Ohio Art

The Ohio Art Company began in 1908 in Archbold, Ohio, founded by dentist Henry S. Winzeler. Its first business was metal picture frames and novelty goods. In 1912 it moved to Bryan, where it installed a metal lithography press. The company expanded into toys during the First World War, when imports from Germany were interrupted. Its early products included small wagons, carts, banks, spinning tops and tea sets; sand pails followed in 1923. In the early 1930s Ohio Art licensed Steamboat Willie, an early Walt Disney character, for a toy. Other lithographed products included shovels, drums, farmhouses, globes and checker sets.

As plastic toys displaced many lithographed metal toys, Ohio Art diversified into products such as film canisters, signs and trays. Its best-known drawing toy began with French inventor André Cassagnes’s Telecran design. Ohio Art acquired rights to the design in 1959; Cassagnes and company engineer Jerry Burger refined it before its 1960 American release as Etch A Sketch. The toy became a major product, while the company also made licensed metal signs and trays. In 2016 Ohio Art sold the Etch A Sketch and Doodle Sketch brands to Spin Master and stated that it would concentrate on metal lithography and its Bryan manufacturing operations.