This may be of interest to you:
"In 1961 A. C. Gilbert died. In order to settle estate taxes his
majority holding in the company that bore his name was sold off.
Although A. C.'s son remained as head of the company, the real power
rested with the new majority owners who had big ideas about the
direction that Erector and the A. C. Gilbert company's other toys
should take. By 1966 the A. C. Gilbert toy company was bankrupt. The
A. C. Gilbert and Erector names were acquired by Gabriel Toys, then
Ideal Toys and went through several other hands before the Erector
name was eventually purchased by Meccano in the late 1980's...
The original Meccano plant in England closed its doors in the late
1970's but Meccano continued to be manufactured by a plant in Calais,
France. Meccano SA France was purchased by Nikko Toys, Japan in May
2000.
In the early 1990's Meccano started selling its sets in the US as
Erector sets. Those sets are just Meccano sets with the Erector name
and have been imported by Irwin Toys. About 1999 Irwin decided to stop
importing Meccano-Erector into the US except for the plastic Erector
Junior. You can still find some of the metal Meccano-Erector sets at
Toys R Us, most recently the Millennium Set, but basically no other
new sets are due to be imported. What will Nikko do? They are not
saying, so only time will tell."
http://www.girdersandgears.com/erector-history.html |
