Mechanical blue horse used for promotions, Montag Bros. Co., c.1960. The company was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1889 by Sigmund Montag and his four brothers. In 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, Sigmund Montag and son Harold asked one of the company's salesmen, Sam Sugarman, to design an advertising campaign to increase sales of its writing tablets. Sugarman's idea was to make the tablets' covers and filler bands collectable and redeemable for a prize. He coined the name, "Blue Horse", for the tablets. The grand prize was an actual pony, but the company soon realized that Depression-era families could not
afford to feed and care for a pony. The following year, the grand prize became a bicycle.