Herman Guy Fisher (November 2, 1898 – September 26, 1975), was born in Unionville

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

. He is best known as the co-founder of the famous toy brand

Fisher-Price Fisher-Price is an American company that produces educational toys for infants, toddlers and preschoolers, headquartered in East Aurora, New York, East Aurora, New York (state), New York. The company was founded in 1930 during the Great Depressio ...

Biography

Herman G. Fisher was born in Unionville, Pennsylvania in 1898. He graduated from the

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

where he was a member of

Sigma Pi Sigma Pi () is a collegiate fraternity with 233 chapters at American universities. As of 2021, the fraternity had more than 5,000 undergraduate members and over 110,000 alumni. Sigma Pi headquarters are in Nashville, Tennessee. The fraternity ...

fraternity in 1921 with a BA in Commerce and Finance. In 1930, he got together with Irving Price,

Margaret Evans Price Margaret Evans Price (March 20, 1888 – November 20, 1973) was a U.S. toy manufacturer. With her husband, Irving Price, and Herman Fisher, she co-founded Fisher-Price Toys in 1930. Margaret Evans was a children's book illustrator and artist. ...

and

Helen Schelle Helen M. Schelle (1893 in Piqua, Ohio Piqua ( ) is a city in Miami County, southwest Ohio, United States, 27 miles north of Dayton. The population was 20,522 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area. It was ...

to establish a toy company under the name of Fisher-Price. Although this was the time of the Great Depression, the company manufactured 16 wooden toys which proved highly popular at the

American International Toy Fair The North American International Toy Fair (formerly the American International Toy Fair and also known as Toy Fair New York) is an annual toy industry trade show held in mid-February in New York City's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and at t ...

in New York City. Fisher was the president and chairman of the Fisher-Price company from its inception in 1930 to 1969 (he later retired and sold the firm to the

Quaker Oats Company The Quaker Oats Company, known as Quaker, is an American food conglomerate based in Chicago. It has been owned by PepsiCo since 2001. History Precursor miller companies In the 1850s, Ferdinand Schumacher and Robert Stuart founded oat mills. S ...

.) He was instrumental in building Fisher-Price into the world's largest manufacturer of

preschool A preschool, also known as nursery school, pre-primary school, or play school or creche, is an educational establishment or learning space offering early childhood education to children before they begin compulsory education at primary school ...

toys. Along with Irving Price and Helen Schelle, he established the simple but strict Fisher-Price creed: "''Fisher-Price toys should have intrinsic play value, ingenuity, strong construction, good value and action''." Herman Fisher was also instrumental in spearheading many 'firsts' in the toy industry. He coined the term “preschool toys” with the advent of the wooden blocks in 1934, the first to use plastic in 1950 in Queen Buzzy Bee’s wings and the creation of “National Baby Week” in the fifties.

Other information

*The Fisher Plaza in the Penn State University is named after him. He donated a large amount of money "to provide an area of beauty for his alma mater where all could pause to rest, reflect, or just watch the flowers grow." *In 1985, he was inducted in the Toy Industry Association's Toy Industry Hall of Fame. *Was a member of

fraternity at Penn State. *In 1938, during his tenure as the president of TMA, he led the campaign to establish the association's statistical committee. *He has several great-grandchildren, including Jessica Fisher, who is currently in a custody battle for the company Fisher-Price.

References

Herman Guy Fisher Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fisher, Herman American manufacturing businesspeople 1898 births 1975 deaths Smeal College of Business alumni Fisher-Price