Mercury (toy manufacturer) Marklin, the company was started in 1932, by Attilio Clemente and Antonio Cravero, but its first toy was a gun produced about 1939 (Batazzi et al 1974; Force 1992, 5; History of Mercury 2013; Ralston 2009, 62). The company first began making toy cars just after World War II, so is one of the earliest diecast model makers preceding Corgi and many others and it was the earliest producer in Italy (Richardson 1999, 134). In Italy there was little competition for Mercury through most of the 1950s (Force 1992, 5). Early cars were more Tootsietoy-like with simple cast bodies, wheels
The Toy Collector The Toy Collector The Toy Collector is a novel written by James Gunn, published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2000. It is the story of a hospital orderly who steals drugs from the hospital which he sells to help keep his toy collection habit alive. Although the work is fictional, the name of the protagonist is James Gunn. The novel flashes back and forth between the character Gunn's drug-addled, sexually abusive adult life, and his life among his childhood friends. Furthermore, we see the lives of Gunn's childhood toys—from Rom, Spaceknight to the Fisher-Price Little People, who seem to have lives