Old Danish Toy Catalogs!
Posted: 28 Feb 2015 00:06
Today I got an envelope from a very kind colleague who had been using her contacts in the toy business to look for old catalogs.
I knew the company where she had worked (the main distributor of toys in Denmark in the 80´s, 90´s and early 00´s) and also that they are now closing down the business for good. So I talked to her about these catalogs and she managed to get a stack of them dating back from December 1983 to December 1989. As you can imagine I was
to get my hands on these since they represent a huge part of my childhood, going to the shows to see upcoming toy lines for the following year with my parents and also owning a lot of these back in the happy toyshop days 
.
It also allowed me to date when Action Force (Hasbro) was first introduced in Denmark because this distributor had exclusive rights to all Hasbro products for at least 4-5 years before some of the other companies got involved (the ones who now own ALL rights for toy lines in Denmark). Those other companies also had the Palitoy rights so if I can manage to dust up some of their catalogs somewhere I will post pictures later of those
In the Christmas catalog for 1987 I found the first evidence of Action Force in Denmark and it stayed at least to the 89 catalog as well but only with a very very limited representation. I will try to scan all the relevant adverts and post them here and on my site and maybe I can get the time to actually scan all the catalogs because they are just SO cool with the old Walkie Talkies, Donkey Kong games etc
I knew the company where she had worked (the main distributor of toys in Denmark in the 80´s, 90´s and early 00´s) and also that they are now closing down the business for good. So I talked to her about these catalogs and she managed to get a stack of them dating back from December 1983 to December 1989. As you can imagine I was
to get my hands on these since they represent a huge part of my childhood, going to the shows to see upcoming toy lines for the following year with my parents and also owning a lot of these back in the happy toyshop days .It also allowed me to date when Action Force (Hasbro) was first introduced in Denmark because this distributor had exclusive rights to all Hasbro products for at least 4-5 years before some of the other companies got involved (the ones who now own ALL rights for toy lines in Denmark). Those other companies also had the Palitoy rights so if I can manage to dust up some of their catalogs somewhere I will post pictures later of those
In the Christmas catalog for 1987 I found the first evidence of Action Force in Denmark and it stayed at least to the 89 catalog as well but only with a very very limited representation. I will try to scan all the relevant adverts and post them here and on my site and maybe I can get the time to actually scan all the catalogs because they are just SO cool with the old Walkie Talkies, Donkey Kong games etc
driving the Armadillo & 
hitching a ride with 
.
I talked to my colleague and all the photos in these catalogs were done in their own studios and with their own homemade backgrounds so must have been a fun day of work setting up these AF shots 
. Notice that 
is driving the Ferret too.