Tyco Toys
defunct toy manufacturer and brand
Tyco Toys was an American toy manufacturer. It was acquired by Mattel in 1997, becoming one of its brands.
History
Formation of Tyco
The company was established as Mantua Metal Products by John Tyler and Jim Thomas in 1926, producing model boats and electric motors to power them out of Mantua, New Jersey. They began to produce motors for train models of all sizes. Then, in 1933, the business was moved to Woodbury Heights, New Jersey. By 1937, Mantua began selling its own ready-to-run HO scale model train.
From 1942 to 1945, the production of model railroad products was suspended as the company participated in the manufacturing of precision measuring and mapping equipment for the U.S. Army and Navy in World War II. The company received the Army-Navy "E" Award for excellence in production in 1945. After the war, they converted the plant back to the production of model railroading equipment. Thomas left the company in 1947 to start his own train line. Mantua began using plastic in its trains starting in the 1950s.
The public source identifies “Tyco Toys” as defunct toy manufacturer and brand. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Tyco, Toys and defunct.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3542657. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997, 1926, 1933 and 1937.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tyco Toys” 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.