next several years and the Kenley warehouse was converted into a small factory. 

The Self-Locking Building Brick

Among the many post-war Kiddicraft designs was a new building block. The Self-Locking Building Bricks were essentially smaller, refined versions of the Interlocking Building Cube. Bricks could be stacked on each other and were held in place by studs on the top. The bricks also featured slits on their side that allowed panel-like doors, windows or cards to be inserted. He patented the basic design, a 2 X 4 studded brick, in 1947. This was later followed by patents for the side slits (1949) and the baseplate (1952).

The Kiddicraft Self-Locking Building Brick sets were first marketed in 1947. As a promotion Page and his family built large display models for the 1947 Earl’s Court Toy Fair. Jill remembers “building ‘Sky Scrapers’ that were ‘as tall as I was – 5’ 6” “. The first two sets were soon followed by several more full and supplementary sets. 

The Self-Locking Building Bricks were aimed at the older children, and considering the UK market for construction toys at the time, dominated by Meccano, it doesn’t appear that they were a major part of the Kiddicraft catalog. 

The Automatic Binding Brick

Like everyone else Ole Kirk Christiansen had been following the rising popularity of plastics and he decided that Lego should manufacture plastic toys. Ole and his son Godtfred found a London based company that was interested in expanding their equipment sales and bought the first injection moulding machine in Denmark. Along with the equipment the company sent several example items to show the full capabilities of the machine. Among these were samples, and possibly drawings, of Page’s Self-Locking Building Brick.(4) 

Ole modified the Kiddicraft brick and marketed his own version, The Automatic Binding Brick, in 1949. 

“With the cooperation of a tooling works in Copenhagen, we modified the design of the brick, and moulds were made. The modifications in relation to the Kiddicraft bricks included straightening round corners and converting inches to cm and mm, which altered the size of the brick by approx. 0.1 mm in relation to the Kiddicraft brick. The studs on the bricks were also flattened on top.” (5) 

Lego also copied and modified the larger Interlocking Building Cube and sold it under the name Lego Plastic Byggeklodser in the early 1950s. 

It appears that Hilary & Oreline Page visited Denmark in June 1949, whether they visited Ole and Godtfred is a matter for conjecture.  His widow Oreline indicated that he was unaware of Lego’s version of his brick. 

The 1950s

Although the market was now flooded with inexpensive plastic toys, Kiddicraft continued to enjoy success, particularly in the pre-school market. His cot and pram designs even won the British Toy of the Year in 1951. 

Kiddicraft was successful enough that Page began to seek foreign partners and found Philippe Mayer. Mayer started Kiddicraft France in 1950. In 1954 Mayer, along Kurt Molineus and Wilhelm Seeling, started Kiddicraft Germany, and with Alberto Barcessat, Kiddicraft Spain. Kiddicraft products were also distributed in Australia, South Africa, and the US. 

Page continued to write about early childhood play and published a second edition of Playtime in the First Five Years (Allen & Unwin, 1953). The second edition was translated into several languages, including French, Spanish, and even US English. 

At the time the Kiddicraft office was in Hilary Page’s flat in Barkston Gardens, Earls Court. He had his desk in the living room, his secretaries worked in the spare room and his designer Michael Duck worked in the attic. His children fondly remember the year he set up the Kiddicraft stand in his flat rather than at Toy Fair around the corner and moved the family into to a cold hotel. Later the office moved to 2 Ellis Street, Sloane Street, London S.W.1. 

The System of Play

Page was unable to successfully commercialize the Self-Locking Building Bricks, but to be fair; Lego wasn’t much more successful with their Automatic Binding Bricks. Godtfred renamed the bricks Lego Mursten in 1953 and marketed seven different sets, as well as several supplementary sets, but, at most, they accounted for 5% of Lego’s sales. What changed Lego’s fortunes was the “System of Play” introduced at the 1955 Nurnburg Toy Fair. The System of Play integrated all of the Mursten sets, as well as a number of new elements, into a unified theme based around a streetscape or town plan. It would turn out to be one of the most significant ideas in company history. 

Page, however, was paying little attention to the Self-Locking Building bricks, to say nothing about Lego’s System of Play. By this time his focus was on his most ambitious project yet – the Kiddicraft Miniatures. 

The Kiddicraft Miniatures

The Kiddicraft Miniatures were small reproductions of actual food and household items, such as detergent boxes, soup cans, tea and sugar boxes, ice cream cartons, beer and wine bottles, even cigarette packs. He promised “over 300” different products and set out on what was, perhaps, the largest licensing arrangement in the toy industry. Kiddicraft eventually produced over 200 of these miniatures but the company simply could not deliver on all of Pages’ promises, and could not honour their agreements with their licensors. 

Page became deeply troubled with these pressures on the business and feared a total collapse of the company. Tragically, he committed suicide on 24 June 1957. 

After Page’s death David Day became Managing Director, and along with Henry Darrell, Company Secretary, and Warwick Allpass, Page’s longtime friend and major shareholder, the company continued. Oreline remained an active director until the company was sold in 1977. 

Lego in Britain

By the late 1950s Lego was expanding into Western Europe. British Lego Ltd. was set up in late 1959 and the first sets were sold the following year. Page was never aware of the Lego brick. When asked later, Page’s daughter would only state that she “was relieved that my father never knew about Lego before he died.” 

Page and Kiddicraft had always been aggressive about protecting their designs. Between 1939 and his death in 1957 he was awarded more than 30 different patents, including three patents for the Self-Locking Building Brick. He even defended the design against infringement in 1950. However Lego’s design, which by now included the tube-and-stud coupling, was also patented in the UK. (6) It does not appear that Kiddicraft ever pursued any action against Lego. 

In 1981, as Lego was beginning their litigation with Tyco, they purchased all remaining rights to the Kiddicraft design from Hestair-Kiddicraft for 45,000 UKP. (7) 

Hestair

In 1977 Oreline sold the company to the Hestair conglomerate. The new, completely restructured company, Hestair-Kiddicraft, continued to produce toys. They marketed many of the older ‘Sensible Toys’ as well as a number of new toys, mostly designed by David Day. The company even moved to larger headquarters in Bristol in 1984. 

Hestair sold the company to Fisher-Price in 1989. Fisher-Price used the Kiddicraft brand name, but none of the classic Page and Day designs. In the mid 1990s Fisher-Price finally dropped the Kiddicraft brand. It was the apparent end of the Kiddicraft brand and their toys. 

Source:   http://hilarypagetoys.com/Home/History