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Advertising is the cornerstone of
our Capitalistic society and toys were no exception. On this
page I hope to capture a little bit of a feel for what the public
was seeing and how the manufacturers were selling their toys in the
early days. If you have any that you would like to contribute
to this page please email the pictures to me with a description and
I'll try and get them on for you to share.
I want to thank Scott Smith for all of the initial pictures
on this page.
K&O Outboards
1.K&O
Outboard ads. There
wasn't a lot of toy outboard motor ads for K&O but there are a few.
K&O had a tendency to use pictures of real motors rather than their toys
in their ads. You can see that in the 1960 Johnson ad where both the 75
and 40 horespower motors are real motors. Perhaps the toys weren't ready
for sale when the ads were ready for publication or maybe the real motor
looked better. Many of the ads are directed to one manufacturer like the
Johnson ad and were used to help their dealerships. Most ads have a
Fleetline boat in it.
The first picture is an early 1955 K&O ad. Thank you to Denny Cole
for some of the ads! | 
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Fleetline
Boats
1.
Fleetline Marine, Inc.ads:
Fleetline had quite a few different ads. Most had the K&O toy
outboards in them and some only promoted their inboard boats like the Sea
Wolf. They often showed their neat display stands that dealerships and
toy stores had for their boats. These stands were great ways to get the
kid's attention.
The first four pictures are of a famous article about the Fleetline founders
and how they got started. Just click on the pictures to enlarge them and
you should be able to read the article. Thank you to Kevin Wells
for that article and some of the ads! | 
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Gas Outboards
1.
Gas Outboard motor ads and articles: There
were and still are a number of different gas, or really nitro, powered
outboards. Allyn Sales Company, Inc., which would later be known as
K&B Allyn Company was a popular company. Attwood Motors and Wen-Mac
also made excellent motors. Then there was the Fuji company that had
very realistic and LARGE motors with cowls on them. Later the AMPS
company got involved with making outboards.
Probably the most popular gas motor of the 1950s was the Allyn Sea
Fury, especially the .049 model. I say that because there are still so
many of them around.
Some of the outboards are water cooled and some are air cooled.
A special thank you goes out to Scott Smith for his help in sending so
many of his ads to me. | 
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Generic
Toy Boats and Motors
| 1.
Generic boats and motors.
The generic ads really run the gambit because there was so many toy boat
manufacturers and dealers as well as the toy store ads themselves. Most
are black and white but a few, like the Wico ads, were in bright colors. | 
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Real
Boats
| 1.
Real Boat ads.
Again, there are an almost unlimited number of ads for real boats.
There's no way to put them all here so I'll put a sampling of them in this
section. |  |
Real
Outboards
| 1.
Real Outboard motor ads.
There are an almost unlimited number of ads for real outboard motors.
Outboard manufacturers used magazines, both boating and regular magazines, as
advertising tools to great advantage. They often paid the big money to
get on the back cover or the insides of the front and back cover. It's
not unusual to find a magazine with an Evinrude back cover and a Mercury
inside front cover. |  |
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