Remco Dolls and Toys

       Remco Industries, Inc. was a toy company in the United States founded in the 1940s. It was best known for toys marketed and sold in the late 1950s and early 1960s, like the 'Johnny Reb Cannon', 'Mighty Matilda Atomic Aircraft Carrier', 'Remco Voice Control Kennedy Airport' (which featured model airplanes of American, TWA and United Airlines, a record player and an album which played a voice giving landing and take-off instructions) and the tethered 'Electronic Falcon Plane' that "flies itself". The company's slogan was "Every Boy Wants a Remco Toy...And So Do Girls!"

       Remco was founded by two cousins, Isaac "Ike" Heller and Saul Robbins. Armand Daddis soon joined the two as the company gradually moved from simple 'walkie-talkies' to a variety of sophisticated remote control toys. The name Remco comes from the two words "Remote Control". Originally located in Newark, NJ, the company later moved to nearby Harrison, New Jersey. 

       The boxes and toys were printed with just the company name and the city on them, but there were a few more clues as to the company's physical location on packaging. A street address listed on the back of the 1960 light bulldog tank box is "113 North 13th Street, Newark 7, NJ." The address on the instruction sheet for factory service return of the 1966 Lost in Space Robot is "Cape May St., Harrison, NJ." The Harrison location is now occupied by the Red Bull Arena, while the Newark location is now occupied by a furniture outlet. 

       In the mid-1960s, Remco acquired several licenses for popular culture groups and TV shows and proceeded to make a variety of toys. Some of these were the Beatles, the Monkees, Lost In Space, The Munsters, Batman and Star Trek. However, the company often paid little heed to faithfulness to the property: Star Trek for instance, the merchandise Remco released for that series was usually generic toys from previous unrelated lines and had decals of the series simply placed on them, which is a technique called "label slapping." The most derided of Remco's licensed toys for Star Trek is a white helmet with a red rotating light and siren with either Kirk or Spock's name on it. One popular toy in the early 1960s was the 24 inch long functioning scuba diver with mask, knife, utility belt, rifle, walkie-talkie, air tanks, and floating location buoy. 

       From the 1980s through the 1990s, Remco made a variety of generic diecast and plastic trucks and other vehicles, usually uniformly made about four inches long. Vehicles were attractive and sturdy, though not uniform in scale, and included a tanker truck, fire truck, delivery van, cherry picker truck, skid steer, Jeep, and many more. A few vehicles were larger, like the seven inch long "Tuff Ones" "Recyclable Waste Management Corp." truck with opening side doors for "cans", "glass", and "paper". 

       The company was known by toy collectors for their many Universal Monsters figures produced during the 1980s. These figures were a continuation of the license and figures first produced by AHI during the 1970s. Steel Tec was distributed by Remco Toys, Inc. of New York, New York, from 1992 to 1997 and was a division of parent company Azrak Hamway International. In 1997, Jakks Pacific acquired Remco from Azrak-Hamway.

The Remco Dune Buggy Baby: seen here in the ALDENS Christmas
Catalogue, 1972 edition from Berrien Springs, Michigan.
Our family's version of this doll came with a yellow dune buggy.

Tiny Tears and many more by Remco, 

commercials and interview.

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