Business & Finance: Puzzle Profits

¶In Toronto last week one Fred Shipley did a jigsaw puzzle while his apartment burned. Forcibly ejected by firemen. Puzzler Shipley finished his puzzle under a blanket on the sidewalk.

¶In Chicago the Century of Progress (World’s Fair) was about to issue an official jigsaw puzzle, picturing a panorama of the fair grounds, for 25¢.

¶In Manhattan speakeasy patrons worked feverishly over pictures showing cinemactresses in circumstantial bedroom scenes.

¶Eddie Cantor sat up nights writing a jigsaw song.

¶And a Mr. Morris M. Einson of Long Island City, L. I., went vacationing in the West Indies, leaving behind him a business which had increased its payroll 250% since last summer, was making 3,000,000 jigsaw puzzles a week, and had become so prosperous that it could retain smart Lawyer Mabel Walker Willebrandt to fight the Government’s contention that it owed a tax of 10% under the new amusement excise law.

Last week millions of adults bought jigsaw puzzles from newsstands, stationers, booksellers, department stores, drug shops. Einson-Freeman Co. made most of them. Jigsaw puzzles had been with U. S. citizens for two or three generations without becoming a fad until clever Morris Einson sold an idea to Prophylactic Products Corp. last summer. Prophylactic offered one of Mr. Einson’s puzzles with every toothbrush it sold. A million brushes were sold—and a million puzzles. Pepsodent took up the idea, began giving away more of Einson-Freeman’s puzzles which when put together revealed the faces of Amos & Andy and the celebrated Goldbergs. Sunshine Biscuit, Standard Oil, Squibb fell in line. In November, having increased its staff from 200 to 700 employes, Einson-Freeman began selling its puzzles across newsstands.

Big game-making companies like Milton Bradley Co. and Parker Bros, turned to cheap, cardboard-backed jigsaw. Einson-Freeman’s 3,000,000 puzzles account for more than half the total sales today, with the fad being pushed by newspaper colyumists, cartoonists and editorial writers, by radio gag men and smart cocktail party devotees. Simon & Schuster, crossword pioneers, issued $1 puzzles designed by Peter Arno, William Steig, Otto Soglow, Tony Sarg.

Last week Mrs. Willebrandt was working hard to defeat the Government’s contention that a puzzle of over 50 pieces is no child’s game, should pay the 10% wholesale tax on adult amusements. Most puzzles are 150-500 pieces. Her argument: no matter who plays with them, or how many pieces they contain, jigsaw puzzles are childish, picayune, taxfree.