Barclay Manufacturing Company

The Barclay Manufacturing Company was an American metal toy company based in New Jersey that specialised in diecast toy cars and hollowcast toy soldiers. Due to their common purchase at five and dime stores, collectors refer to Barclay's toy soldiers as "Dimestore soldiers".

Barclay Manufacturing was formed by Leon Donze and Michael Levy in about 1922 (O'Brien 1997, 62). The name of the company came from Barclay Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. During the 1930s, the company was based in North Bergen, New Jersey.

In its heyday Barclay produced 500,000 toys a week, making them the largest toy soldier manufacturer at that time in the United States (Young and Young 2007, 550). In 1939 Barclay acquired another toy soldier company, Tommy Toy and its art deco sculptor Olive Kooken (Fendelman and Rosson 2009) . Soldier's uniforms followed military fashion of the times, replacing closed standing collars with open ones with shirt and tie. Wrap around puttees were replaced by canvas leggings. Prior to the company's temporary closing in 1942 the foot soldiers were purchased individually for a nickel.

Some of Barclay's first vehicles were slush cast white metal made in the 1930s. Some of the most interesting models were in art deco style. One intriguing selection was a "Coast to Coast" art deco style bus - another a two tone oil tanker with pontoon fenders - on both models, fenders were different colors from the bodies. One available set had a cartoon-like strip on the box lid that stated it was a "Build and Paint Your Own Auto Set" which was "Loads of fun". The set included a four-door sedan, a two-door, and a tanker truck. It included paint and the cars had white rubber wheels.

Also about this time, and into the 1940s, the company made a variety of military vehicles - tanks, trucks with cannon and other cars painted brown.

After World War II, Barclay's headquarters were relocated to Union City, New Jersey. Despite the inroads of plastic toy soldiers, Barclay kept manufacturing theirs in metal. Following the war, Barclay changed the helmets on their soldiers to the M1 Helmet. In about 1951 Barclay conserved metal by eliminating bases on their soldiers, which collectors nicknamed podfoot soldiers because each foot appeared as a flattened rounded blob (Johnson 1982, 104-106). These were painted similar to figures in American comic books of the time - olive drab uniforms with green helmets with "enemy" soldiers in red uniforms with white helmets. With the rising cost of metal, the soldiers had risen in price to 15 cents.

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