The 1959 Lowell catalog

[The Ol' Guy]

Some of us have an appreciation for the Lowell Toy Company, which jumped on the game show home game bandwagon early and made some pretty decent products. Going through this week's edition of The Bloom Report (a free weekly newsletter with information on some of the things going on in the toy and game world), one of the story links led to this post of the 1959 Lowell catalog. Thought you may find it interesting. Enjoy. https://toytales.ca/lowell-toy-mfg-catalogue-1959/

[SuperMatch93]

Interesting that it has a station list for Treasure Hunt at the back. Was Lowell a sponsor?

[Matt Ottinger]

Interesting that it has a station list for Treasure Hunt at the back. Was Lowell a sponsor?

That's odd on many levels.  Even if we assume that Lowell was a sponsor, why list every individual station?  It wasn't syndicated, it was on NBC in that early era when everybody knew which network was which.  Sure, it had moved from ABC, but it still seems that space could have been better used with some artwork (maybe a great big face of Jan Murray) and an encouragement to watch your local NBC station. Plus, the days and times might have been helpful. 

Also, the list itself is weird.  There are runs that are alphabetical, so it's not completely random, but I don't see any logic to the groupings.  You'd have to make a bit of an effort to find your station in that mess.

Finally, in more than forty years of collecting, I have never seen a Beat The Clock Target Game.  It's never been a "holy grail" for me, but you think one would have popped up.

[Otm Shank]

This is definitely formatted for sales and marketing and not the general public. The information on case weights and counts indicate this is at least would be marketing collateral or a collection of sell sheets. The station list on the back page appears to be divided into sales regions and then alphabetical order within that group. Some of the divisions don't make a lot of sense, like Santa Barbara being excluded from the SD-LA-SF alignment. I suppose it was there to assist in planning commercial drops in the station breaks either for their internal sales or for local retailers.

[Winkfan]

Just been to see the whole Toy Tales site. I managed to come across a few GS-related links:

Beat The Clock

The Hollywood Squares

The Gong Show

Cordially,
Tammy

[trainman]

Also, the list itself is weird.  There are runs that are alphabetical, so it's not completely random, but I don't see any logic to the groupings.  You'd have to make a bit of an effort to find your station in that mess.

Also, it looks like WXEX, Petersburg-Richmond, and WFLA, Tampa-St. Petersburg, being on the list right next to each other was very confusing to some poor copy editor.

[The Ol' Guy]

The second listing of the Steve Canyon game mentioned that there would be a three-week promotion of the board game on Treasure Hunt. A bit of double promotion for both the game and the Steve Canyon TV series that was also on NBC at the time. Perhaps the hope was the plugging would build a bigger audience for the TV show, which only lasted one season. I have the game, and it's pretty decent for its time. It was interesting seeing a lack of titles listed for their game show games. Between the rise of the scandals and some of the sales going past their peak, there were a lot fewer than I expected. You Bet Your Life, I've Got A Secret, and What's My Line were still doing very well in '59, ratings wise.