O. & M. Hausser

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Former plant 1 with the Elastolin plant, Neustädter Bahnhofstrasse
Mass figure of a military pilot with a hood and helmet

The company O. & M. Hausser was a German toy manufacturer who was particularly known for its Elastolin mass figures .

history

The company emerged from the Müller & Freyer wholesaler in Ludwigsburg, which was taken over in 1904 by the brothers Otto (* 1879; † 1955) and Max († 1915) Hausser . In 1910 the company started producing parlor games and mass figures. These mostly represented soldiers and other war toys and were made from a pulp consisting of sawdust, casein , glue and kaolin with wire frames in tin molds. First, the pulp was put into tin molds, which were then connected to one another and pressed under the influence of heat. After the deburring, the figures were painted. The brand name Elastolin used by Hausser was soon used colloquially outside of Germany as a generic name for mass figures from other manufacturers.

Card game Elfer out!

In 1912 the company name was changed to O. & M. Hausser . From 1925 the card game Elfer was out! sold. At the beginning of the 1930s the annual figure production was around 500,000, at the end of the decade it was over 3 million pieces.

After the termination of rented rooms, work and storage halls by the army administration, the company had to look for a new location. The decision was made in favor of Neustadt bei Coburg , where the former Max Oscar Arnold premises were acquired in 1935 . In 1936 the complex relocation of the means of production took place, which cost more than 100,000 RM and comprised more than 300 railway wagons. In 1937, the company officially relocated to Neustadt. Hausser employed up to 1000 people in Neustadt and was the city's largest employer. In 1943 the toy production had to be stopped, which was only restarted in 1946/47.

Between 1955 and 1964 around 130,000 picture Lilli dolls were produced. The modeller Max Weißbrodt designed these based on drawings by the caricaturist Reinhard Beuthien. After the rights to the doll were sold to the US toy company Mattel , production was discontinued.

After Hausser had already increasingly produced figures from easier-to-process and more stable plastics, the company stopped producing traditional mass figures in 1969. In addition to the traditional, rigid and painted figures, Hausser now also produced plug-in figures, similar to Timpo Toys , in which the individual components were injected from differently colored plastic, thus making labor-intensive hand-painting unnecessary. After many successful years sales declined and O. & M. Hausser KG had to file for bankruptcy on June 29, 1983 due to financial difficulties . Rising raw material prices, customers turning away from war toys and competition from the more diverse Playmobil products had all contributed to the decline. Trademark rights and figure shapes were taken over by the Paul M. Preiser company from Steinsfeld near Rothenburg ob der Tauber . The hard plastic figures on a scale of 1:25 are still produced by this company today.

Some manufacturers and private individuals also produce figures and accessories to match the Elastolin figures on a scale of 1:25.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elfer Raus at the European Game Collectors Guild
  2. ^ O. & M. Hausser KG, Neustadt b. Coburg at the Bavarian Economic Archives
  3. ↑ Hausser catalog plug-in figures 1976
  4. ^ Paul M. Preiser GmbH

literature

  • Esther Reinhart: Max Oscar Arnold (1854-1938) . Volume 21 of the series of publications of the historical society Coburg eV, Coburg 2007, ISBN 3-9810350-3-8 , pp. 208-210

Web links