How One Man Killed America's Favorite Toy Train: Lionel

My book, The Times You Grew Up With, takes you back: https://paulmcallister.store In 1953, Lionel Corporation was the largest toy manufacturer in the world — $32.9 million in sales, two thousand workers at the Hillside, New Jersey factory, and O gauge train sets under every Christmas tree in America. By 1967, the company was bankrupt. What happened between those two dates is a story about postwar American manufacturing, a changing toy market, and one man who accelerated the collapse: Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy’s former chief counsel and the founder’s own grand-nephew. This is the rise and fall of Joshua Lionel Cowen’s Lionel Corporation — from a fan motor and twelve customers in 1900, through the Depression, World War II, the golden age of American toy trains, and the disastrous takeover that left the company $13 million poorer in three and a half years. Sources: Ron Hollander, All Aboard!: The Story of Joshua Lionel Cowen & His Lionel Train Company (Workman Publishing, 2000) “High Finance: Cohn’s Costly Toy,” Time, April 26, 1963 “High Finance: Fast Switching at Lionel,” Time, March 28, 1960 “Tracking Irony Across Lionel Trains History,” The Strong National Museum of Play, Rochester, NY “The Little Engines That Could,” Invention & Technology Magazine “Railroad Museum to Debut Rare & Recently Acquired Pastel-Colored Lady Lionel Train Set,” California State Railroad Museum, Sacramento, 2017