Ives Manufacturing Company
Encyclopedia
The Ives Manufacturing Company, an American
toy manufacturer from 1868 to 1932, was the largest manufacturer of toy trains in the United States
from 1910 until 1924, when Lionel Corporation overtook it in sales.
by Edward Ives
, a descendant of Plymouth colony governor William Bradford
. The company initially produced paper dolls whose limbs moved in response to hot air, but soon began producing a wide range of toys, including a toy cannon
that shot using real gunpowder
and clockwork
powered dolls and animals that could move. The clockwork toys were designed by Jerome Secor, Nathan Warner, and Arthur Hotchkiss and by the 1880s, Ives was a leading producer of these toys.
Its emphasis shifted to trains as its designs were copied by other toymakers who were willing to sell them more cheaply. Ives' trains were made of tin
or cast iron
and initially powered by clockwork, but like later electric trains, some models could whistle and smoke. On December 22, 1900, a fire destroyed Ives' main factory and its tooling, prompting a re-design for 1901 that resulted in Ives' first toy train that ran on track. In the end the fire benefited the company, as the insurance money permitted it to build a modern factory with state-of-the-art tooling.
Although several companies were selling electric trains at the time, Ives opted to remain with clockwork, partly because many U.S. homes still lacked electricity.
Initially, Ives' greatest competition came from German
imports, and not from domestic manufacturers. Ives' response was with marketing
, which it directed at its target audience, the twelve-year-old boy. Its campaigns addressed boys as business partners, telling them that the success of Ives' fictional railroad, Ives Railway Lines, depended on their shrewd management. This worked, building brand loyalty.
undercutting its prices on clockwork trains. Ives initially produced electric trains in O gauge and 1 gauge
.
Ives' train sales continued to decline in the face of increasing competition and Lionel's greater momentum, the latter having released its first electric trains nearly a decade earlier. Meanwhile, construction toys were gaining in popularity, so in an effort to re-diversify, Ives released a Meccano
and Erector Set
-like construction toy in 1913 named Struktiron. Although it offered parts its competition did not, the set was not very successful and Ives withdrew it from the market in 1917.
World War I
had mixed effects on the company. On one hand, it eliminated imports from Germany
, increasing Ives' share of the market. However, Ives' geographic location made it difficult to bring in the materials it needed to make trains, and also made shipping finished products difficult. Lionel and American Flyer, being headquartered in New York City
and Chicago
, respectively, did not face that challenge. Additionally, Ives' isolation made it impossible for Ives to gain lucrative wartime government manufacturing contracts. As a result, Ives did not benefit financially from the war.
After the war, Ives, along with competitors Lionel and American Flyer, lobbied successfully for protective tariff
s to promote the fledgling American toy train industry. As a result, there was very little foreign competition after World War I, especially at the high end of the market where Ives had positioned itself.
The seasonal nature of train sales continued to cause concern for Ives, and Harry Ives, Edward Ives' son and successor, sought one last time to diversify by selling toy boats, which he hoped would support the company through strong summer sales. The first boats, released in 1917, were powered by a clockwork engine from an Ives O gauge locomotive. However, the designs were unrealistic looking, lacking the costly detail that was the highlight of competing German designs, and had a tendency to sink easily. Additionally, since Ives did not use a primer when painting the boats, the paint flaked off easily. Ives had difficulty adapting its methods for designing and building trains to work for boats. Despite the problems, Ives continued producing the boats until 1928. Few Ives boats exist today, but it is unclear whether this was due to lack of popularity or their propensity to sink.
Harry Ives had a heated professional relationship with Lionel founder Joshua Lionel Cowen
, in which they traded lawsuits and, starting in 1915, Lionel criticized the quality of Ives' offerings in print advertisements, calling its cars flimsy and showing a cast-iron Ives locomotive shattering into 15 pieces when dropped from a table, while a Lionel locomotive dropped from the same height would survive with only dents. Other ads criticizing Ives' quality appeared, but they always compared Ives' cheapest products with Lionel's priciest offerings.
Although Ives could rightly claim that its lithographed
offerings were more realistic than Lionel's simple enameled
two-color cars, Lionel, taking a cue from Ives, targeted advertising straight at children, claiming its cars were the most realistic and that its paint jobs were more durable.
Ives' subdued responses did little to counter Lionel's claims, only calling its competitors (including Lionel) imitators whose technology was "12 years behind." It was no match for Lionel's bold and brash ads. Additionally, Lionel's trains generally were priced lower, or, in instances where their price was comparable to Ives, they were larger, making them appear to be a better value for the money. As a result, Lionel continually gained ground on Ives, finally overtaking them in sales in 1924.
In 1921, Ives abruptly discontinued its slow-selling 1 gauge trains in favor of Wide Gauge
trains, a standard Lionel had introduced several years earlier and called "Standard Gauge". Ives did not call its trains Standard Gauge, as Lionel had trademarked the name. While Ives was inconsistent in what it called its larger-gauge trains, it most frequently called it wide gauge. Numerous other companies also entered the wide gauge market in the early 1920s, increasing consumer interest in the size and forcing the manufacturers to innovate in order to survive.
In 1924, Ives introduced a locomotive engine that would change directions when its power flow was interrupted, a feature that Lionel would not offer for another two years. Even after Lionel's introduction, Ives' offering was unique in that it offered a neutral position as well as forward and reverse, and the engine's headlight continued to operate even when the train was in neutral. Ives charged a premium for this feature, which it dubbed the "R-unit" (the "R" stood for 'remote'), and it increased sales.
This was not enough for Ives to re-take its former place as market leader—by 1926, Lionel's revenue was twice that of Ives'--and, worse yet for the company, Ives was losing money by the mid-1920s. This was worsened by Ives' attempts to compete at the low end of the market, where, unlike its competition, it sold its entry-level models at a loss. If Ives' low-end products were higher quality than its competitors, it benefited its customers, not the company.
, reporting liabilities of $188,303.25. As Ives already had $245,000 in Christmas sales lined up, Johnson petitioned for a private sale and a quick settlement. The motion for a private sale was denied.
On July 31, 1928, Ives was purchased by Lionel and American Flyer
for $73,250. The low price in comparison to the company sales was presumably due to liens on Ives' assets. Lionel and Flyer then operated Ives as a joint venture, retaining Johnson and Harry Ives as president and chairman, respectively. Harry Ives left the company in September 1929, and within seven years he was dead.
Ives' new owners immediately discontinued the line of toy boats, and much of Ives' train product line was replaced with relabeled American Flyer or Lionel product, and most new designs were carried out using Lionel and American Flyer parts, even though Ives' own designs were usually more realistic. There are several reasons for this. When Lionel and American Flyer bought Ives, they did not buy the factory or tooling, which they then had to rent. It may have been less expensive for the parent companies to supply their own parts than to rent the old Ives tooling. Some historians have speculated that the Ives tooling was worn out and no longer suitable for use. A third factor was that Lionel's and Flyer's manufacturing process was less labor intensive, which made their designs less expensive to manufacture than the Ives designs they replaced.
A notable exception was the Ives 1122 locomotive, first produced in 1929, which was the first near-to-scale model of an existing locomotive to enter the marketplace. Although it had a 4-4-2
wheel configuration, it was otherwise a recognizable copy of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
President Washington Class 4-6-2
locomotive.
Whatever the reasons, the Ives product line after 1928 inherited many recognizable traits from three different companies' product lines.
factory. Lionel kept the Ives brand on the market through 1932, then repositioned Ives for 1933, branding its entry-level trains as Lionel-Ives, then dropped the Ives name altogether following that year. Although re-issues were occasionally made, the Ives name never re-appeared on the marketplace with any kind of regularity.
Although Joshua Lionel Cowen would later claim that he dumped all of the Ives molds in the Connecticut River
, Ives' influence lived on. Lionel continued the Ives practice of issuing low-end train sets that ran on a circle of O-gauge track with a 27-inch radius, and Lionel incorporated some Ives-designed freight cars into its product line. The Lionel 1680 tanker car, for instance, was an Ives design that remained in Lionel's catalogs right up to the start of World War II
.
Even more significantly, the Ives e-unit first introduced in 1924 lived on in Lionel locomotives, with a modified version of the Ives design first appearing in Lionel trains starting in 1933. Some historians have said Cowen coveted the Ives e-unit, and that it was the primary reason Lionel bought the company. It would remain present in Lionel trains for more than 50 years.
Ives toys are highly sought after by collectors today.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
toy manufacturer from 1868 to 1932, was the largest manufacturer of toy trains in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
from 1910 until 1924, when Lionel Corporation overtook it in sales.
Early history
Ives was founded in Plymouth, ConnecticutPlymouth, Connecticut
Plymouth is a town in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. It is named after Plymouth, Devon, England. The population was 11,634 at the 2000 census. The Town of Plymouth includes the villages of Terryville and Pequabuck.-Geography:...
by Edward Ives
Edward Ives
Note: For the American folklorist, see Edward D. Ives, and for the American Olympic oarsman, see Edward Ives .Edward Riley Ives was an American toymaker from Connecticut...
, a descendant of Plymouth colony governor William Bradford
William Bradford (1590-1657)
William Bradford was an English leader of the settlers of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, and served as governor for over 30 years after John Carver died. His journal was published as Of Plymouth Plantation...
. The company initially produced paper dolls whose limbs moved in response to hot air, but soon began producing a wide range of toys, including a toy cannon
Cannon
A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellents to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees,...
that shot using real gunpowder
Gunpowder
Gunpowder, also known since in the late 19th century as black powder, was the first chemical explosive and the only one known until the mid 1800s. It is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate - with the sulfur and charcoal acting as fuels, while the saltpeter works as an oxidizer...
and clockwork
Clockwork
A clockwork is the inner workings of either a mechanical clock or a device that operates in a similar fashion. Specifically, the term refers to a mechanical device utilizing a complex series of gears....
powered dolls and animals that could move. The clockwork toys were designed by Jerome Secor, Nathan Warner, and Arthur Hotchkiss and by the 1880s, Ives was a leading producer of these toys.
Its emphasis shifted to trains as its designs were copied by other toymakers who were willing to sell them more cheaply. Ives' trains were made of tin
Tin
Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...
or cast iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
and initially powered by clockwork, but like later electric trains, some models could whistle and smoke. On December 22, 1900, a fire destroyed Ives' main factory and its tooling, prompting a re-design for 1901 that resulted in Ives' first toy train that ran on track. In the end the fire benefited the company, as the insurance money permitted it to build a modern factory with state-of-the-art tooling.
Although several companies were selling electric trains at the time, Ives opted to remain with clockwork, partly because many U.S. homes still lacked electricity.
Initially, Ives' greatest competition came from German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
imports, and not from domestic manufacturers. Ives' response was with marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
, which it directed at its target audience, the twelve-year-old boy. Its campaigns addressed boys as business partners, telling them that the success of Ives' fictional railroad, Ives Railway Lines, depended on their shrewd management. This worked, building brand loyalty.
Electric trains
Ives released its first electric trains in 1910, partially in response to companies such as American FlyerAmerican Flyer
American Flyer was a popular brand of toy train and model railroad in the United States in the middle part of the 20th century.- The Chicago era, 1907–1938 :...
undercutting its prices on clockwork trains. Ives initially produced electric trains in O gauge and 1 gauge
1 gauge
Gauge 1 is a model railroadingand toy train standard, popular in the early 20th century, particularly with European manufacturers. Its track measures , making it larger than 0 gauge but slightly smaller than wide gauge, which came to be the dominant U.S...
.
Ives' train sales continued to decline in the face of increasing competition and Lionel's greater momentum, the latter having released its first electric trains nearly a decade earlier. Meanwhile, construction toys were gaining in popularity, so in an effort to re-diversify, Ives released a Meccano
Meccano
Meccano is a model construction system comprising re-usable metal strips, plates, angle girders, wheels, axles and gears, with nuts and bolts to connect the pieces. It enables the building of working models and mechanical devices....
and Erector Set
Erector Set
Erector Set is the trade name of a toy construction set that is popular in the United States.It consists of collections of small metal beams with regular holes for nuts, bolts, screws, and mechanical parts such as pulleys, gears, and small electric motors.The brand name is currently used for...
-like construction toy in 1913 named Struktiron. Although it offered parts its competition did not, the set was not very successful and Ives withdrew it from the market in 1917.
World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
had mixed effects on the company. On one hand, it eliminated imports from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, increasing Ives' share of the market. However, Ives' geographic location made it difficult to bring in the materials it needed to make trains, and also made shipping finished products difficult. Lionel and American Flyer, being headquartered in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, respectively, did not face that challenge. Additionally, Ives' isolation made it impossible for Ives to gain lucrative wartime government manufacturing contracts. As a result, Ives did not benefit financially from the war.
After the war, Ives, along with competitors Lionel and American Flyer, lobbied successfully for protective tariff
Tariff
A tariff may be either tax on imports or exports , or a list or schedule of prices for such things as rail service, bus routes, and electrical usage ....
s to promote the fledgling American toy train industry. As a result, there was very little foreign competition after World War I, especially at the high end of the market where Ives had positioned itself.
The seasonal nature of train sales continued to cause concern for Ives, and Harry Ives, Edward Ives' son and successor, sought one last time to diversify by selling toy boats, which he hoped would support the company through strong summer sales. The first boats, released in 1917, were powered by a clockwork engine from an Ives O gauge locomotive. However, the designs were unrealistic looking, lacking the costly detail that was the highlight of competing German designs, and had a tendency to sink easily. Additionally, since Ives did not use a primer when painting the boats, the paint flaked off easily. Ives had difficulty adapting its methods for designing and building trains to work for boats. Despite the problems, Ives continued producing the boats until 1928. Few Ives boats exist today, but it is unclear whether this was due to lack of popularity or their propensity to sink.
Harry Ives had a heated professional relationship with Lionel founder Joshua Lionel Cowen
Joshua Lionel Cowen
Joshua Lionel Cowen , born Joshua Lionel Cohen, was an American inventor and the cofounder of Lionel Corporation, a manufacturer of model railroads and toy trains....
, in which they traded lawsuits and, starting in 1915, Lionel criticized the quality of Ives' offerings in print advertisements, calling its cars flimsy and showing a cast-iron Ives locomotive shattering into 15 pieces when dropped from a table, while a Lionel locomotive dropped from the same height would survive with only dents. Other ads criticizing Ives' quality appeared, but they always compared Ives' cheapest products with Lionel's priciest offerings.
Although Ives could rightly claim that its lithographed
Lithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...
offerings were more realistic than Lionel's simple enameled
Enamel paint
Enamel paint is paint that air dries to a hard, usually glossy, finish, used for coating surfaces that are outdoors or otherwise subject to hard wear or variations in temperature; it should not be confused with decorated objects in "painted enamel", where vitreous enamel is applied with brushes and...
two-color cars, Lionel, taking a cue from Ives, targeted advertising straight at children, claiming its cars were the most realistic and that its paint jobs were more durable.
Ives' subdued responses did little to counter Lionel's claims, only calling its competitors (including Lionel) imitators whose technology was "12 years behind." It was no match for Lionel's bold and brash ads. Additionally, Lionel's trains generally were priced lower, or, in instances where their price was comparable to Ives, they were larger, making them appear to be a better value for the money. As a result, Lionel continually gained ground on Ives, finally overtaking them in sales in 1924.
In 1921, Ives abruptly discontinued its slow-selling 1 gauge trains in favor of Wide Gauge
Standard Gauge (toy trains)
Standard Gauge, also known as Wide Gauge, was an early model railway and toy train rail gauge, introduced in the United States in 1906 by Lionel Corporation. As it was a toy standard, rather than a scale modeling standard, the actual scale of Standard Gauge locomotives and rolling stock varied...
trains, a standard Lionel had introduced several years earlier and called "Standard Gauge". Ives did not call its trains Standard Gauge, as Lionel had trademarked the name. While Ives was inconsistent in what it called its larger-gauge trains, it most frequently called it wide gauge. Numerous other companies also entered the wide gauge market in the early 1920s, increasing consumer interest in the size and forcing the manufacturers to innovate in order to survive.
In 1924, Ives introduced a locomotive engine that would change directions when its power flow was interrupted, a feature that Lionel would not offer for another two years. Even after Lionel's introduction, Ives' offering was unique in that it offered a neutral position as well as forward and reverse, and the engine's headlight continued to operate even when the train was in neutral. Ives charged a premium for this feature, which it dubbed the "R-unit" (the "R" stood for 'remote'), and it increased sales.
This was not enough for Ives to re-take its former place as market leader—by 1926, Lionel's revenue was twice that of Ives'--and, worse yet for the company, Ives was losing money by the mid-1920s. This was worsened by Ives' attempts to compete at the low end of the market, where, unlike its competition, it sold its entry-level models at a loss. If Ives' low-end products were higher quality than its competitors, it benefited its customers, not the company.
Bankruptcy
In an effort to turn around the company, Harry Ives relinquished his presidency in 1927, becoming chairman of the board and bringing in an outsider, Charles R. Johnson, as president, but problems continued and Ives' largest creditor sued in 1928. Ives filed for bankruptcyBankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
, reporting liabilities of $188,303.25. As Ives already had $245,000 in Christmas sales lined up, Johnson petitioned for a private sale and a quick settlement. The motion for a private sale was denied.
On July 31, 1928, Ives was purchased by Lionel and American Flyer
American Flyer
American Flyer was a popular brand of toy train and model railroad in the United States in the middle part of the 20th century.- The Chicago era, 1907–1938 :...
for $73,250. The low price in comparison to the company sales was presumably due to liens on Ives' assets. Lionel and Flyer then operated Ives as a joint venture, retaining Johnson and Harry Ives as president and chairman, respectively. Harry Ives left the company in September 1929, and within seven years he was dead.
Ives' new owners immediately discontinued the line of toy boats, and much of Ives' train product line was replaced with relabeled American Flyer or Lionel product, and most new designs were carried out using Lionel and American Flyer parts, even though Ives' own designs were usually more realistic. There are several reasons for this. When Lionel and American Flyer bought Ives, they did not buy the factory or tooling, which they then had to rent. It may have been less expensive for the parent companies to supply their own parts than to rent the old Ives tooling. Some historians have speculated that the Ives tooling was worn out and no longer suitable for use. A third factor was that Lionel's and Flyer's manufacturing process was less labor intensive, which made their designs less expensive to manufacture than the Ives designs they replaced.
A notable exception was the Ives 1122 locomotive, first produced in 1929, which was the first near-to-scale model of an existing locomotive to enter the marketplace. Although it had a 4-4-2
4-4-2 (locomotive)
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 4-4-2 represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles , four powered and coupled driving wheels on two axles, and two trailing wheels on one axle...
wheel configuration, it was otherwise a recognizable copy of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was one of the oldest railroads in the United States and the first common carrier railroad. It came into being mostly because the city of Baltimore wanted to compete with the newly constructed Erie Canal and another canal being proposed by Pennsylvania, which...
President Washington Class 4-6-2
4-6-2
4-6-2, in the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles , six powered and coupled driving wheels on three axles, and two trailing wheels on one axle .These locomotives are also known as Pacifics...
locomotive.
Whatever the reasons, the Ives product line after 1928 inherited many recognizable traits from three different companies' product lines.
Lionel Manufactured Production
In 1930, Lionel bought out American Flyer's share in Ives and closed the Ives factory in Connecticut, moving operations to Lionel's New JerseyNew Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
factory. Lionel kept the Ives brand on the market through 1932, then repositioned Ives for 1933, branding its entry-level trains as Lionel-Ives, then dropped the Ives name altogether following that year. Although re-issues were occasionally made, the Ives name never re-appeared on the marketplace with any kind of regularity.
Although Joshua Lionel Cowen would later claim that he dumped all of the Ives molds in the Connecticut River
Connecticut River
The Connecticut River is the largest and longest river in New England, and also an American Heritage River. It flows roughly south, starting from the Fourth Connecticut Lake in New Hampshire. After flowing through the remaining Connecticut Lakes and Lake Francis, it defines the border between the...
, Ives' influence lived on. Lionel continued the Ives practice of issuing low-end train sets that ran on a circle of O-gauge track with a 27-inch radius, and Lionel incorporated some Ives-designed freight cars into its product line. The Lionel 1680 tanker car, for instance, was an Ives design that remained in Lionel's catalogs right up to the start of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Even more significantly, the Ives e-unit first introduced in 1924 lived on in Lionel locomotives, with a modified version of the Ives design first appearing in Lionel trains starting in 1933. Some historians have said Cowen coveted the Ives e-unit, and that it was the primary reason Lionel bought the company. It would remain present in Lionel trains for more than 50 years.
Ives toys are highly sought after by collectors today.
External links
- December 1918 advertisement for Ives in Popular Science - Ives Toys Make Happy Boys, Popular SciencePopular SciencePopular Science is an American monthly magazine founded in 1872 carrying articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects. Popular Science has won over 58 awards, including the ASME awards for its journalistic excellence in both 2003 and 2004...
monthly, December 1918, page 111, Scanned by Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=EikDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA111