by Sally Hill

A. C. Gilbert was first and foremost a showman who knew the importance of promotion and salesmanship. This talent for marketing is evident even from the very early days of Erector. The 1913 national campaign included ads in the Saturday Evening Post, St. Nicholas, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, The American Boy, Youth's Companion, and Boys Magazine.

The ads were structured as a personal message from A. C. Gilbert to each boy friend and began with Erector's famous "Hello Boys!" slogan. Illustrations of the models with descriptions of the sets were often accompanied by information about Gilbert's skills as an athlete and talent as a magician. He would advise them as to what set he would buy if he were a boy. Or a boy could write a postcard addressed "For Mr. Gilbert" and receive a personal letter from A. C. along with a Free Book telling about his championships and showing the latest Erector model (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 An ad from the November 1914 St. Nicholas magazine using Gilbert's athletic prowess and success as an incentive to buy his Mysto Erector product.

These early ads were rather small, but by 1914 they were often fullpage and Gilbert increased the number of publications in which he advertised. The Erector Contest was invented in 1913 as a way to add more ideas for models to the Erector catalogues. Gilbert offered extravagant prizes such as automobiles and ponies to the winners. The winners' names and photographs were printed in the catalogues along with their prizewinning entries.

Parents were encouraged to buy Gilbert toys not only because it "solved the Christmas Riddle" but also because of the stress on education and career development (Figs 2 & 3). A whole life scheme is offered in the box... and seems to have accomplished its goal more often than one might imagine. Yale professors who have come to the Gilbert Gallery at the Eli Whitney Museum frequently confide in us that it was their Gilbert Chemistry Set or their Gilbert Erector Set which started them toward their career in chemistry, physics, or engineering.

Fig. 2 Another early ad from the Mysto Manufacturing Company. This is one of the few ads which acknowledge girls as possibly being interested in Erector. Up until the war years, girls are seen only in artwork as admiring younger sisters who dutifully watch their older brothers build with Erector Sets or as part of the ideal family playing with wire puzzles or designing with colored beads.

Gilbert touted the Erector as a "real engineering" toy and created the "Gilbert Institute of Erector Engineering." A boy could "win degrees, honors, a handsome diploma, valuable prizes and a salary through free membership" in the Institute. Diplomas for First Degree, Second Degree and Third Degree Engineers were awarded with a gold "E.M.E" fraternity pin for the third degree Master Engineer. Gilbert even offered to write a reference for the winner to any business house stating this accomplishment. The career in your future is the message of the ad in Figure 3. The advertisement doesn't even have a picture of a boy but rather a picture of successful'Master' engineer working at his drafting table while he looks out the window at the Golden Gate Bridge we must imagine he designed. Boys, It's Real Engineering.

Fig. 3 Ad from the Literary Digest for December 9, 1916, which goes into great detail about the Gilbert Institute of Erecto Engineering and advertises the Brik-tor Toy "For Young Architects."

Fig. 4 A full-page two-color ad from the Youth's Companion of November 26, 1925. This was the era of the New Erector with an added bonus: a coupon for the "mysterious Gilbertscope," a pair of 3-D glasses (with blue and red lenses) and a double color exposed photograph of Erector models or of A. C. Gilbert which appear to stand out from the page. This must have been a Inew' thing at the time because the ad claims that "you've never seen anything like it."

With few exceptions very early on, (Fig 2) any mention of girls is conspicuously absent until the war years when Gilbert markets a Nurse's Outfit. One early Mysto Erector ad says, "Hello Boys and Girls: Here's FUN!" but it is very difficult 10 find any reference to girls again until much later. Gilbert speaks to boys in his ads and manuals and directs all his advertising toward the making of good boy friends who he feels share his interests. .

In 1915 Gilbert redesigned the Erector motor and accessories. It was at this point he realized he could fill a gap in his factory work schedule after the Christmas rush was over by using the new motor in an electric fan (Fig. 7). The Polar Cub line was born and grew into a varied range of small appliances which included mixers, hair dryers, heaters, juicers, and vibrators all using the basic motor design. The Polar Cub represents the tendency of Gilbert, also seen in his real estate ventures, to develop businesses along parallel lines with his core business derived from the Mysto Magic sets and the A. C. Gilbert Erector sets.

Fig. 5 Another ad from the Youth's Companion of October 21, 1926, which advertises real tools along with the Erector motor. Gilbert often collaborated with other manufacturers to market their tools with his label as a promotional deal. The tools shown here did not appear to have the Gilb.ert label on them and were offered as an incentive for selling new subscriptions of the Companion.

Fig. 6 "Keeping Up With Father." An advertisement in the back of one of the Gilbert manuals offering a 10-volume set of the Master Hand Library. Competency was of first importance to Gilbert, a man who never accepted less than total conquest over any task he undertook--whether a business venture or an athletic hobby.

"Keeping Up With Father" (Fig. 6) shows a variety of elements personalizing the A. C. Gilbert enterprise. It is the last page in Fun With Your Motor, a Gilbert instruction manual accompanying one of his model building sets. He stresses in the left sidebar his own personal history as inspiration, accompanied by the pole-vault image representing his Olympic gold medal in 1908. In the "Do You Want to Know" segment, he emphasized the play aspect of the motor and its recreational aspect as a descendent of his magic sets. He ends inspirationally, always a careerist.

By scanning the Gilbert ads, we can realize quickly that the Gilbert toy, while being fun and educational was an expensive toy to own. In 1916 a new Erector set sold from $1 to $25 (Fig. 3). It is rare to find a visitor who owned one of the larger versions of the Erector set; usually they point out to us the one they really wanted and the one their parents could afford. The image and copy of the advertisements, however, also impress on us how vitally the Gilbert toys were connected to the American ideals of business success through technical achievement of individuals--a constant in our culture from the Eli Whitney through Edison and Henry Ford to Bill Gates.

Fig. 7 A 1928 ad for Polar Club fans which promoted "Happiness and Economy at Home." Note the address in England where Gilbert was marketing is appliances as well.

Fig. 8 A four-color ad for American Flyer which promotes the famous Gilbert Hall of Science, the giant New York City showroom of Gilbert toys with elaborate train layouts which the public could view.

Additional Information

For a definitive history of A. C. Gilbert and Erector, refer to Greenberg's Guide to Erector Sets, by William M. Bean and AI M. Sternagle, Greenberg Publishing Company, Inc., Sykesville, MD, 1993.

For the complete collection of Gilbert American Flyer catalogues, refer to Greenberg's American Flyer Catalogues: 1946-1955, Greenberg Publishing Company, Inc., Sykesville, MD, 1991.