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Maco (toy company)

toy company

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ6724778 ↗
Source-derived summary

Maco Toys, Inc., was the name of a popular toy company based in Brooklyn, New York which produced war-themed toys for children in the 1950s and 1960s. Their toys were sold in a catalog that was illustrated by Tony Tallarico and printed by Charlton Comics which presented itself as a war comic book. (These toys were also sold in toy stores.) Products included plastic guns (including the M1903 Springfield rifle and an Army Paratrooper Carbine ), grenades, and a plastic Molotov cocktail.

The company's products were available in stores throughout the United States, but had a limited range of products and did not operate in other countries. Competitors included Hawk Model Company, Applause Inc, and Louis Marx and Company.

Anti gun toy controversy

In 1955, the New York City Council passed a bill to ban the manufacture, sale or possession of imitation revolvers that resemble the real article too closely. In a debate about the measure, an Army .45 caliber automatic manufactured by Maco was used as an example of a toy gun which was similar enough to the real model to be used as a weapon in a robbery.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Maco (toy company)” as toy company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Maco and company.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1955—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Maco and company providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Maco (toy company)”, the useful work is to connect “toy company” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6724778. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1955.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Maco (toy company)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Maco (toy company) primary sources, Maco (toy company) archive and Maco research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Maco (toy company)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.