Figuring out when an item was made can be difficult. Sometimes there will be date codes on some of the parts inside, but not always. My friend Andrew Tolch reminded me recently that if you have the box it came in, there may be some very good clues hiding there.
Decoding date codes on cardboard boxes
Sometimes, but not always, there will be a date code on the box itself stating when the box was printed. I have one such example, where the date couldn’t be much more clear. The box literally states 09/ 77. That is very common nomenclature for the 9th month of 1977.
Sometimes it’s a bit more subtle than that. He showed me a tin lithographed fire truck made by Marx with the box. Next to the manufacturer’s seal, there was the number 56. That sounds like 1956. And that is well within the time frame either of us would have expected, since the truck was made of lithographed tinplate and also had some plastic components. That mixture of technology was still common in the mid-1950s.
But he pointed out another detail. There were five stars near the number 56. That’s the indicator of the month the box was printed. Five stars means five, for the fifth month of the year, which is May. So the box was printed in May 1956. That means the toy that went in the box was manufactured very close to that date as well. They probably did order boxes somewhat in advance, but a box from the middle of the year probably means the toy came from the middle of the year as well.
So if you have the box the item came in, check the underside of the box, especially if it’s bleached or unbleached cardboard and not with full color printing on all six sides.
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.