I don’t know how aware the British toy market is of Jaymar wooden toys as I rarely see them at  toy fairs but the company’s’ history is of interest and we will all recognise the name. It was a Marx family business started in the 1920’s in Brooklyn New York Louis Marx had the metal and tin toy business and his father Jacob, Louis’s brother David and sister Rose made wooden toys. The two businesses never competed and they worked together sharing resources. Louis Marx Co. specialized in lithograph tin toys whereas Jaymar Speciality Co. made toys from cloth, paper and wood.

The wooden toys were mainly characters from American cartoons and radio programs from the 1920’s to the 1950’s. Little Orphan Annie, Popeye, Amos and Andy, Moon Mullins, Ignatz the Kat and so on. They also produced soldiers, animals and circus figures. This is how I know them as with some Schoenhut European animals I bought came 4 Jaymar animals. The figures are wood jointed so can be posed but the jointing is very different to Schoenhut. Jaymar also made early very colorful Disney toys.

During the depression Jaymar promoted Yo-Yo’s which had been introduced to the toy world by Donald Duncan (a topic for another time)  and for 20 years was his main distributor. I believe Duncan yo-yo’s can still be bought in America today.

 Louis Marx started a factory in Japan in 1946 and by 1952 had factories in ten countries.  Jaymar also went abroad but with a cheaper line of plastic toys under the MarJay label. After the war Jaymar made toy pianos and puzzles having the licence to make Disney diecut jigsaws. Of interest to me with my love of Schoenhut is in the 1950’s Jaymar bought the rights to the Schoenhut piano but did not have much success with it and it was sold on to another toy maker and it has become the very successful Schoenhut Piano Company.

Jaymar remained a family owned business with production in the US and abroad until it closed its doors in 1990. I did once as a small girl meet Mr Louis Marx who was visiting relations in Little Silver New Jersey my only claim to fame!