Linda informs us that today’s word, ideal, is brought to us by Astrid.
The first thing that I thought of when I saw the prompt was the Ideal Toy Company, whose original logo you see above. A lot of their business was in dolls, including the famous (or infamous) Besty Wetsy doll, which, when given water, relieved herself. They also created a lot of action figures, such as Captain Action, for whom you could purchase appropriate pieces to turn him into Superman, Batman, Captain America, The Phantom, and other comic book heroes. Captain Action also had his own costume and appropriate weaponry. I had Captain Action and I think the makings of Batman, who was all the rage at the time, and also had a model of him that I glued together and painted.
Ideal also made board games, including a couple of 3D games that were built like Rube Goldberg contraptions, called Mouse Trap and Crazy Clock. I found the original ads for both, which you can see in this video.
By far, their most popular toy was Rubik’s Cube, for which they won the US license in 1980. They made a fortune on it that year, then spent twice as much as they made the following year, chasing after manufacturers who were selling knockoffs of the original.
Through a series of mergers, acquisitions, and spinoffs, Ideal became part of Mattel in 1997. Mattel is the 800-lb. gorilla of the US toy business, because they make Barbie.
That’s all for today, boys and girls!
The Sound of One Hand Typing 
How interesting. I don’t think we had those toys in Australia, but back then we weren’t such an international place. I never did see that version of Mouse Trap, although when the Barbarians were little we had the modern version.
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I’m not sure that Ideal shipped outside of North America, to be honest.
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We had this game…it was rare when it worked right
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We never had any trouble with ours. I think sometimes one of the pieces might be a little bit off…
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I LOVED the original mouse trap! Such a fun game.
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I always wanted the Mouse Trap game. Never happened, but some fifty years later I finally got to play when my grandchildren got the game for Christmas.
Fun post, John.
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It was pretty fun, especially springing the trap. Glad you liked the post. Going back like that and finding out what happened to businesses like that is always fun. It’s the business major in me…
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I love learning new things. I didn’t know Ideal merged with Mattel. ;-)
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Read the Wikipedia article. It’s all pretty involved…
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As soon as I saw that it brought back memories
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That’s the fun part for me, the trip down memory lane and learning what has happened in the last 40+ years.
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