Category:Modern Products

Toy Brands and Manufacturers

Modern Products

1946 -

Logo [image info]

Modern Products Ltd. were a company that made diecast toys, distributed by Morris and Stone.

After a while, Morris and Stone started manufacturing diecast toys themselves, as "Morestone", and their catalogues showed mixtures of "Morestone" and "Modern" products, side by side, with no obvious differentiating theme.

This slightly unsatisfactory situation, where the buying public were being presented with two different brands but unable to tell what the brands actually stood for, simplified somewhat when Morestone came up with the Budgie brand, which felt more like a consistent product range designed with consumers and retailers in mind, rather than an inventory system meant to help a distributor keep track of which factory a toy happened to be produced in.

1966: Reverse Takeover

When large distributor Guiterman (who'd bought Morestone and renamed it Budgie Models Ltd.) eventually went bust in 1966, Modern Products found that they'd lost their most important customer, and decided that, rather than wait for someone else to hopefully buy Budgie and continue their close relationship, they might as well buy out Budgie Models themselves.

The new company focused on selling the "miniatures" range into the US market.

Significant survivors

Three toys with explicit "Modern Products" packaging and branding seem to have survived in significant numbers: A covered wagon with horses, a Daimler ambulance, and a black police car.

We suspect that, given the name, Morestone's "Modern Series" may have been wholly or partly supplied by Modern Products.

Box-end artwork

Addresses

Modern Products Ltd. – 264-6 High Road, Chiswick, W.4. (1935) – perhaps not the same company
Modern Products – 92 Stoke Newington Church Street (1946)