page_title: D. Dudley Bloom
section_title: Reality-based toys
hierarchical_section_title: D. Dudley Bloom / Reality-based toys
caption_attribution_description: English: D. Dudley Bloom Amsco Toys sponsored The Wendy Barrie Show on the Dumont Television Network, soon to become ABC. Here, Bloom prepares Barrie for an Amsco commercial spot.
context_page_description: David Dudley Bloom was an American businessman who made notable contributions to the consumer products industry as a conceptual inventor and marketing executive during the 1950s and 1960s, including proposing and designing the first conventional travel luggage built on wheels; marketing the first "magic milk bottle" for dolls; and designing and marketing a continuous-play tape recorder.
context_section_description: After clerking for Millard Ullman, a Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, lawyer, Bloom moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he became assistant buyer of men's clothing at Lit Brothers's flagship department store at 701 Market Street. While working at Lit's, he met his future wife, Nancy Blum, and the couple married in June 1953.
  Bloom then joined the New York City market research firm of A. J. Wood, Inc. Immersion in the then-new field of computerized mass marketing research at the Wood company prepared Bloom in the spring of 1954 to become director of product research and promotion at the American Metals Specialties Corporation (AMSCO), a then-struggling toy manufacturer located in Hatboro, Pennsylvania.
  
  At AMSCO, Bloom expanded the company's line of reality-based toys that eschewed traditional military themes for boys and encouraged children of both genders to imitate constructive adult roles. "If we teach our children war and crime," he was quoted by Newsday in 1959, "we haven't much of a future to look forward to." He taught the industry that children learn how to be consumers long before they get their first jobs.
  The incorporation of common consumer products into Amsco reality-based play sets enabled children to imitate cooks with products manufactured by General Foods, Procter and Gamble, and Kellogg's; to feed dolls with Gerber's baby food and Pet Milk from a "magic bottle" that disappeared as Dollee "drank" it; and to care for those dolls with real Johnson and Johnson's baby shampoo, baby oil and baby powder. Children played doctor and nurse with toy stethoscopes and reflex hammers; playwright, actor, and stage director with magnetic puppet theaters; and astronaut with rockets and launching pads.
  Soon, consumer product manufacturers were initiating reality-based campaigns of their own, such as General Foods for its AMSCO-manufactured Maxwell House Coffee-Time Set, which was advertised on children's television programs concurrently with the company's "Tastes as Good as it Smells" television advertising campaign for its brand of ground coffee, blurring the merchandising line between children's toys and their parents' groceries.
  Bloom packaged virtually everything in see-through acetate rather than the paper to which the industry was accustomed.
caption: D. Dudley Bloom prepares TV host Wendy Barrie for an Amsco commercial spot on the Dumont Television Network, soon to be ABC, early in 1954.
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