KENNER
Kenner was founded in 1947 by brothers Albert, Phillip, and Joseph Steiner in Cincinnati Ohio. The company was originally the Grandpa Soap Company, later named the company after Kenner Street where their original corporate office was. Kenner started out producing the Bubbl-Matic bubble gun, becoming the first toy made by them, leading Kenner into the toy business. Kenner went on to produce the Girder & Panel building sets, Give-a-show Projector, Easy Bake Oven, and the Electric Mold Master toys all within 6 years. These 4 toys transformed the Kenner brand entirely from a once-novelty toy company into one of the nation's leading toy manufacturers.
Building a Toy Empire
KENNER THROUGH THE YEARS
Later in 1958, Kenner changed the way toys were advertised by sponsoring the children's television program Captain Kangaroo, allowing them to promote their products year-round, unlike other toy companies, which could only afford to advertise their products throughout November and December for Christmas. In 1977, Kenner acquired the license to produce Star Wars action figures. Kenner then faced an immense issue: the action figure toys took over a year to produce, meaning they would not be ready by the holiday season. This led Kenner to come up with the “Early Bird Certificate Package”; the package did not include actual action figures; instead, it had an early bird certificate, cardboard stand, sticker sheet, and a space club card. Parents then had to take the IOU postcard and mail it to receive the first four figures, Luke, Leia, R2-D2, and Chewbacca by spring. Kenner sold over 600,000 during the 1977 Christmas season alone, and by 1978, they had sold over 40 million action figures. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s continued producing iconic toy lines, including the Ghostbusters, Batman, D.C. Super Powers, and Jurassic Park collections, before being acquired by Hasbro in 2000. Kenner will forever be remembered as an immensely influential toy company with a significant role in the growth of the modern toy industry.