Early years Around the turn of the 20th century, Charles Raizen took a summer job with a manufacturer of embroidery patterns. then at 113-115 University Place. It quickly found that children enjoyed transferring the friction patterns, and the company shifted toward children's products such as Art-Toy Transfer Pictures. In 1917, Raizen bought the company and renamed it Transogram, the company developed the Toy Research Institute to test toys with input by a child psychologist, leading to the 1920s tagline that its toys were "Kid Tested". The company also began licensing media properties, manufacturing the likes of a
Little Orphan Annie set of
clothes pins. After producing toys, play sets and activity items, the company in 1929 produced its first game-like product, Orje, The Mystic Prophet, which one historian calls "a solitaire fortunetelling pastime".
Later years In 1955, Transogram introduced its first TV-series licensed board game,
Dragnet. Transogram advertised on television in 1968 for the first time in six years, with a million-dollar campaign centered on Green Ghost and Hocus Pocus, its two glow-in-the-dark games;
Ka-Bala, a future-telling game; and the printing kit Inkless Printing. The TV commercials were produced by the advertising agency Smith / Greenland.
Going public and final years Following a previous incorporation in New York, the Transogram Company incorporated in Pennsylvania on September 4, 1959. In 1966, Transogram's total sales were $18,665,631. In the first six months of 1967, the company posted a loss of $1,191,000 on sales of $4,713,000, down from $6,169,000 in sales during the same period the year before. For the first nine months of 1970, Transogram reported a loss of $2,328,000 on sales of $21,642,000, compared to a loss of $293,000 on sales of $17,938,000 during the same period in 1969. Transogram announced in August 1969 that it had agreed to acquire 81% of the stock in Mountain Savings and Loan of
Boulder, Colorado, in exchange for an unspecified number of shares of Transogram stock. The financial holding company Winthrop Lawrence, controlled by
du Pont heir Lammot du Pont Copeland Jr. and Thomas A. Sheehan, bought controlling interest in Transogram in 1969 and installed Joseph Bruna as chief executive officer. On February 26, 1971, Transogram declared
Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing liabilities of $12,067,307 and assets of $3,009,072. Trading on the
American Stock Exchange had been suspended the week prior. The Transogram trademark and assets were liquidated in 1971, with the marks and toy molds purchased by Jay Horowitz of American Plastic Equipment. Horowitz later transferred all rights to American Plastic Equipment's subsidiary, American Classic Toys. In 2019, American Classic Toys entered an exclusive license agreement with The Juna Group to represent the Transogram brands in all categories worldwide. In 2023, the Transogram exclusive license agreement was acquired from The Juna Group by CSN Press LLC., publishers of the weekly newspaper, Comic Shop News. ==Products==