Word: zippo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Crowds passing through the display saw copies of Ronson and Zippo lighters, Sheaffer and Parker pens, Bell & Howell movie projectors, Leica cameras, Esterbrook desk-pen sets, Revere Ware copper-bottomed saucepans, even a West German B.M.W. motorcycle. Some Japanese copies were so precise the parts were even interchangeable with foreign products. "There would be many more complaints if people only realized the full extent of the copying," said one trade official. "American electrical appliance makers may be due for an early shock. Japanese appliance manufacturers are rapidly nearing the stage of technical proficiency where facsimile copies will be possible...
GOODS & SERVICES New Ideas Smoke Now, Pay Later. Larus & Brother Co. of Richmond, Va. announced a "Take your premium now-pay later" scheme to spur the sales of their Holiday cigarettes. Customers select a premium gift (e.g., a Zippo lighter for 255 coupons), make a down payment of 15 Holiday coupons, sign a pledge to pay the balance of the coupons (one to a pack) as they smoke...
...Zippo Climbs Back. The horn sold well, and Marx was made a Strauss director. One day the directors discussed whether the company should continue to manufacture and sell in its four retail stores in New York or give up selling. Marx alone urged Strauss to get out of the retail field. Instead of getting rid of the stores, Strauss got rid of Marx...
...twelve and finished Fort Hamilton High in three years. At nights he pored over books "on how to become a $5,000-a-year man." After a short-lived job with a druggists' syndicate, Marx stumbled "by sheer happenstance" into an office-boy's job with Ferdinand Strauss, whose Zippo the Climbing Monkey and Alabama Coon Jigger (a clockwork minstrel) were the first mechanical toys mass-manufactured in the U.S. Within four years, Marx had been promoted to manage the company's East Rutherford, NJ. plant, and soon afterward he had his first idea for a toy. One of Strauss...
...brothers Louis and Dave started in to make toys themselves. They bought the dies for Zippo and the Coon Jigger after Strauss had gone bankrupt. The monkey and the minstrel had been on the market for more than 20 years, but Marx gave them bright new colors, brought out bigger models, and sold 8,000,000 of each. By the time he was 26, Marx was a millionaire and convinced that, in the toy industry, there is nothing new under the sun. To prove his point, he brought Zippo back this year, redesigned, rechristened (Jocko) and repriced...