Fisher price

Fisher-Price is a toy company based in East Aurora, NY which makes toys for infants and children. The company was created in 1930 by Herman Fisher, Irving Price, Helen Schelle and Irving Price's wife, Margaret Evans Price who is an illustrator and artist. Their company's basic principles were that a toy would be of strong construction, good value for the money, good play value, ingenuity and action. The early toys were made out of heavy steel parts and ponderosa pine wood which were thought to be very sturdy for heavy use and rthe wood resisted splintering. The beginning toys were push-pull toys which had details added with lithographic labels and were designed by the art director, Margaret Evans Price. [1]

In 1931 16 wooden toys were taken to the American International Toy Fair in New York City for a successful showing. The first Fisher-Price toy sold in 1931 and was called Dr. Doodle. It wasn't until the early 1950's that the company used plastic, making a toy called Buzzy Bee. By the end of the 1950's the company made 39 toys out of plastic. During the 1960's, the company introduced a product line called Play Family which later came to be known as Little People and the popularity of this line replaced much of the earlier toys. By the end of the 1960's, Herman Fisher retired and the company was bought out by the Quaker Oats Company. This ownership continued until 1991 when the company regained its independence and was a publicly traded company. In 1993 Fisher-Price became a subsidiary of Mattel and the company expanded internationally . By 1997 Mattel decided to market all preschool products unter the Fisher-Price name. Fisher-Price has created approximately 5,000 different toys since its beginning in 1930. [2]