The story
Founded by Helen Schelle, Herman Fisher, Irving Price and Margaret Evans Price on Jun 19, 1930.1
Fisher-Price was founded in 1930 during the Great Depression by Herman Fisher, Irving Price, Price's illustrator-artist wife Margaret Evans Price and Helen Schelle. Fisher worked previously in manufacturing, selling and advertising games for a company in Churchville, New York. Price had retired from a major variety chain store and Helen Schelle previously operated Penny Walker Toy Shop in Binghamton, New York. Fisher-Price's fundamental toy-making principles centered on intrinsic play value, ingenuity, strong construction, good value for the money and action. Early toys were made of heavy steel parts and ponderosa pine, which resisted splintering and held up well to heavy use. The details and charm were added with colorful lithographic labels. Mrs. Price was the first Art Director and designed push-pull toys for the opening line, based on characters from her children's books.
The mayor of East Aurora, New York supported Fisher by raising $100,000 in capital. In 1931, three of the four founders took 16 of their wooden toys to the American International Toy Fair in New York City and they quickly became a success. The first Fisher-Price toy ever sold was "Dr. Doodle" in 1931. In the early 1950s, Fisher-Price identified plastic as a material that could help the company incorporate longer-lasting decorations and brighter colors into its toys, introducing "Buzzy Bee" as the company's first. By the end of the 1950s, Fisher-Price manufactured 39 toys incorporating plastics.
During the 1960s, the Play Family (later known as Little People) product line was introduced and soon overtook the popularity of earlier toys. The 'Family House' was one of the more popular Little People playsets. Herman Fisher retired at the age of 71 in 1969 and The Quaker Oats Company bought Fisher-Price the same year.
In April 1990, Quaker Oats announced that they would spin off Fisher-Price as a publicly traded company, of which their shareholders would control the company. This was following struggling sales and competition from rival toy companies. The deal was completed at the end of June 1991, with the company trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
On August 20, 1993, Mattel announced that they had agreed to acquire Fisher-Price for $1 billion to create a single company. Fisher-Price's company assets would be folded into Mattel although they would keep their New York-based offices. The deal closed at the end of November, and Fisher-Price became a fully owned subsidiary. A new management group set the company's focus on basic infant and preschool products and began expansion into international markets. By 1997, Mattel decided to market all of its preschool products under the Fisher-Price name.
In 2004, Royal Caribbean Cruise lines launched Fisher-Price Cabanas, play laboratories for children on each of their cruise ships.
Recalls
On August 2, 2007, Fisher-Price recalled close to a million toys, including the Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street toys, because of possible hazards due to the toys being coated in lead-based paint.
Rock 'n Play
Fisher-Price recalled all 4.7 million of their Rock 'n Play sleepers on April 12, 2019, days after the company recalled 250,000 infant soothers. The product, introduced in 2009, holds the sleeping baby in an inclined position. More than 30 infants have died while sleeping in a Rock 'n Play. The Consumer Product Safety Commission said these deaths occurred "after the infants rolled over while unrestrained or under other circumstances".
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Years before the introduction of the Rock 'n Play sleeper in the mid-1990s, the American Academy of Pediatrics' Back to Sleep campaign recommended that "babies should not sleep for long periods in inclined devices". In babies under one year old, dying during sleep (also known as SIDS, or "Sudden Infant Death Syndrome") is the leading cause of accidental death. The recommendation that babies sleep flat on their backs, in an empty crib, has cut this death rate in half.
The Rock 'n Play was designed 15 years after these sleep recommendations were published and, according to an article from The Washington Post, violated them. Fisher-Price sold the Rock 'n Play without first getting medical advice from more than one pediatric specialist and without doing any real-world safety tests. They continued to sell it for years after the first deaths were reported.
In January 2023, Mattel re-announced the recall after additional infant deaths were reported.
From Wikipedia’s article on Fisher-Price, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4