The Lionel Corporation, makers of toy trains and such, has worked itself out of a $650,000 equity receivership in eight months.
Mickey Mouse and gal Minnie, together with the streamline rage in railroad trains and the improvement in Christmas business this Winter, aided good sales management to turn the trick.
It would be a good story if Mickey had done it all alone. The comic movie figure did enough, however, to win special mention by Judge Guy L. Fake, who dismissed the receivers in United States District Court at Newark, New Jersey, January 21, and handed the business back to its owners.
The facts are that Lionel, under an agreement with Walt Disney, Inc., made 253,000 sets of Mickey and Minnie on a tin wind-up handcar running humorously around a 27-inch circle of track and sold them mainly through department stores and chains. The public paid $1 each for the sets. This item, however, constituted less than 5% of the total Lionel business. But it was a percentage that Lionel would not have had without Mickey.
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