The Games We Play:

The Rise and Fall of Ideal Toy Corporation in Newark’s Ironbound District

Abstract

The 1970s were an era of great change for Newark, as its industrial economy fled overseas in search of cheap labor leaving thousands unemployed in their wake as the city reeled from the effects of the Newark Rebellion. The Ironbound neighborhood was hit hardest, losing the Ballantine Brewery and other major employers in just a few short years. It would be the Ideal Toy Corporation, leaving Queens behind, that promised to bring opportunity and renewal during this transitional period in return for tax abatements and a sizable workforce. The factory would close in under fifteen years, a short blip in the industrial history of Newark overlooked by its labor historians. This paper seeks to analyze the ways in which Ideal Toy represented the potential that the city government believed Newark to possess at this crucial time, and the realities that its workers in the Ironbound struggled against due to deindustrialization, racism, poor labor conditions, and a union that did not, or would not, support those on the assembly line.