Fun video for the admittedly narrow target audience of fans of classic toys, Mad Men era advertising, and the distinctive forced exuberance of a corporation trying to put a happy face on a desperate situation.
If you operated a toy store in 1965, you might have seen this promotional film with the new A.C. Gilbert toys for 1965. You will see television commercials that were to be aired nation wide showing the new line of Erector Sets: Erector Set 1,2,3,and 4, Erector Constructor 5 in 1, Ride-Em Erector, Gilbert Auto-Rama Power Steering Pit Stop slot cars, ChemLab Chemistry Set 1 to5, Gilbert Microscope Lab, Gilbert Telescope, and American Flyer Trains: The All Aboard, ready to go train sets. The commercials are great. A Carnival Barker, and Spokesperson for Gilbert add to the fun. "65: The Year To Go Gilbert" will also show what TV shows in the United States Gilbert will sponsor. A rare glimpse of the new toys you might have had under your Christmas tree in 1965. Sadly, after several failed attempts to market their existing toys and to create new lines of toys, the A.C. Gilbert Company ceased production in 1966 and declared bankruptcy in 1967. They couldn't keep up with the changing trends and competition in the toy industry. Transferred from 16mm color film, faded, color corrected.
Gilbert was a cool company that deserved better, particularly its line of Erector sets (though Lego has since filled most of the niche), but Alfred Carlton Gilbert (a remarkable character described by Wikipedia as "an American inventor, athlete, magician, toy maker and businessman") was the business and his death in 1961 pretty much sealed its fate.
And, no, I wasn't kidding about the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory.
The set originally sold for $49.50[3] (equivalent to $650 in 2024[7]) and contained the following:[3][8][9]
- Battery-powered Geiger–Müller counter
- Electroscope
- Spinthariscope
- Wilson cloud chamber with short-lived alpha source (Po-210) in the form of a wire
- Four glass jars containing natural uranium-bearing (U-238) ore samples (autunite, torbernite, uraninite, and carnotite from the "Colorado plateau region")[3]
- Low-level radiation sources:
- "Nuclear spheres" for making a model of an alpha particle
- Gilbert Atomic Energy Manual — a 60-page instruction book written by Dr. Ralph E. Lapp
- Learn How Dagwood Split the Atom — comic book introduction to radioactivity, written with the help of General Leslie Groves (director of the Manhattan Project) and John R. Dunning (a physicist who verified fission of the uranium atom)[11][12]
- Prospecting for Uranium — a 1949 book published jointly by the Atomic Energy Commission and the United States Geological Survey
- Three C batteries
- 1951 Gilbert Toys catalog
If the lab had come out a few years later, Stan Lee could have gotten a few more origin stories out of it.
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