#452 SCHUCO, BING and CO. 1 (JÜRGEN FRANZKE AND OTHERS)

This is a beautiful book. Most of it it´s just high resolution and big size pictures of old tin toys made by companies from Nürnberg (Germany). This city is the home of some of the most important toy companies in Germany and Europe. During the first half of the last century, Schuco and Bing had each thousands of workers each, and produced toys for many european countries as well for the USA. Although these two companies closed by the 1960s, there are still today many world-wide famous companies there, like Playmobil, Carrera or Trix.

 

Inthe book there are some chapters with beautiful texts, explaining the relation between the city and toys, as well as two short chapters with the histories of Schuco and Bing. The rest of companies (CKO, Fleischmann, JNF, Gama...) are trreated only tangentially. The book ends with an epilogue that gives an insight on the companies settled in Nürnberg that still produce toys today.

 

Some of the brands shown in this book are:

Arnold, Carette, Distler, Doll & Co., Dressler, Falk, Fuchs, Fischer, Fleischmann, Gama, Gescha, Geobra, Günthermann, Gösö, Hess, JNF, Kellermann, Köhler, Lehmann, Niedermeier, Plank, Seidel, Strenco, Technofix, Tipp & Co. and Wüco

 

I bought this book in Cologne/Köln in March 2014 for around 12 Eur, although in Amazon can be found even cheaper. There are at least three books more with the same format dedicated to other companies (for example TRIX or Gama), but these are much rarer, they were probably printed in more limited issues.

 

Very interesting book, if you ever find it, buy it. It is a nice introduction to German toys and offers a great insight into the toy companies from Nürnberg.

 

This picture has been reduced on purpose

#187 PLAYMOBIL EVOLUCIÓN E HISTORIA (XAVIER ARUMÍ)

Among all topics that Xavier Arumí’s books deal with, Playmobil is (or was) for me the most uninteresting, that’s why this book is the last one I read from all those that he has written. I have now read all of them, and I can now say, this one is the best written together with the one he dedicated to Exin.

I enjoyed this book quite a lot: maybe it was because I knew nothing about Playmobil, so I could learn many new facts about this toy-line, maybe simply because Geobra and Plamobil are amazing companies under the control of extraordinary people (Horst Branstätter, manager and Hans Beck, designer).

I have to say that after reading this book, I will recover my old Playmobils (they’re somewhere in a box), and I’ll check if they’re complete, in good shape and clean for new blog entries. After learning a bit about these figures, you see them in a different way.

As usual, this book is available at Bubok.es and has a price of 14,00 Euros (+shipping costs) or 3,75 in eBook format. Find it here:  

www.bubok.es/libros/175071/Clicks-de-PLAYMOBIL-Historia-y-evolucion

This book was recommended by Bubok, in its Youtube channel during December 2010.

About the autor: Xavier Arumí is the host of www.rosaspage.com, has already written a few books about collecting and about toys, comic books (that he also illustrate), and novels. He is a collector himself, and as you can check on his website, or reading his books, a great expert on toys, apart from a good writer. Two of his publications are: "Exin: Su Historia" and "Bburago: Su Etapa Clásica".