Lazy Hound from Mary Meyer 1960’s

This morning a friend sent me a photo of her favorite Vintage Mary Meyer stuffed toy.

The “Lazy Hound” is 13″ long with a Brown plush body and head and Honey  plush ears, chest and snout.
He has a large Black pompom nose, a Red felt tongue, felt buttons on his chest and a satin neck-ribbon.  The fabric in the 1960’s when we first manufactured the Lazy Hound was Rayon plush, made in Philadelphia, PA. by Baxter, Kelly & Faust.  They were usually stuffed with chopped foam rubber to make a soft cuddly stuffed toy.

In the 1960’s the Lazy Hound retailed in a toy store for $2.98 .  We made this design for over 20 years and it was one of our most successful stuffed toys.

The Lazy Hound was Mary Meyer’s design #467.  In those days we added 20 to 30 new designs each year. The Lazy Hound was a very successful and long running design and is one of my favorite.

New designs are very important.  When someone, such as my wife goes shopping for a new blouce or dress, she does not buy the same one or same color or same design as she did last year.  She wants something NEW.  Stuffed toy designs are exactly the same.  New designs are the life blood of a stuff toy manufacturer.  Today at Mary Meyer, Steven Meyer ( Mary Meyer’s grandson)  is the head designer and creates well over 100 new designs each year.  He probably creates 200 to 300 new design and weeds out the poorer design and puts the best 100+ designs into production.

I’m Walter Meyer and I started working at Mary Meyer in 1955 and I’m still here.  Mary Meyer was my Mother.  I try and remember all of the designs we did during the past 50 years.  It’s fun and I see a lot of old friends that we made here at Mary Meyer in Townshend, VT over the past 60 years.  When I see an old Mary Meyer toy, it’s like looking at one of your old friends.  You look at them and try and remeber when that design was made.  It may have been over 50 years ago.  It’s tough recognizing an old friend after that length of time. 

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