Chad Valley, the world war and the advent of television - in the Original Virtual Museum

Chad Valley gets set for television

Chad Valley is now a brand of Home Retail Group, the parent company of Argos, who are now Britain's leading toy retailer. This bonus page in the Original Virtual Museum relates to the history of Chad Valley from the start of World War II to their twenty-one year association with Woolworths which came to an abrupt halt in 2008. It is offered for historical interest. All trademarks are acknowledged.

In the late 1930s all of Europe feared another World War and countries started to re-arm at pace. Government intervention meant that many factories were encouraged to convert for their peace-time manufacturing to maufacturing armaments and specialist engineering for a future conflict. Chad Valley was no exception, but by the late 1930s had a string of factories, giving them more flexibility.

A Chad Valley diecast globe from 1939 - by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen - shows the changing the political scene in Europe, with an englarged Germany following the Anchluss and different borders for Italy too

As the Toymaker to the ruling classes, Chad Valley persuaded the powers-that-be that they must be allowed to retain a limited toy manufacturing capability and that top London stores must still have a good selection of toys because "children won't understand war". As a result while Woolworth children made do with Mighty Midget comics and patriotic Lumar-branded jigsaws of U-boats and Spitfires for Sixpence, the clientelle of Harrods and Gamages in London and selected up-market Department Stores in the Provinces like Manchester's Kendal Milne & Co. were able to offer a selection of diecast toys figures, vehicles and educational items as well as teddy bears and a handful of other soft toys.

The items - now bearing the Royal Warrant as 'Toymakers by Appointment to H. M. the Queen' - included globes reflecting the changing political scene in Europe. The layout was updated regularly to show the changing land borders between the major powers - for example the enlarged Germany after the Anchluss and the Channel Islands now part of the Third Reich.

As with the downmarket Woolworths range, paper card products were updated, with military characters appearing in the game of snap, and the Happy Families cards including soldiers in uniform heading off to war. The major difference between the two companies was on price - with the Chad Valley cards four shillings and elevenpence (around 25p) and the Woolworths version just sixpence (2.5p).

The Chad Valley wartime teddy bear maintained the usual high quality. The illustration below shows that the company did not compromise the design or manufacture.

It's hard to tell there was a war on from the 1940s Chad Valley teddy bear

A diecast Chad Valley motor car from 1947. It is remarkably detailed and reflects the fact most people were still driving their cars from before the war during the austerity period that followed the end of the long conflict

Initially it appeared that manufacturing at Chad Valley would simply return to normal once the long conflict was over. Some of their early post-war toys were very reminiscent of the offers of yesterday, with tin toy cars finished with lots of detail back on the shelves in 1947. Other ranges were updated too - the clockwork trainset was amended to remove the logos of the steam railway companies, with 'British Railways' replacing the traditional LMS (London Midland Steam), LNER (London and North East Railway) and GWR (Great West Railway) tenders respectively, along with the Carter Paterson van. Even the London bus got a makeover to reflect the narrowing of the Routemaster chassis after the war.

The post-war Chad Valley clockwork trainset was initially virtually identical to its Thirties predecessor, except that the trains were liveried to the newly nationalised British Railways rather than the old steam railway companies

Diecast Chad Valley vehicles from the early Fifties - both routemaster and the British Railways lorry had been given a makeover

But the wind of change was sweeping through Britiain in the 1950s and the Chad Valley management had to decide how to engage with the new world. Their response was exemplary, modernising the firm while maintaining its core values and brand ethos. For example, in a bid to get toys onto the shelves of Woolworths (from whom Chad Valley had traditionally been too expensive) - they designed clockwork diecast cars which were unpainted and had a little less detail. Now that Woolworths had abadonned their upper limit of sixpence, this allowed for some middle ground with solidly-built vehicles for half a crown (12½p)

Chad Valley clockwork car from the 1950s

Building on a traditional strength, Chad Valley were quick to respond to the wave of royal fervour that swept the nation on the accession of the young Queen Elizabeth II. A jigsaw showing the Queen with T. R. H. Prince Charles and Princess Anne proved to be a smash hit around the world. In deference to the Monarchy the unusual puzzle featured outsize pieces for the heads of each of the subjects with much smaller wooden interlocking pieces for the remainder. The box included a revised royal warrant as Toymakers by Appointment to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The same royal fervour that saw sales of the puzzle rocket also prompted a massive increase in the sales of television sets ahead of the Royal Coronation, which prompted what many consider to be Chad Valley's finest hour.

Their Royal Highnesses Prince Charles and Princess Anne posed for the picture featured on this Chad Valley jigsaw puzzle alongside the new Queen, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1952. The portrait picture is Copyright Marcus Adams, 1952

Chad Valley were the first British toy company to recognise the potential of television, signing many exclusive agreements to make toys related to the early programmes

Building on the success of the Chad Valley Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, licenced from the Disney Company, the firm was the first to see the potential of making toys to link up with popular television programmes, prompted by launch of ITV in the 1950s. They licenced a series of BBC and ITA programme brands and translated them into toys, spanning genres from the Jimmy Edwards classic Whack-o! to comedian Tony Hancock's satirical Hancock's Half Hour.

Most of the games were remarkably simple, following the television format of programmes like the Michael Miles hit Take your Pick.

The biggest hit came from the inspired choice to licence The Sooty Show - the creation of the Harry Corbett, who went from being a Butlins Redcoat to a national superstar almost overnight when the programme first screened in the 1950s.

A teddy bear who did magic tricks but often got them wrong, who never spoke other than to whisper to Harry Corbett, a slightly naughty dog with an infection squeak in place of a voice, and the oh so gentile Soo - a houseproud Panda - captured the imaginations of a generation and showed the power of television.

The Chad Valley was inspired, because not only did it allow board games but also magic tricks (some of which were designed to go wrong) and their highly regarded range of soft toys. They went to acquire the Chiltern Toy company partly to satisfy the demand for Sooty, Sweep and Sue puppets - although they never went as far as a Harry Corbett one!

Sooty, Sweep and Soo - the popular puppets that took Harry Corbett to stardom and also helped secure a new future for the Chad Valley toy company

Superstar Harry Corbett with Sooty and Sweep

Back in the 1950s many television programmes went out live, including The Sooty Show, always presenting a big challenge for the pupeteers. Harry Corbett was a consummate professional, but one mistake actually boosted sales not only of the puppets but the whole Chad Valley range. In one scene where Sooty and Sweep were fighting, Corbett got particularly animated and the glove puppet flew off his hand, with a Chad Valley sew-in label landing up on the camera, filling viewers, screens at home. After a quick cut to commercials and a 'where have you been Sooty?' quip the programme continued - as many viewers hurried to the shops to buy a Sooty of their own. Such is the power of television and the blooper.

The Give-a-Show Project by Chad Valley was possibly the defining product of their first 150 years

For many of today's parents and grandparents the defining Chad Valley product was the Give a Show Projector, which brought countless hours of happiness and was one of very few toys that actively encouraged kids to want to go to bed. The battery operated projector included strips of seven pictures from some of the popular shows of the day - in the Fifites led by Popeye the Sailor Man and in the Sixties by Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds.

Chad Valley's designers had hit on a great product, caputing the technology revolution which was emerging in the Fifties, the popularity of Childrens TV and the character franchise all-in-one. But they never guessed that instead of projecting the pictures onto a 'piece of card about eight feet away', children would discover the great picture and wonderful effects and shapes that could be achieved by playing the film strips under the covers on the white bed sheets!

The innovative Chad Valley Super 8 projector came complete with 8mm movie versions of popular TV programmes from the UK and USA long before the video recorder was invented

An upmarket Chad Valley projector from the 1970s, one of the first products not made in a British factory but actually licenced from an Italian manufacturer

The success of the Give-a-Show spawned a whole range of products, including extra film strips, either singly or in fives at pocket-money prices, and projectors, initially for cassette films of popular TV programmes from Britain and America, which were exported all over the world. We flew our exhibit back from Canada, if you spotted the spelling 'Favorite' on the box, which Chad Valley would never have allowed for Britain. The idea of replaying television programmes on cartridge tape pre-dated the Betamax and VHS Video Recorder by more than twenty years, and could have made the Company fabuloulsy rich if they had patented the concept!

The 1970s Projector (left) gives a hint of what was to come. It says in small print beneath the new-look logo - 'Made in Italy', part of a trend towards manufacturing overseas that affected much of British industry in the Sixties and Seventies.

The projectors weren't the only example of Chad Valley embracing new technology. The Chad Valley telephone, first added to the range just before the Second World War, went on to be a smash hit through the Fifites and Sixties as more homes had telephones of their own. The original design, made of Bakelite, closely mirrored the engineering of the GPO's own model. (The GPO was the original name of the phone company that is called BT or British Telecom today).

As the Fifties continued brightly moulded plastics were used for the telephones which fell in price in line with technology developments in the adult world.

Chad Valley telephones were a big hit with children. The early models were a masterpiece of engineering, made of the some bakelite and basic wiring design as the GPO equivalent, the phones that many people were having installed at home for the first time

Miniature clockwork gramophones were a big hit for Chad Valley, who were also among the first to embrace 45 rpm technology, while others stuck with the traditional 78 rpm format

Another example of Chad Valley engaging with new technology was the introduction of a very popular wind-up gramophone in the 1950s, which was later replaced by battery operated 'slot'n'go' model in the Sixties which remained popular into the 1970s. The firm also released records of nursery rhymes and children's songs on their own record label - among the first to sell at 45 rpm rather than the 78s of rival companies. The fifties model, complete with the Royal Warrant, are a popular collectable in the twenty-first century, fetching good prices at auction - and like so many other Chad Valley items tend to work straight out of the box almost sixty years after they were made.

Despite all of the innovation, and some clever new games and occasional smash hit toys like Chad Valley's Jacko the Monkey and cuddly models of The Smurfs, times were hard for Chad Valley in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Manufacturing was steadily moving overseas as rival companies sought the economies of foreign manufacture to keep prices down at home. The period saw a lot of consolidation in the industry, with big name toy companies snapped up by rival companies.

On the one hand this gave a good return to investors and allowed family owners to retire, but on the other saw big names like Palitoy subsumed into larger corporations, often based in the USA.

'Beat the Traffic Warden' - a topical Chad Valley game that saw the funny side of the introduction of parking meters to British streets in the 1960s

The Chad Valley guitar, one of a range of musical instruments inspired by the new music of the Sixties. Many a budding musician first played a guitar like this!

In the early Seventies Chad Valley merged with Milton Bradley, initially offering co-branded products, mainly in aimed at fun learning like the facts and figures game illustrated below. But by 1978 the Chad Valley brands and most popular products had been split among several other toy companies - some branded Waddingtons in Britain and Hasbro overseas - and the name had vanished. 118 years after the first card games were produced it look as if the brand was gone forever, with the Harborne factory closed and the others subsumed into larger corporations and heading for a similar fate as the move to overseas to overseas production accelerated.

Co-branded Milton Bradley and Chad Valley, the Facts and Figures game was one of the last products to be marketed under the name that was made in Britain. It was firmly pitched at Chad Valley's up-market clientelle.

"Sell a toy, spread some joy"
Frank W. Woolworth - letter to stores. November 1909.


Fast links to Original Virtual Museum exhibits Wonders from Woolies What our great grandparents used to buy Got to believe that it's magic The first character merchandise In and out the windows The Lion and Albert There's a war on Fifty years ago Mum and dad's toys The race for space Cool for School Woolies by Woolies at Woolies Eighties and Nineties Toys Wooly and Worth Kids and Celebrations Century of Toys Video

Bonus Items - The History of Chad Valley Although now owned by the Argos parent Home Retail Group, Chad Valley was rescued by Woolworths and a key part of the firm's offer for 21 years Toys for Toffs TV changes everything

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