Mechanical toy:Pinched

Louis Marx started his own toy company in 1921 and mass-produced and sold inexpensive toys in huge quantities. The Marx company was particularly noted for its chromolithographed wind-up toys, of which the Honeymoon Express, the Marx Merrymakers, and mechanical toys featuring screen and comic-strip characters are the best remembered. Wind-up toys such as this one were key to the Marx company's success. Marx offered a variety of toys similar in make-up to popular or successful toys produced by other companies. Marx, however, varied the toy enough to avoid charges of piracy and undersold the competition. Yearly alterations to his toys kept them in production for decades and thus held down per unit costs.