Kenner Toys! What do you have? Show your stuff!

Started by Hepcat, July 11, 2019, 04:08:52 PM

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Hepcat

Kenner Products was founded in 1946 by brothers Albert, Phillip and Joseph L. Steiner with the original corporate offices being located on Kenner Street just north of Cincinnati's Union Terminal.

Beginning in 1958 Kenner pioneered the use of national TV ads for toy marketing. The company's corporate mascot, the Gooney Bird, was introduced in the early 1960's and was used until 1974:



Awwwkkkk!!!

Kenner was responsible for the release of many popular and still much beloved toy lines over the years including the Bubble-Matic toy gun that blew bubbles, the Girder and Panel building sets in 1957, the Give-a-Show projector in 1959, the Easy-Bake Oven in 1963, the Electric Mold Master in 1963 and the Spirograph drawing toy in 1966.

Kenner was purchased by General Mills in 1967. Play-Doh was brought into the Kenner product line in 1970 when General Mills merged its Rainbow Crafts division into Kenner Products. General Mills then spun-off both its Kenner and Parker Brothers toy divisions in 1985 as Kenner Parker Toys, Inc. that also included the Lionel Trains division which had been a component part of General Mills since 1969. Lionel Trains though didn't stay under the Kenner Parker Toys umbrella very long as the division was sold in 1986.

Kenner Parker was then acquired by Tonka in 1987 but continued as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tonka. Tonka was then purchased by Hasbro in 1991. Hasbro sadly closed Kenner's Cincinnati offices in 2000 and Kenner's remaining product lines were merged into Hasbro's. And so the storied corporate history and much beloved Kenner name came to an end. Very sad.

:(

But let's see what you got. Show your Kenner stuff!

8)

Collecting! It's what I do!

Mord

 Nice tutorial. I had no idea Kenner had started in 40's.

Hepcat

#2
Here are a couple of pictures of my Kenner Give-A-Show Projector:





I got it cheap off Ebay early this century. Beautiful item, but the slides tend to bend/warp over time.

8)
Collecting! It's what I do!

Hepcat

I always admired the Kenner Presto and Sparkle Paint sets when I was a kid. Whenever I had money enough to buy one though, I'd always opt for a model kit instead. These days though I have a rather nice collection of the Kenner paint sets visible here on the right hand side of the shot below:



Here are close-up shots of some of the individual sets:













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Collecting! It's what I do!

Hepcat

The memory of "Big Daddy" Roth and his wild car and fink creations had been slowly but steadily fading in the 1970s and 1980s. New "Big Daddy" Roth items just weren't released for well over twenty years. But Kenner's release of these Rat Fink Rad Rods in 1990 acted to catapult "Big Daddy" Roth back into the public consciousness where he's remained ever since.











We "Big Daddy" Roth fans therefore owe a big vote of thanks to Kenner for helping to re-establish "Big Daddy" Roth as a present day pop culture icon!

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Collecting! It's what I do!

Hepcat

Here are pictures of the Rat Fink Hydro Racers that Kenner released in 1990:







I was delighted to see Ed "Big Daddy" Roth making a comeback as a kids' icon when I saw these Hydro Racers on Toys "R" Us shelves in the early nineties!

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Collecting! It's what I do!

Hepcat

Kenner released several sets of these wild monsterrific Glow-Globs in 1967:









As such the Glow-Globs seemed to be simply an application of the glow-in-the-dark technology that had in 1967 taken the world by a storm to Kenner's Gloppy modeling compound:







cl:)
Collecting! It's what I do!

Akira-Devilman

Those are pretty rare and ancient Kenner items!!!

Personally i always loved Kenner, when i was a kid they produced my favorite figure series. I have yet to take a nice group pic of them but i still own theyr (HUGE) Ghostbusters line, Aliens, Swamp Thing and Gargoyles and some Jurassic Park stuff too

Hepcat

Well then we're all eagerly awaiting not just a group shot but individual pics too!

:)
Collecting! It's what I do!