PopCult Rudy Panucci on Pop Culture

The Marx Toy Museum Sale 2022

June 28, 2022 by Rudy Panucci

The Marx Toy Convention happened the third weekend of June this year at The Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum in Wheeling, West Virginia. I’ve already shown you photos and video from the convention, and yesterday I brought you images from our side trip to The Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex in Moundsville.

Today we’re going to show you some of the Friday-night fun from Francis Turner’s Brigadoon-like Marx Toy Museum, also in Moundsville, which only opens one or two nights a year since it ceased daily operation six years ago. Francis puts out select toys from the museum for sale and collectors from all over North America get to share in the bounty of Francis’ collecting journey.

The day’s hot weather and our long day of Marx Toy festivities caught up with me, so we ducked out after about half an hour, but it was great to see Francis again and visit his incredible collection. And I did get a few good images to share. We’re still limited to a dozen or so photos a day, so we’ll bring you a few more from this Museum Thursday in PopCult.

But we have some great images today, so let’s look at ’em…

Die-hard collectors check out what was the Johnny West area of the museum.
Checking out the Knights and Vikings.
More collectors checking out the treasures.
Lot’s of cool artifacts, including a photo of Francis with The American Pickers.
If my house wasn’t full, I might’ve bought this Stony Smith Jeep.
Concept sketch and designs for The Big Wheel.
Cool toys everywhere you look.
Some of the Marx-Hanna Barbera collaborations.
Checking out more Marx action figures.
And more spectacular playsets!
One last glance at the Marx Toy Museum before we had to cut out.

Tomorrow we’re going to take a side trip to a FiestaWare paradise, and then we’ll wrap up with a couple more photo essays on  Thursday.

 

Marx Toy Museum: The Ballad of Big Loo

July 25, 2018 by Rudy Panucci

The Marx Toy Museum, in Moundsviille, WV, closed in June, 2016, but every year since its closing, the museum’s curator, Francis Turner (right, with an inset of Big Loo), has agreed to reopen it during the annual Marx Toy Convention, which takes place at the Kruger Street Toy and Train Museum in nearby Wheeling. Francis founded the museum, which was created to share his comprehensive collection with the public.  His original goal was to preserve the legacy of Marx Toys and their founder, Louis Marx, by trying to find at least one example of every toy they made.

For sixteen years The Marx Toy Museum did just that. Since the museum closed in 2016, Francis has slowly been selling off pieces of his massive collection, and his annual open house sale is a chance for collectors to own a part of history.

In 2017, the History Channel show, American Pickers, visited the museum, and made a star out of one of its exhibits, the only sealed Marx Big Loo known to exist. In this clip, recorded last June, PopCult visits the museum, and finds out what happened to everyone’s giant robot pal from the moon as Francis Turner explains The Ballad of Big Loo.

It’s always a treat to get to visit the Marx Toy Museum, and it’s one of the perks of being a regular attendee at The Marx Toy Convention. Francis and the rest of the Turner family are always so welcoming and the only sad part is that there wasn’t enough public support to keep the museum open on a permanent basis. There are plans in the works for part of the Marx Toy Museum collection to be loaned out to other museums in the future, and we’ll keep you updated on the details when that happens.

Below you can see a clip I posted a few weeks ago, showing the famous encounter between American Picker’s Mike and Frank, and Big Loo…

American Pickers Visits The Marx Toy Museum in Moundsville

November 7, 2017 by Rudy Panucci

59fa31623b4e8-imageLast Summer we told you about how Mike and Frank from the History Channel series, American Pickers, had made a trip to see Francis Turner at the now-closed Marx Toy Museum in Moundsville. We can now tell you that the episode in which they go to this toy Valhalla will air Monday, November 13m at 9 PM, EST.

The description provided for the episode titled “Frank’s Big Day,” reads: “Frank jumps for joy as he and Mike pick a recently closed toy museum ready to sell their collection of treasure.”  Of course, this is a reality-TV program, so there’s bound to be lots of staging, and some of the information is going to be a little bit off.  That’s all part of the game. The huge plus is that we’ll get to see inside the Marx Toy Museum again.

The museum closed its doors on June 30, 2016, but has still been in use to store part of Francis Turner’s massive toy collection. The Turner family will still open the museum for special sales on occasion. While I’m sure that Francis set Frank and Mike up with a few really good deals, when I was at the museum back in June, all of the really valuable stuff was still there.

img_4818-e1459474404930Francis Turner (seen left) is an avid toy collector who years ago found himself on a mission. He wanted to amass a collection of every toy produced by The Marx Toy Company. The Marx Toy Company was at one time the largest toy company in the world. Following the retirement of company founder, Louis Marx and the sale of the company to Quaker Oats, the fortunes of the Marx Toy Empire fell, and the company closed its last factory and ceased operations in 1980.

Once Turner came close to achieving his goal, he decided that he needed to share his collection with the public, so he opened a museum in Moundsville. Located just a few miles from the site of one of the largest Marx Toy Factories in Glendale. The Marx Toy Museum was open to the public for more than fifteen years, to the delight of kids and kids at heart, before closing it’s doors in 2016. It still continues as a virtual online museum, but the Turner family is still trying to chart a course for its future, continuing its mission of preserving the legacy of Louis Marx and The Marx Toy Company.

img_4819On June 23, 2017, the museum opened its doors again for one night only, as Francis Turner held a massive sale. Everything from common Marx Toys to one-of-a-kind prototypes were sold to die-hard collectors.

Francis, who personally priced every item, was swamped all night long and tens of thousands of dollars traded hands.

It was great seeing Francis and The Turner family again, and it was wonderful to see that the museum location is still filled to the brim with terrific Marx Toys.The sale was where it was announced that Mike and Frank from American Pickers, had visited the museum in May to film this episode which will air next week. There was a bit of secrecy involved. They didn’t want to spoil the episode for anyone who wants to watch it, so aside from saying that the American Pickers crew had been there, The Turner family was tight-lipped about what they bought.

marx-toymusemwebIt should be a fun show, and it might be unintentionally hilarious for the die-hard toy experts who tune in. Mike and Frank are experts in many areas of antiques, but both are woefully under-informed when it comes to toys of a certain vintage. It’ll be fun to see if they get away with some real gems, or if, as they have done before, they leave behind the cream of the crop and get really excited about stuff that isn’t particularly rare or valuable.

I’m sure the program will present them as getting a great deal from Francis, then selling it for a huge profit, but knowing Francis, I’m sure that he knew exactly what he was doing, and getting some national exposure for the Marx Toy Museum will be worth way more than any deals he may given up.

Let’s hope that the added exposure leads to a major announcement about the future of the museum.

Sunday Evening Video: The Marx Toy Museum Sale

July 2, 2017 by Rudy Panucci

Tonight we bring you a short video with highlights of the big sale that was held last week at the former site of the Marx Toy Museum in Moundsville, West Virginia. The museum closed its doors on June 30, 2016, but has still been in use to store part of Francis Turner’s massive toy collection. Since so many Marx Toy Collectors where in nearby Wheeling at the Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum, it made sense for the Turner family to open the doors for a very special sale.

In case you don’t know the history, Francis Turner (seen right) is an avid toy collector who found himself on a mission. He wanted to amass a collection of every toy produced by The Marx Toy Company.

The Marx Toy Company was at one time the largest toy company in the world. Following the retirement of company founder, Louis Marx and the sale of the company to Quaker Oats, the fortunes of the Marx Toy Empire fell, and the company closed its last factory and ceased operations in 1980.

Once Turner came close to achieving his goal, he decided that he needed to share his collection with the public, so he opened a museum in Moundsville. Located just a few miles from the site of one of the largest Marx Toy Factories in Glendale. The Marx Toy Museum was open to the public for more than fifteen years, to the delight of kids and kids at heart, before closing it’s doors last summer.

Financial pressure, a struggling economy and a lack of traffic combined to make operating a physical museum too challenging to continue.

The museum still exists as an online entity, continuing its mission of preserving the legacy of Louis Marx and The Marx Toy Company.

On June 23, 2017, the museum opened its doors again for one night only, as Francis Turner held a massive sale. Everything from common Marx Toys to one-of-a-kind prototypes were sold to die-hard collectors. Francis, who personally priced every item, was swamped all night long and tons of toys traded hands. Basically, you picked up your item, and then you had to ask Francis how much it cost. I even scored a couple of great figures at a bargain price. Some of my high-roller friends walked out with rare prototype figures that they used to only dream of owning.

It was great seeing Francis and The Turner family again, and it was wonderful to see that the museum location is still filled to the brim with terrific Marx Toys. At the sale, it was announced that Mike and Frank from the History Channel program, American Pickers, had recently visited the museum to film an episode which will air in September, and the Museum Board has informed its donors that exciting plans about the future of the museum may be announced soon.

If you’d like a closer look at the still photos included in the above video, along with a few that didn’t make the cut, check out the image bank HERE.

This was all part of a fantastic toy-filled trip that your PopCulteer experienced last weekend. In case you missed my earlier video report, here’s our look at the 19th annual Marx Toy Convention, held last weekend in Wheeling at Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum…

PopCult Note: Apologies to Andrew McGrady, whose name we mis-spelled in the above video. With a name like “Panucci” you’d think we’d do a better job of looking out for these things, but we didn’t and now we hang our head in shame.

One Week Left for The Marx Toy Museum

June 22, 2016 by Rudy Panucci

Img_8431The PopCult Toybox

The Marx Toy Museum in Moundsville will close its doors for good on June 30. That means you have about a week left to visit one of the coolest spots in the state and take in the history of one of the greatest toy companies of all time. The museum will continue as a virtual entity and a series of traveling exhibits, but the physical location simply became too expensive to operate.

If you have not made the trek up North to visit the Marx Toy Museum, I implore you to make the effort to check it out before the end. Your PopCulteer and his lovely wife were in Wheeling and Moundsville last weekend for the annual Marx Toy Convention (you will see more photos from that later this week), and we made one last trip to the museum, hanging out with fellow MTM supporters one last time for the after-hours get-together, complete with DiCarlo’s pizza and tons of great deals on toys and stuff.

To help entice you to make the trip, today we’re going to bring you one last photo essay, which follows in the footsteps of the massive five-part photo essay that we posted after our first visit to the museum. I also want to thank Francis Turner and the Turner family for their generosity in sharing this epic collection with the public for fifteen years. They have demonstrated the classiest way to share a toy collection with the world, and I hope they inspire others to follow their example.

We still haven’t ironed out all the captioning bugs with our new blogging template, so we present these images without much in the way of explanation. Go visit the museum and they’ll tell you all about what you see here.

Nestled on Second street in Moundsville, this is The Marx Toy Museum
Nestled on Second Street in Moundsville, this is The Marx Toy Museum

Img_8430
Let’s go in one last time, shall we?

Continue reading…

Sad News: The Marx Toy Museum To Close

April 1, 2016 by Rudy Panucci

The PopCulteer
April 1, 2016

One of my favorite attractions in West Virginia will be closing on June 30.  The Marx Toy Museum in Moundsville, West Virginia, which opens today after their winter hiatus, will close its doors for good at the end of June.

For fifteen years, the storefront on 2nd Street in Moundsville that houses the Marx toy collection of Francis Turner has thrilled and delighted visitors from all around the globe.

Unfortunately, there have not been enough of those visitors to sustain operations at their current facility.  The sad fact is that we are talking about a toy company that went out of business more than three decades ago.  Kids who grew up playing with those toys are an aging population whose nostalgia can’t draw them to the museum often enough to keep it going.

Franci Turner, the Marx Toy Museum Curator
Francis Turner, the Marx Toy Museum Curator

Sadly, millennials have no connection to the Marx Toys brand and therefore are not attracted to what is one of the coolest museums in northern West Virginia.

Francis Turner started collecting Marx toys many years ago and devised the museum as way to share his collection with the public. A few years later, one of the sons of Louis Marx visited and aided Turner in attaining 501(c)3 non-profit status. A board of directors was chosen and goals for the growth of the museum and its financial support were drawn up.

The board has been meeting repeatedly over the winter and came to the sad conclusion that the best way to continue their mission to preserve the history and cultural significance of the Louis Marx toy company required closing the physical museum which, due to ever-increasing costs, had become a financial burden.

Continue reading…

Meet The Marx Toy Museum

August 28, 2015 by Rudy Panucci

Ten Years of PopCult

Today is the tenth anniversary of The PopCult Blog, written by Rudy Panucci. Every hour, on the hour(sort of), we’re going to bring you one of our favorite posts from the preceding decade. Some are significant “firsts,” while others are deeply touching or overwhelmingly goofy. We’ll leave it to you to figure out which is which.

While we’re posting photo essays, I had to include this one, the first of five, in fact, featuring the Marx Toy Museum, one of the coolest places in West Virginia. This one links to the other four Marx Toy Museum essays.

The PopCulteer
August 24, 2012

The Marx Toy Museum
Photo Essay Part One

Welcome to our first multi-part photo essay in The PopCulteer. As a sort of early present to our readers, just a few days away from PopCult’s seventh anniversary, we are bringing you photographic evidence of a trip we took last week to The Marx Toy Museum in Moundsville, West Virginia.

It was an incredibly pleasant trip. The weather was perfect. The museum was easy to find. Francis Turner, founder of the museum and Candy, who was working as a docent the day we showed up, were warm, friendly and gracious. I’ve been reading about Francis and his amazing collection for years, and it was great to finally meet him in person.

The Marx Toy Company was, at one time, the biggest toy company in the world. One of their main factories was located in Glen Dale, West Virginia, only a few miles from the site of The Marx Toy Museum. There’s a real sense of community on display here, as so many people in the area worked for Marx. At the museum you can learn about the history of Louis Marx, his wonderful toys and the people who made them.

This photo essay cannot possibly replace the actual experience of going to The Marx Toy Museum. You can’t imagine how cool it is to see this much toy history in one place. It’s a great day trip, and I recommend it to anyone in the Charleston area. If you grew up any time before the 1980s, The Marx Toy Museum will bring back many childhood memories. You may overdose on nostalgic glee. If you’re younger, you will still find the toys of yesteryear to be fascinating.

This photo essay is broken into five parts, so that the graphics don’t overwhelm your browsers. Convenient links will be posted at the top and bottom of each essay, so that you can jump around at will.

Enjoy!

The Marx Toy Museum Photo Essay
Part One–Meet The Museum (You Are Here)
Part Two–Marxism In The Toy World
Part Three–Playsets And Plastic People
Part Four–Girl’s Toys
Part Five–Johnny West And The Cowboys

Continue reading…

Meet The Marx Toy Museum

August 23, 2012 by Rudy Panucci

The PopCulteer
August 24, 2012

The Marx Toy Museum
Photo Essay Part One

Welcome to our first multi-part photo essay in The PopCulteer. As a sort of early present to our readers, just a few days away from PopCult’s seventh anniversary, we are bringing you photographic evidence of a trip we took last week to The Marx Toy Museum in Moundsville, West Virginia.

It was an incredibly pleasant trip. The weather was perfect. The museum was easy to find. Francis Turner, founder of the museum and Candy, who was working as a docent the day we showed up, were warm, friendly and gracious. I’ve been reading about Francis and his amazing collection for years, and it was great to finally meet him in person.

The Marx Toy Company was, at one time, the biggest toy company in the world. One of their main factories was located in Glen Dale, West Virginia, only a few miles from the site of The Marx Toy Museum. There’s a real sense of community on display here, as so many people in the area worked for Marx. At the museum you can learn about the history of Louis Marx, his wonderful toys and the people who made them.

This photo essay cannot possibly replace the actual experience of going to The Marx Toy Museum. You can’t imagine how cool it is to see this much toy history in one place. It’s a great day trip, and I recommend it to anyone in the Charleston area. If you grew up any time before the 1980s, The Marx Toy Museum will bring back many childhood memories. You may overdose on nostalgic glee. If you’re younger, you will still find the toys of yesteryear to be fascinating.

This photo essay is broken into five parts, so that the graphics don’t overwhelm your browsers. Convenient links will be posted at the top and bottom of each essay, so that you can jump around at will.

Enjoy!

The Marx Toy Museum Photo Essay
Part One–Meet The Museum (You Are Here)
Part Two–Marxism In The Toy World
Part Three–Playsets And Plastic People
Part Four–Girl’s Toys
Part Five–Johnny West And The Cowboys

Continue reading…

Memories of Marx Toys

July 21, 2022 by Rudy Panucci

The PopCult Bookshelf

Memories of Marx Toys: Glen Dale
by Gary Rider and Roseanna Dakan Keller
Independently published
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8801403045
$25 (Paperback)
$34.99 (Hardcover)

I picked this book up from the authors last month at an event held in conjunction with the Marx Toy Convention, and it’s an absolute gem. Anyone interested in toy manufacturing, Northern West Virginia history or post-war industrial America should seek out Memories of Marx Toys: Glen Dale.

Gary Rider and Roseanna Dakan Keller have crafted an exhaustive history of the Marx Toys Glen Dale, West Virginia plant, pre-dating Marx toys and going all the way to the days of the Marx Toy Museum. They do this by weaving deep research with a stirring oral history provided by dozens of Marx Factory employees and their families. The book is also generously illustrated with photos and images from the factory.

It’s a trip to find out that, before Marx Toys took over, the factory built Fokker Aircraft.  Memories of Marx Toys: Glen Dale opens with a detailed look at the fall of the fabled airplane maker, and how that left an opening for Marx Toys to choose Glen Dale for one of their manufacturing plants.  It’s a wild to discover that the legendary Fokker Triplane was made in the same building as Big Wheels and Johnny West.

Memories of Marx Toys: Glen Dale is a fascinating look at how toys were made in the days before OSHA, before outsourcing to other countries, and before Marx Toys themselves shut down operations.  We learn how life was for an every day worker at the factory, including some downright frightening tales of dangerous incidents at the plant and the aftermath of chemical exposure. However, the overwhelming aura of this book is that of a fond rememberance of a factory that provided employment for hundreds, if not thousands of households in the Glen Dale/Moundsville area for decades.

The book winds up with a profile of Francis Turner and a history of The Marx Toy Museum, which is one of my favorite places in the world. It follows the opening of the museum, the closing and even the visit by American Pickers a few years ago. I think Francis deserves a book of his own someday, but this is a great start and taught me a lot of new facts about my friend.

While Memories of Marx Toys: Glen Dale is obviously a must-have book for any fan or collector of Marx Toys, it will also appeal to anybody who would like a well-crafted story about a small factory town and the people who lived there.

To quote the PR blurb:

Founded in August 1919 in New York City by Louis Marx and his brother David, the company’s aim was to “give customers more toy for less money.” They were so successful in this venture, that at one time Marx Toys was the largest toy manufacturer in the world. The Glen Dale facility, in its’ heyday, employed more than 2,000 workers and had multiple buildings in Glen Dale and McMechen.

But this story is about the people that made the toys that children around the world loved to have on Christmas morning. Their lives were dedicated to bringing that job and happiness to youngsters that opened those presents on that day and had happiness delivered to their doors.

You can order Memories of Marx Toys: Glen Dale from Amazon in Hardback or Paperback editions, and I hope that it turns up in museum gift shops all around the state. You might also be able to order it from your local bookseller using the ISBN number above.

Sunday Evening Video: The 2022 Marx Toy Convention

June 26, 2022 by Rudy Panucci

Today we revisit last weekend’s Marx Toy Convention at The Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum in Wheeling, West Virginia .The Marx Toy Convention happens there the third weekend of June every year.

Following the first day of the Marx Toy Convention, many collectors made the short trip to The Mound Museum in nearby Moundsville, West Virginia, for a book signing and discussion about the new book, Memories of Marx Toys: Glen Dale, by Gary L. Rider and Roeseanna Dakan Keller . The authors of this oral history of The Marx Toys plant in Glen Dale signed books and presented a talk with some of the employees of the Marx Toy factory and their families. Look for a review of this book in PopCult sometime in the next week or two.

Unfortunately, a camera malfunction rendered our recording of the talk unusable. Had it not, we would have presented it here along with our wrap-up video. We do have some footage of the book signing, and we also have footage from Francis Turner’s  Marx Toy Museum, also in Moundsville, which only opens one or two nights a year since it ceased daily operation six years ago.

This is the wrap-up video of The Marx Toy Convention, but we still have more photos, so look for a short photo essay from our trip all next week, here in PopCult.

Special note: PopCult may disappear from this location at The Charleston Gazette-Mail soon. Don’t miss out on our new posts at our NEW HOME. Bookmark the new site, and subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also follow PopCult and Rudy Panucci on social media at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.