Unique Art Manufacturing Company was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 toy

Toy

A toy is any object that can be used for play. Toys are associated commonly with children and pets. Playing with toys is often thought to be an enjoyable means of training the young for life in human society. Different materials are used to make toys enjoyable and cuddly to both young and old...

 company, founded in 1916, based in Newark, New Jersey

Newark, New Jersey

Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...

 that made inexpensive toys, including wind-up mechanical toys, out of lithographed

Lithography

Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...

 tin

Tin

Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...

. One of its early products was a wind-up toy featuring two tin boxers

Boxing

Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...

.

The company scored a hit in the 1940s when it acquired the rights to a popular comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 and released the Li'l Abner Dogpatch Band for Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

 1945. The windup toy featured Abner dancing, Pappy on drums

Drum kit

A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

, Mammy with a drum stick, and Daisy Mae playing piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

. Unique followed with a Howdy Doody

Howdy Doody

Howdy Doody is an American children's television program that was created and produced by E. Roger Muir and telecast on NBC in the United States from 1947 until 1960. It was a pioneer in children's television programming and set the pattern for many similar shows...

 band several years later.

Unique's president, Sammy Bergman, was a good friend of toy magnate Louis Marx

Louis Marx and Company

Louis Marx and Company was an American toy manufacturer from 1919 to 1978. Its boxes were often imprinted with the slogan, "One of the many Marx toys, have you all of them?"-Logo and Offerings:...

, and the two men's companies at times cooperated, with Marx providing tooling to Unique and sometimes acting as a distributor for Unique's products.

In 1949, Unique began producing lithographed tin O gauge toy train

Toy train

A toy train is a toy that represents a train. It is distinguished from a model train by an emphasis on low cost and durability, rather than scale modeling. A toy train can be as simple as a pull toy that does not even run on track, or it might be operated by clockwork or a battery...

s, using tooling of its own design along with some recycled tooling from the defunct Dorfan

Dorfan

Dorfan was an American toy company based in Newark, New Jersey, specializing in O gauge and Wide gauge toy trains. It was founded in 1924 by Milton and Julius Forcheimer, two immigrants from Nuremberg, Germany, whose family was involved in the production of Fandor trains. The company is named for...

 Company. Unique sold its trains in inexpensive boxed sets like Marx, and also produced a circus set that was distributed on a car-by-car basis by the [Jewel Tea Company] Jewel Companies. Marx saw this as a betrayal and responded with a new line similar in size to Unique's, but with lithography that looked more realistic. Unique found itself unable to compete, and withdrew its trains from the marketplace by 1951.

Although Unique was unable to capture much of a piece of the toy train craze of the early 1950s, a tin typewriter

Typewriter

A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...

 toy introduced during the same time frame did take market share away from Marx, who had a similar toy. Marx responded by moving production of its typewriter toy to Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

in order to undercut Unique's price.

Unique Art's eventual fate is unclear but the company appears to have disappeared by 1952.