Faller

In 1946, brothers Hermann and Edwin Faller founded a toy company and began making small buildings from wood and printed cardboard. Production started under the name Hermann Faller, and that year the company moved to the brothers’ parents’ house in Gütenbach, where it established a workshop. Its modular Marathon construction set used prefabricated panels that could be assembled into different structures. The company also made beechwood combs and saucepan trivets for income. After the toy market contracted in 1948, the brothers laid off their employees and turned to wooden clothes pegs while continuing to develop toys.

In 1949 the brothers adapted their building concept to model railways, developing stations, signal boxes and goods sheds for H0 layouts. At the 1950 Nuremberg Toy Fair, Faller presented ten building prototypes and a small motor for model windmills and watermills. In 1954 the company introduced a viaduct bridge made by plastic injection moulding, which was also its first kit. A new building was constructed in Gütenbach in 1959. The N scale range and AMS car racetrack followed in the 1960s; the first colour catalogue appeared in 1958.

In the 1980s Faller left the toy sector and refocused on model building. It introduced the Car System in 1988, with self-driving cars and road-traffic controls. Hermann Faller died in 1982, and Edwin withdrew from company management in 1986. After filing for insolvency, the company restarted in 2010 under new shareholders led by Horst Neidhard. Later developments included Car System Digital and FALLER CREATE, introduced in 2019, through which customers can design models for production by 3D printing. The company’s production and development remain based in Gütenbach.