Early Kohnstam/Moko & Lesney Advertising

[johnboy]

These are some facsimiles I have of some early adverts:

[johnboy]

Part 2:

[johnboy]

Part 3:

[johnboy]

Part 4:

[johnboy]

Sorry if the images are a bit large, but I reduced them enough just to read without too much trouble hopefully when you click on the image. Ignore the odd duplicate, some of these are doubled in the folder. These ads were collated by Patrick Talbot and given out at MICA gatherings over 20 years ago.

[Squid]

Old adverts like that are always fascinating to look at. It's a shame that the large Euclid quarry truck didn't go into production!

[durangokid]

John,
Those are quite historic and very interesting! They help tell some of the story about the early days of Moko/Lesney and how the market/sales were started.
Can you share more about Kohnstam? Was it a retailer/wholesaler, etc.? I'm assuming that we should be thankful to them for helping advertise Matchbox toys during their infancy............

Thanks for sharing -- very cool!

Bill

[durangokid]

John,
Those are quite historic and very interesting! They help tell some of the story about the early days of Moko/Lesney and how the market/sales were started.
Can you share more about Kohnstam? Was it a retailer/wholesaler, etc.? I'm assuming that we should be thankful to them for helping advertise Matchbox toys during their infancy............

Thanks for sharing -- very cool!

Bill

Follow-up: I found this on the internet about Kohnstam (courtesy of Dream-Tintoys; blue-gold-angel.com (a nice site that I had not seen before!)


The very first coined in 1890 official logo of the firm of Moses Kohnstam in Fürth Bavaria.
HISTORY OF MOKO TOYS
Moses Kohnstam was a wholesaler who specialised in packaging, storing and distributing toys and also gave financial backing to small toy manufacturers for which he received a percentage of their selling prices.
He also sold toys using his own brand name "Moko",the toys he distributed carried his Company`s name Moko no matter what various small firm`s made them.
By 1890 Moko had branches in Milan, Brussels and East London. Although M.Kohnstam & Company were not the largest toy manufacturer in Germany they were one of the leading firms in it`s field, owning a number of patents for mechanical toys.
The business was quite profitable and had a large amount of export trade. The name M. Kohnstam & Company was very well known and respected within the business circles throughout Europe.
Moses came to England in about 1900 to develop the toy industry, Moko became a well known name in toys. Many different toys were sold under the Moko name.
Moses Kohnstam died in 1912, one of his son`s Julius Kohnstam took over the business until the late 1940`s. It was then that Richard Kohnstam (Moses` grandson, Julius`s nephew) took control of the company.
In 1953 Richard Kohnstam became the marketing agent for Lesney Products, later better known as Matchbox Toys. Moko took a percentage of the profits on the products sold. In 1959 Lesney bought out Moko, there were conflicting interests between the parties.
Richard went on to form his own firm Richard Kohnstam Ltd / Riko International which were a toy and model importer until the end of 2000.

Bill

[matchboxkiwi]

Excellent group of early adds. I was most interested in the Yesteryear add and the toy trader adds as I'd not seen them before.
Like most on this site I know Moko never appeared on the Yesteryear boxes so to see an add with them on and Moko on the page was interesting.

Cheers, Steve
Matchboxkiwi

[matchboxmarcel]

Excellent group of early adds. I was most interested in the Yesteryear add and the toy trader adds as I'd not seen them before.
Like most on this site I know Moko never appeared on the Yesteryear boxes so to see an add with them on and Moko on the page was interesting.

Cheers, Steve
Matchboxkiwi

Steve, This was amazing to me too when I first saw these adds about 8 years orso ago when I helped working on the big book about Models of Yesteryear from Alex Picha. I got the same copies of old adds via Stewart. If I remember right Patrick talbot did all the trouble to make old scans many many many years ago from GAMES and TOYS magazine in the national libary in London. I have tried to go these several times but as I live in the Netherlands to little time. It would be nice to have better scans in higher resolution.

I have sent you an email by the way this evening.

marcel