Doug Harke

For the past decade, I have been seriously collecting all sales literature that I can find that features farm toys. This includes ads in farm magazines, promotional brochures sent to dealers, full catalogs, and order blanks. My collection is growing but it is challenge to fill all of the “holes” since the first brochures and ads appeared in the early 1920’s.

The earliest farm toy advertising piece that I have is the illustrated ad for a cast iron Avery toy tractor made by Arcade beginning in 1922. Twenty-five cents doesn’t sound very expensive now but in 1922 it was more than an hours’ wage. Next came the Arcade Fordson ads in 1924 and this was followed by the McCormick-Deering 10-20 tractors both in farm paper ads and dealer order blanks.

Ad in 1930 Farm Mechanics magazine for Case farm toys made by Vindex

It appears that a number of the cast iron farm toys were sold through a promotion to increase the circulation of the Farm Mechanics magazine in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. Selling a certain number of subscriptions would get you a free toy with the most expensive being the John Deere pull-type combine, made by Vindex, which required selling five three-year subscriptions to the magazine. I have included an ad for Case farm toys made by Vindex but John Deere farm toys, also made by Vindex, and International Harvester toys, made by Arcade, were covered in this promotion.

Page from reprinted 1940 Arcade toy catalog

Cast iron toy catalogs, from the late 1920’s to 1941, were extensively reprinted in the 1980’s and they serve as a good reference for toy collectors. Included are several years of Arcade catalogs, a Vindex catalog, and a Hubley catalog. Be careful of unscrupulous vendors who sometimes try to represent these reprints as originals. There is considerable discussion of reprinted catalogs because they are widely available for a modest price but this depresses the value of the originals.

After the end of World War II, there was a rush of new farm toys including the plastic Farmall M made by Product Miniature and the plastic Case SC by Monarch as well as a host of sandcast and diecast toy tractors. Product Miniature printed nice color catalogs which they distributed through the general toy market and they also issued color pages, for dealer books, to implement dealers. It appears that a marketing company, probably Eska, issued the advertising material for the plastic tractors and the pressed steel implements, made by Carter Tru-Scale through the dealer network. Eska also added the pedal tractor order material because they manufactured all of the early pedal tractors except the Fords and the small Massey-Harris 44.

Promotional material for plastic Farmall M made by Product Miniature

Order blank for the Case VAC pedal tractor

John Deere dealers generally received a toy brochure plus an order blank from the era of the closed flywheel A to the present. Apparently, dealers could order extra copies of the toy brochure but few did because most of the old John Deere toy literature comes from dealer files or their former employees. My earliest brochure of this type is a 1953 one. John Deere toy ads also appeared in the Furrow magazine in the Fall issue before Christmas and my earliest one comes from 1949 which shows the “hipost B” tractor. Content of the Furrow magazine varied by area of the country and only some regional editions carried the toy ads.

Page from the 1954 John Deere farm toy brochure

Page from a dealer book showing Minneapolis Moline farm toys

Oliver and Minneapolis-Moline toy literature from 1950’s is primarily in the form of pages in the dealer products book. They also printed color order blanks illustrated with pictures of the toys. Massey-Harris, New Idea, New Holland, Ford, Coop, and Cockshutt also followed this sales strategy but their printed materials were usually in black and white. International Harvester toy literature also followed suit with pages for dealer books but they featured full page color materials for each toy. There were four suppliers for IH toys then – Product Miniature provided the plastic M, flarebox wagon and 1/25 scale trucks, Lakone made the plastic Super C tractor, Carter Tru-Scale made the pressed steel implements and trucks, and Eska made the pedal tractors. The marketing strategy seemed to change by 1957 or 1958 because I have a 1957 color catalog featuring the plastic IH toys by Product Miniature and then I begin a long series of full line toy catalogs starting in 1958. My biggest void is any sales literature for the 1/16 scale Farmall 400 and 450 and their associated implements. Pedal tractor literature, with the 400’s and 450’s, appears regularly for sale.

Page from the reprinted 1963 Ertl general toy catalog

Page from the 1970 dealer catalog for White, Oliver, and Minneapolis-Moline toys

Ertl became the exclusive manufacturer and marketer of farm toys in the 1963-64 time span and they printed brochures or catalogs for each OEM toy line as well as a general catalog. The Toy Farmer reprinting of the general Ertl catalogs from 1962-71 provided a nice reference for a modest price. From the early 1970’s onward, there was a year lag between when new toys were announced and included in the OEM catalog and when they appeared in the general toy catalog. This gave implement dealers an advantage in selling the new models. John Deere toys did not appear in the general catalog until 1970 and that was apparently the result of a change in their marketing agreement. Several different strategies were followed by Ertl with their brochures and catalogs. Beginning in 1964, they included a very small black and white folding brochure in the box with each John Deere toy, printed small format (3-1/2 X 5) brochures for distribution to customers from the dealers, and printed a full size color catalog for dealers only. The very small brochures in the toy boxes ended in 1968 and the smaller format brochures for consumers were changed to color in 1971. Other toy lines had only the full size dealer catalogs except for IH which had smaller black and white brochures in the toy boxes in 1966 and 1967.

Page from the 1963 Tru-Scale catalog

Tru-Scale catalogs are also of great interest to collectors and they began to appear as one-sheet, double-sided with the introduction of their own toy line in 1953. As the product line expanded, so did the number of pages in their catalogs which were always in color. Their last catalog was for 1971 when it was issued with both the Tru-Scale and Ertl names as they had been bought out by Ertl in 1969 or 1970. Tru-Scale also included small black and white catalogs in the box with the toy and these are popular with collectors.

Cover of the 1983 Allis-Chalmers farm toy catalog

TTT February 2004 Page 5

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