Mego history question

[heartoflightness]

I have been trying to find out whether Mego acquired the Samet & Wells (aka) Samwel Toy Company at some point in the 1970s.

There is reference to a court case involving workers and both companies are named, but whether they were associated or whether Mego purchased Samet and Wells is something that I have not been able to find.

There is another aspect that I have not been able to track down. There was an R & R Toy Company that produced dolls that were identical in style to a line from Samet & Wells. I have been trying to find out if there was any relationship between the two companies or if one copied from the other and infringed on a patent.

Here are a couple of images for comparison. The patchwork-clothed doll is from the R & R Toy Company and the other one is from Samet & Wells.

Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

David B

[imp]

The answer to your first question is YES. The following paragraph is taken from my book, MEGO 8" SUPER-HEROES: WORLD'S GREATEST TOYS!:

During 1975, Mego continued its corporate expansion. Through the years, Mego unsuccessfully attempted to buy several companies, including LJN, Tyco, and Grand Toys in Canada. Mego already held wholly owned subsidiaries, such as Samet and Wells, acquired in September 1971. Located in Bohemia, New York, “Samet and Wells was the ‘rags,’” said Mr. Demato. “They made stuffed toys for the shore. The carnie [carnival] trade, they called it.” Mr. Demato laughingly said, “The air actually went on fire there once, because there was so much dust and debris in the air from filling these stuffed toys.” One wonders if this isn’t the origin of the urban legend about a fire at the Mego warehouse.

The book is out of print but if you're interested, the Digital Edition of the book is now available:

Click to check out the Mego book digital edition

I don't recall anything about R & R Toy Co., but Samet and Wells was a Mego subsidiary. Hope this helps.

- Benjamin

[heartoflightness]

Hi Benjamin,

Thanks so much for the info! That date for Mego acquiring Samet & Wells got the ball rolling with some other info as well.

I found this page:

http://www.artistictoysmfg.com/history.html

I believe that where it reads S & R it should actually be R & R consistently in that paragraph. The company was R & R Toy Manufacturing from circa 1947 to 1976 in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania. A Google search of that also turns up various obituaries for people who worked for the company while it was in operation.

So after a bit of evolving/reorganizing, what had been R & R was eventually acquired by Artistic Toy.

A key element in all of this is the fact that these are carnival dolls. I'm thinking that perhaps R & R might not have had a patent on the particular design. Samet and Wells might have come along afterwards and made use of the design without any consequences.

I also discovered that R & R got into a bit of trouble in 1970 for chronically having too little information on their tags.

Here is a comparison of an R & R tag and a Samet & Wells tag:





Here are a couple of old advertisements for R & R, the first being from 1947:





This is some interesting stuff about one of Mego's acquisitions and one of the acquisition's competitors back in the day.

[imp]

Fascinating stuff, David! Great research, and thank you for sharing it with us.

-b

[heartoflightness]

Thanks, Ben. I thought I would post up some more photos of these dolls to show some of the variety of outfits that was done by Samet & Wells and by R & R. These are all jumbo-size 24" dolls.

In addition to one of the patchwork style as shown above, and two of the green and white checkerboard pattern as shown above, my wife and I have a light blue and white checkerboard, a red and white checkerboard (which got all of this started, because someone gave that to me when I was about two years old and I gave it to my wife when we got married), and the ones in the following photos. The first one shown below, in the paisley pattern, is the only one we have seen thus far that has flesh-colored ends on the arms and legs rather than white. You can also get a sense of how easily the faces can be dented and cracked. But, these have all survived. We have a total of 11 so far.

[Mego Marauder]

Interesting but a little creepy.

[heartoflightness]

Interesting but a little creepy.

What is "creepy" about it ?

[Mego Marauder]

The dolls have those creepy kind of faces.