(music)
Streaker Industries of Mound, Minnesota had been making wooden ammunition boxes during
the war, and they’d been using the scrap wood for kids toys.
After the war, they continued making wooden toys, but branched out into metal toys as well.
Ed Streaker, head of Streaker Industries took his new metal creations to the American Toy Fair,
only to be given the cold shoulder.
Despondent, he made his way back home.
While having lunch he got chatting to Lynn Baker.
Lynn and two friends were starting up a new business producing garden tools and closet
accessories to satisfy the post-war spending boom, and to utilise a post-war excess supply of steel.
Ed Streaker was selling his factory – a converted schoolhouse, and Lynn felt this
would be an ideal location for his new business – the Mound Metalcraft Company.
Mound Metalcraft started making products such as tie racks, but Ed Streaker persuaded them
to also try his metal toys.
Recalling the toys his children owned, Lynn realised they didn’t look much like the
things they were supposed to and broke easily.
Mound Metalcraft worked to make one of Ed Streaker’s metal toys tougher, and more
realistic, showing it off at the 1947 American Toy Fair, under the brand name “Tonka Toys”,
using the Dakota Sioux word for “great” or “big”, and a lake motif on the logo
to honour nearby Lake Minnetonka.
The toy was an immediate hit.
The following year they added two more models, selling over 37,000 by the end of the year.
As the 40s turned into the 50s, Tonka’s sales exploded as baby boomers discovered
the tough, realistic Tonka toys.
In a world just moving away from cheap tin toys, there really wasn’t anything else like it.
Mound Metalcraft were farming out work to as many local businesses as possible to satisfy demand.
In 1952 orders totalled $1M (£730,000, €840,000, $1.3M AUD), and the following year it was $3M (£2.2M, €2.5M, $4M AUD).
By 1953 the line-up had grown to 14 models, including a forerunner of the iconic Tonka dump truck,
and sales had expanded to 7 countries.
By 1956 Mound Metalcraft officially changed their name to Tonka Toys Incorporated and
had moved to a new factory just down the road, employing 350 people.
The owners would regularly visit construction sites, looking for new vehicles that would
inspire them to create a new vehicle.
One model that won an award for its innovation was the 1957 “Suburban Pumper”.
It came with a miniature fire hydrant that could be connected to the garden hose.
Once the fire truck was connected to the fire hydrant, it could shoot water up to 9 meters (30’).
This was just one example of the attention to detail Tonka were taking to make their
model vehicles the best on the market.
Some vehicles, such as the semi and trailer – an articulated lorry in Britain – would
be continually altered to improve their quality, and to keep up with the changing fashions
of real-world vehicles.
A sign of things to come would be the 1957 “Big Mike Dump Truck”, named after Lynn
Baker’s grandson, but the iconic Tonka toy, called, try not to snigger, the “Mighty
Dump”, was released in 1964.
Like the 2000s fad of making larger and smaller versions of regular sweets and chocolates,
Tonka would make “mini” and “mighty” versions of their regular toys.
With Tonka trucks using a thicker gauge of metal than on regular cars, early models were
a little too “mighty” – they were so heavy some kids had problems lifting them up,
and future models had material removed to make them lighter.
But they were still strong – Tonka would pride itself in adverts about how much abuse
could be thrown at their toys.
Selling all these vehicles meant Tonka had the capital to diversify, purchasing Mell
Manufacturing who made barbeques.
This might not seem an obvious move to make, but with toys selling well at Christmas, and
barbeques selling well in the summer, it was a good way to smooth out production demand,
and to utilise both factories as well as possible.
Tonka introduced the “Tiny” line of vehicles in 1968, possibly to take on the new threat
of Matchbox cars.
And it was timely with the new threat of Hot Wheels that same year.
Tonka would experiment with hot rod vehicles to try to compete with the new threat, but
Hot Wheels became the market leader in pocket-sized vehicles.
Tonka would do versions of Jeeps and VW Beetles, and it helped that several of their designers
came from the auto industry.
Today lawyers would need to draw up complex agreements to allow this, but in the 1960s
Tonka merely asked the company’s permission, who were generally glad to give it as it was
free publicity for their main business.
But sometimes Tonka did paid promotions, such as the Allied Van Lines semi from 1961.
By the early 1970s Tonka toys were being manufactured from a factory 1/3 of a mile (0.5 km) long,
employing 2,000 people around the world.
They proclaimed Mound, Minnesota as the “truck capital of the world”, producing up to 16M trucks every year!
By the end of the 1970s over 175M trucks had been produced, making Tonka the most popular
truck in the world.
They’d continue to experiment with new markets, such as the Tonka Toddler range to compete
with Fisher Price, producing vehicles mainly from plastic for the first time, but their
metal construction vehicles continued to be their main seller.
Their workforce was loyal, and the Tonka factory in Mound, Minnesota was a good place to work,
but Tonka was finding it harder to compete with cheaper competition that was copying
Tonka’s sturdy designs.
In the early 1980s Tonka moved production to Texas and Mexico, primarily to lower their
production costs.
At the same time they expanded their range of toys to “Gobots”.
Tonka didn’t create them, they licenced their design from Bandai in Japan, meaning
Tonka mainly did the branding and distribution.
Bandai had attempted to release the toys as “Machine men”, but had largely failed,
except in Australia, so Tonka retained the “Machine men” branding there.
Gobots books, cartoons and computer games helped sell the toys to children, making it
the hottest selling toy of 1984.
Gobots were primarily marketed to boys, and Tonka wanted to do the same for a “girls toy”.
Pound Puppies were originally sold by a Canadian toy company, but Tonka would again work its
branding and marketing magic to sell them in 35 countries, again with TV shows and a
feature film.
Tonka hoped to replicate their Gobots and Pound Puppy success by selling the Sega Master System.
Sega weren’t doing a good job against Nintendo, so felt a company with experience in US toy
distribution could help them make inroads.
Soon Sega’s were in many more US shops, but Tonka’s lack of experience selling video
games quickly became apparent, and the sub-par games on offer meant the Nintendo Entertainment
System dominated.
In 1987 Tonka expanded by purchasing the Kenner Parker toy company, makers of the Easy-bake
Oven, Spirograph, Play-Doh, Monopoly, Sorry!, Risk, Trivial Pursuit, and if you’re a kid
from the 1970s, the “Six Million Dollar Man” action figure.
The deal included UK-based Palitoy, makers of Action Man and the Care Bears.
This made Tonka a much bigger player in the toy industry, and the Tonka toy line almost
an afterthought, but they’d needed a £290M loan ($400M USD, €340M, $520M AUD) to make
this purchase, and as a publicly listed company this made them a target for a takeover themselves.
With failing sales of their new Ghostbuster’s products, and their Batman products hit with
the delay of the “Batman Returns” film, plus more children buying video games than
board games, Tonka was purchased by Hasbro in 1991.
Hasbro was more interested in the Kenner Parker products, and had no need of the original
Tonka toy line, so farmed it out to Funrise Toys in 1998, makers of the wonderful “Fart Ninjas”!
(fart sound)
Hasbro attempted to breathe new life back into the Tonka brand with video games, but
the main focus today is on the classic Tonka vehicles – the bulldozer, front loader,
and of course what sandpit wouldn’t be complete without a Mighty Dump?
What?!?
Toys then and now have planned obsolescence – they’re built “to a price”.
Tonka decided to build longevity and quality into their products.
They cost a little more, but thanks to their design skills, we’re still able to enjoy
a lot of old Tonka’s that have survived many a childhood!