Diecast toys first appeared on the market in the 1920s, but the conservative Marx was slow to adopt it. Diecast toys from the 1920s and even much of the 1930s often have issues with breaking down over time. By the early 1940s, toymakers had worked out the issues. So early in 1941, Marx started developing its first diecast train, the Marx 999 locomotive.
Marx intended for the 999 to be a 1/64 scale locomotive to compete with American Flyer’s 1/64 scale O gauge line. It’s unclear how many Marx 999s made it out the door in 1941. Marx did sell limited numbers of them in 1942, but the start of World War II curtailed toy production. I’ve seen 1942 sets that would have included a 999, but Marx substituted whatever other locomotives they had on hand to sell through its inventory. Marx reintroduced the 999 in 1946 and produced it until 1959.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
