Herman Guy Fisher was born in Unionville

Unionville, Centre County, Pennsylvania

Unionville is a borough in Centre County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area...

 Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

. He is best known as the co-founder of the famous toy brand Fisher-Price

Fisher-Price

Fisher-Price is a company that produces toys for infants and children, headquartered in East Aurora, New York. Fisher-Price has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Mattel since 1993.-History:...

.

Biography

Herman G. Fisher was born in Unionville, Pennsylvania in 1898. He graduated from the Pennsylvania State University in 1921 with a BA in Commerce and Finance.

In 1930, he got together with Irving Price

Irving Price

Irving Lanouette Price was a U.S. toy manufacturer. He was the co-founder and co-eponym of Fisher-Price Toys in 1930. On 23 February 1909, he married the children's book illustrator and artist Margaret Evans Price...

, Margaret Evans Price

Margaret Evans Price

Margaret Evans Price was a U.S. toy manufacturer. With her husband, Irving Price, and Herman Fisher, she co-founded Fisher-Price Toys in 1930. Margaret Evans was a children's book illustrator and artist...

 and Helen Schelle

Helen Schelle

Helen M. Schelle was co-founder of the toy manufacturing company Fisher-Price. Schelle was born in Piqua, Ohio and moved to New York as an adult, where by the middle of the 1920s, she had become owner and manager of the Penny Walker Toy Shop in Binghamton...

 to establish a toy company under the name of Fisher-Price. Although this was the time of the Great Depression, the company manufactured 16 wooden toys which proved highly popular at the American International Toy Fair

American International Toy Fair

The American International Toy Fair is one of a few major toy industry trade shows held around the world. It is held annually in mid February in New York City's Toy Center, located at 23rd Street at the crossover of Fifth Avenue and Broadway and at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, and is...

 in New York City. Fisher was the president and chairman of the Fisher-Price company from its inception in 1930 to 1969. He was instrumental in building Fisher-Price into the world’s largest manufacturer of preschool toys.

Along with Irving Price and Helen Schelle, he established the simple but strict Fisher-Price creed: "Fisher-Price toys should have intrinsic play value, ingenuity, strong construction, good value and action."

Herman Fisher was also instrumental in spearheading many 'firsts' in the toy industry. He coined the term “preschool toys” with the advent of the wooden blocks in 1934, the first to use plastic in 1950 in Queen Buzzy Bee’s wings and the creation of “National Baby Week” in the fifties.

Other information

• The Fisher Plaza in the Penn State University is named after him. He donated a large amount of money "to provide an area of beauty for his alma mater where all could pause to rest, reflect, or just watch the flowers grow."
• In 1985, he was inducted in the Toy Industry Association's Toy Industry Hall of Fame.
• Was a member of Sigma Pi
  Sigma Pi
  Sigma Pi is an international college secret and social fraternity founded in 1897 at Vincennes University. Sigma Pi International fraternity currently has 127 chapters and 4 colonies in the United States and Canada and is headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee...
  
  Fraternity at Penn State.
• In 1938, during his tenure as the president of TMA, he led the campaign to establish the association’s statistical committee.