The antique blocks show a bit of wear. Generations of children have stacked the wooden shapes into elaborate houses, curious shops, dramatic stages and caverns of exotic lore. Part of Penn State’s Allison Shelley Collection in Pattee Library, the blocks are a remembrance of the way children used to play.
Sturdy, adaptable wooden toys like those blocks may well have been an inspiration to a Penn State graduate who co-founded the world-renowned Fisher-Price Toy Company.
One of the legends of the toy industry, the late Herman Guy Fisher 1921, believed that a toy was best when it ran on “child power.” Throughout a distinguished career he held steadfastly to that principle. His contribution to enriching playtime was honored last year when he was one of the first to be named to the Toy Industry Hall of Fame.
Toys were not on Fisher’s mind when he entered Penn State in the autumn of 1917. A “local” from Centre County’s Unionville in the Bald Eagle Valley, he had been sent to State by his determined mother, a Quaker schoolteacher who had been widowed when her son was just five.
The year he graduated, 1921, was economically unpromising for a young man just out of college. He had taken the liberal arts course with what he called “all the strength I could get in economics,” and he accepted the only job offered—in the branch office of a surety company in Rochester, New York. He soon left there for the Fairchild Company, producer of paper boxes for candy companies. As a sideline, Fairchild opened a shop that made cardboard games and used the slogan, “Our Work is Child’s Play.” Fisher managed that shop and in later years purchased its slogan from his old employer to make it the motto of his own company, Fisher-Price.
It’s a minor miracle that Fisher-Price Toys ever got off the ground. The year was 1930—the depths of Depression. In East Aurora, New York, Irving Price, a Woolworth executive who had taken early retirement, was looking for something to do. He even had a little capital to invest. One day a neighbor took him on a tour of Fisher’s toy plant in nearby Churchville and the idea for the new company began to germinate. Put Fisher’s manufacturing expertise together with Price’s marketing ability ... but where to get the idea for new toys? The answer was found in Helen M. Shelle, owner of a local toy store. Fisher would later credit her with some of the company’s most innovative creations. “She had more ideas for toys than I did,” he said in a 1967 interview.
Many would have thought it crazy to start a business in the midst of a depression. And Fisher himself might well have agreed after the first, the second, even the third year. By that time the company had lost more than two-thirds of its capital. But their toys—imaginative, brightly lithographed, and made of tough Ponderosa pine—had received good reviews from the industry, and the partners decided to hang on for one more year. Finally, in 1936 the company made a small profit—$3,000 on sales of just over $250,000—and it stayed in the black from then on.
To reward the loyal workers who had held on during the lean years, the firm instituted one of the nation’s first profit-sharing programs, another resounding success.
Initially F-P had made the push to get its first toys into production in time to be represented at the 1931 New York Toy Fair. That year the company catalog listed sixteen toys—with names like Barky Puppy, Woodsy Wee Circus and Zoo, Go N’ Back Mule, Drummer Bear, and Doctor and Granny Doodle—all relying on child power and providing lots of “action.”
The catalog described Granny Doodle as “an experienced dame but young for her years, [she] knows just how children play. She follows them—neck going up and down with waddling motion, bill opening and closing as she quacks, ‘Play! Play!’” With her concealed squawker, Granny Doodle was “an easy seller” at $1.00.
Buyers like the new “old-fashioned” toys with their bright designs. Thanks to Helen Schelle’s contacts, Fisher-Price toys began to be seen in such major New York department stores as Macy's. Still, times were hard, and it must have been a temptation to cut corners in order to reap a larger profit. But the partners refused to compromise on the quality they knew was necessary: Toys should have intrinsic play value, action and strong construction and offer "good value for the money," insisted Fisher.
A second line—wooden blocks—introduced in the mid-‘30s reflected Fisher’s belief that toys should force the child's involvement. Like the antique blocks of the previous century, the Fisher-Price blocks opened the gateway to imagination, becoming a fort in the Wild West, a knight’s castle, or Buck Rogers’ spaceship.
Fisher-Price did not offer an extensive line of toys, but every one was “kid tested.” The research staff of fifteen, housed in a separate unit which has been described as resembling “a streamlined Swiss chalet,” could expect each design to stand or fall as a result of the ultimate test—what a child did with it. New toys were introduced to a group of children in a special room furnished in a homelike manner and fitted with a one-way mirror. After a couple of afternoons of being ganged, pushed, dragged and drooled on, the toy would be thrown and beaten to test its durability and safety. Of course, not all toys made it to the final step. If the children ignored it or tried it once and then chose other playthings, the toy never went into production.
Fisher’s favorite toy—introduced in 1938 and still popular—was droopy-eared, long-nosed Snoopy Sniffer whose short legs could trot briskly along behind a fast-pulling toddler. It is said that Herm Fisher used to stroll through the F-P plant in East Aurora with a Snoopy Sniffer at his heels. His production staff of 900 loved it.
During the 1940s F-P, like most of the nation, turned to war work. Its assembly line, a series of hand-operated pulleys and belts in a converted barn, was used to make bomb crates, Navy medical boxes, ship bumpers and other military necessities. After the war, F-P made two significant changes—it moved to a modern production facility and introduced a wartime innovation, plastic. The first use of plastic in a Fisher-Price toy was on Buzzy Bee. Its wings were molded of the new material and its success was immediate.
In the mid-’50s Fisher, who had been the company’s president and general manager since the beginning, took on the added responsibilities of chairman of the board when partner Irving Price retired.
Later, with a little time for himself after his own retirement, Fisher took on added responsibilities at his alma mater. Fisher-Price funded a $3,500 scholarship for a graduate student in family studies, and several professors of child development were retained as F-P consultants. Fisher also lent his expertise to the College of Business Administration as a member of its alumni society, was named a Distinguished Alumnus in 1969, and donated money for the University Park plaza which bears his name and for landscaping the north entrance to campus.
Herm and his wife Elizabeth (whose nickname “Tinny” was inspired by her maiden name, Ford) were also avid fans of Nittany Lion football and tried to attend all the team’s home games.
Although he was not a talkative man when it came to his own accomplishments, Herm Fisher was more than willing to share his toy industry experiences with others. He served his profession as president of the Toy Manufacturers of America, Inc., worked actively for the United Fund and Community Chest, and founded the East Aurora Boys Club, which he headed for five years.
A father and grandfather, Fisher worked hard to make his philosophy—that a toy should be durable, whimsical, active and affordable—part of his corporate identity. In the ’60s he saw just how successful he had been: More and more parents had begun to ask for Fisher-Price toys by name—an impressive statistic in the hurly-burly world of gimmick and gadget. In fact, it was estimated in 1969, when the company was sold to Quaker Oats, that there was one Fisher-Price toy for every preschooler in the country.
Herman Fisher died in 1975, but he left behind a proud legacy; the company he founded is still turning work into child’s play.
