“Prospects Brighten for Irwin Toys”

Irwin Toy (Wikipedia entry) was a Canadian toy distributor years ago, and anyone who collects Kenner’s Star Wars toys of the seventies and eighties is probably most familiar with Irwin for their work in distributing those toys in Canada. There’s even a book on the subject — Irwin Toys: The Canadian Star Wars Connection* — for the dedicated, but I’ve gotta admit that it’s not one of the best books in my library of guides to toys and the toy industry.

Today we can look back at a small piece of Irwin Toy’s past with this June 8, 1978, newspaper article. What most caught my eye was the mention of Edwin S. Lowe; Lowe, if you’re at all into the toy and game industry, is best known for popularizing bingo and making Yahtzee a success. Reading the Wikipedia entry on Lowe tells me I may need to dig a bit deeper into his past. Lowe clearly lived a fascinating life.

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