Maker record
Marx (Hongkong)
Marx (Hongkong) was the Hong Kong manufacturing operation of the American toy company Louis Marx and Company. Established in the 1950s, it produced toys for the Marx range, including plastic toys. The operation was based in North Point, where its factory employed about 2,500 people at its peak. Marx’s Hong Kong production formed part of the city’s postwar expansion as an exporter of toys for international brands.
- Founded
- 1954
- Final year
- 1980
- Countries
- China
The story of Marx (Hongkong)
Louis Marx, founder of the American Louis Marx and Company, entered Hong Kong’s toy industry in the mid-1950s. He visited local manufacturers and arranged for factories to supply Marx with toys. He then asked David Yeh Chung-woo to represent Marx in Hong Kong and build a factory in North Point. The Hong Kong company, Elm Tool and Machinery Company, was operating by the late 1950s and employed about 2,500 people at its peak. Its name was said to reflect Marx’s initials.
Marx’s Hong Kong production included plastic toys and licensed character figures. A Hong Kong account dates the opening of its plastic toy factory to 1954 and notes its production of cartoon figures. The Hong Kong operation belonged to a wider manufacturing shift in which international toy companies used the city’s factories to supply overseas markets. Hong Kong-made toys became part of a major export industry in the decades after the Second World War.