Web Page No 2510

16^th  September 2018

1^st Picture. TRIANG Factory

2nd Picture. TRIANG advert

3^rd Picture. TRIANG car

4^th Picture. TRIANG railways

5^th Picture. TRIANG dolls house

Triang Toys

We must have all had at least one Triang toy in our childhood but who were Triang?

The toymaking company Lines Brothers was founded by the brothers Walter, William and Arthur Lines when they returned to civilian life after WW1. The company used Tri-Ang as a brand name, since a triangle is made of three lines.

Lines Brothers at one time claimed to be the largest toy company in the World, and even absorbing Meccano. However business became less reliable through the 1960s, and Lines Brothers Limited called in the administrators in 1971.

Toymaking had been a family tradition for the brothers - their father Joseph Lines, ran the toymaking company G&J Lines (1876-1930) with his brother George the family had actually started making toys and models from 1850.

G&J's business had been wood-based specialising in wooden horses right up to full-size models used in shops to sell saddlery. G&J Lines had been successful in promoting the rocking-horse. However, while G&J were focused on traditional wooden toys the brothers wanted to move into new markets. Walther is credited with having invented the scooter while at G&J, but been unable to persuade the company to put it into production. G&J did make wheeled items such as horse tricycles but were not impressed with the scooter.

Matters came to a head when the brothers returned after WW1 and after a showdown with G&J, the brothers started their own toy company, Lines Brothers Limited, with Walter doing the initial toy design work.

Lines Brothers absorbed the products of G&J Lines after their father died in 1931. While the Tri-ang brand had multiple sub-brands based around factories with their own products such as model aircraft Aircraft, and Tri-ang Railways. The name Tri-ang, the company's main impact on people's lives seems to have been created by the pedal cars and tricycles, and  Tri-ang dollhouses.

The brothers set up their Triang Works in Morden Road, London SW10, billed as "The largest Toy Factory in the World", and designed by Walter. The Merton site had its own railway siding, and, in the centre of the factory site, it's own football field, which also came in handy as a space for testing out the model aircraft.

As the business boomed, Lines Brothers were keen to continue entering new markets, Walter embarked on a programme of acquisitions –Lines Brothers used a lot of paint, so they bought a paint company. They used a lot of paper, so they bought a paper company and forestry to grow their own trees.

When the London toy shop Hamleys went into receivership, Walter polled other toy manufacturers about what their attitude might be if LBL acquired the shop but continued to run it semi-independently ... after which Walter also had the country's biggest toyshop.

They bought Rovex, a small plastics moulding company in Richmond, and set them up with a new factory site in Margate, making plastic-bodies model railways as Triang Railways .

Overall, Lines Brothers at their peak were supposed to own over fifty companies in the UK and abroad.

Although the Triang brand was a brilliantly clever bit of marketing, the Lines Brothers approach to market branding was haphazard, and coupled with their enthusiasm for taking over and founding new companies. With three founders, all of whom were brought up in the toymaking business, Lines Brothers' empire just kept growing. With the takeover of Meccano Ltd in the mid-1960s, Triang also acquired Dinky.

The Sixties were a difficult time for the British toy industry, with companies struggling to compete with imported toys from the US and Japan. When Meccano Ltd. went bust in the mid-1960s, Lines Brothers acquired them and integrated most of the products into their lineup, but by this time, some of the factors that had been damaging Meccano Ltd were also having an impact on LBL. Although LBL had done their best to move with the times, sturdy metal and wooden toys bought through toyshops with decent profit margins were being replaced with cheap mass-produced plastic, with the diecast car market increasingly dominated by cheaper imports taking over much of what had once been the "penny toys" sector. It was a time of buyouts and rationalisations and venture capital acquisitions, and Lines Brothers finally succumbed in 1971, and was broken up.

Keep in touch

Yours

Peter

gsseditor@gmail.com

Chris Writes:

My wife kindly brought home a couple of the Drayton books, the ‘Final’ being one of them. The Drayton Final ‘Open All Hours’ article has omitted the shop in the area on the northern corner of Augustine Road (No.26 I believe) and Seaview Road run by the Dadswells. Their son Guy, also attended Manor Court.

Our family moved to Drayton 1958. I attended Solent Road school for a year and a bit before secondary school, ‘Cosham Park House’ Court lane. My form teacher for that last year at Solent Road was Mr Brooks, a very engaging teacher who fired my imagination. I believe Mr Brooks, and his wife, later became headteachers in Portsmouth schools. The ‘bit’ at Solent Road was in Mr Wing’s class.

The Dadswell’s shop didn’t last so many years after we came to the area. Looking back, I am not surprised. You could look out a bedroom window and virtually all day and not see a soul. Children that lived nearby went off to boarding schools or travelled out of the area to private schools. As far as I know very few of us went to Solent Road (or Manor Court) from the hillside area west of Solent Road to Drayton Lane in that period.

There were a few children on the Naval estate. Through one of them I met the late multi Olympic medallist marksman Malcolm Cooper, who happened to be at home from boarding school. Malcolm went on to become a Shipwright in the HM Dockyard, which is where we met again (early seventies). I believe he in was a drawing office and I was operating a centre lathe in the ‘Factory’ in the Dockyard.

By this time Malcolm had taken up shooting seriously. I made some add on parts ‘quietly’, on my lathe for his rifle which were to provide inertia to unwanted forces created when firing a round, hence improving accuracy. With Malcolm’s Olympic successes, he went on found a company with his wife (the company still located in Portsmouth to my knowledge) making high accuracy weapons.

News and Views:

On this day 16th September 1960-1965

On 16/09/1960 the number one single was Apache - The Shadows and the number one album was Down Drury Lane to Memory Lane - A Hundred and One Strings. The top rated TV show was No Hiding Place (AR) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was Parking tickets and traffic wardens introduced in London

On 16/09/1961 the number one single was Johnny Remember Me - John Leyton and the number one album was Ipswich Town. The top rated TV show was "Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £not very interesting and 13.25 were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Take Your Pick (AR)".

On 16/09/1962 the number one single was She's Not You - Elvis Presley and the number one album was West Side Story Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 16/09/1963 the number one single was She Loves You – The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 16/09/1964 the number one single was You Really Got Me - Kinks and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 16/09/1965 the number one single was (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - Rolling Stones and the number one album was Help - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.