F & F - a forgotten auto manufacturer
One of the United States’ largest automobile manufacturers
in the decades of the nineteen fifties and sixties - from 1950 through 1967 - was
based in Dayton, Ohio. Readers are forgiven
if they are not familiar with the name of F & F Mold & Die Works
Incorporated because the vehicles they manufactured were made of plastic and only
3-1/4 inches long, but in 1991, an article in the Dayton Daily News pointed
out that “at one time F & F made more plastic Fords than the automaker.“
German emigres John and Joseph Fiedler came to the United
States in 1927 and founded Fiedler & Feidler (later shortened to F & F)
Mold & Die Works in Dayton Ohio in 1938 in a shop behind the family home at
34 Pierce Street in Dayton. By 1942, the busy with war work, the company moved
into a two-story building at the corner of Sachs and Pruden Streets also in
East Dayton.
Joseph’s son, Otto Fiedler, who was born December 1919 in
Nuremberg Germany, graduated from Fairmont High School in Dayton then attended
Harvard College on a scholarship and graduated in 1940 in the same class as a
young man named John F. Kennedy. Otto came home to Dayton, registered for the
draft and studied sculpture at the Dayton Art Institute.
After he graduated from the Art Institute in 1942, he
entered the military and during World War II Otto served in the U.S. Army
counter-intelligence division. In 1946 he returned home to Dayton and oversaw
the installation and start-up of F & F’s three new plastic injection
machines in the new facility at 103 Sachs Street in East Dayton. At first, the
company manufactured imitation tortoise shell plastic purses, but the following
year they made plastic refrigerator dishes and ice cube trays.
In that era, many food consumers purchased a boxed product
then sent an order form on the package together with a small amount of money to
redeem for a special premium item. In 1947 on the hunt for new business, F&F
attended food industry trade shows and displayed a line of plastic premiums for
buyers’ consideration.
At one trade show, a representative of the Quaker Oats Company
asked Otto if F & F could design and manufacture an Aunt Jemima themed item
that could sell for about 50 cents. F & F eventually made 16 million of Otto’s
Aunt Jemima syrup pitchers, the first of many Aunt Jemima themed items that F
& F made through the years.
The company also manufactured large and small plastic
novelty salt and pepper sets, sugar and creamer sets, spice holders and cookie
jars. Later the company found a niche making
novelty plastic mugs that pictured Roy Rogers, Mr. Quaker, Tony the Tiger, Yogi
Bear, Dennis the Menace, the Flintstones, and many more for General Mills, Post
Cereals, Kool-Aid, and Quaker Oats.
F & F Mold and Die Works entered the scale automobile
cereal premium business with plastic cars wrapped in cellophane that were larger
than model railroad HO (1/87) scale and smaller than model railroad O scale (1/43).
Their debut premium car, for the Kellogg Company, was a 1950 Ford four door
sedan with a magnet cemented inside on the underside of the roof. The car rode
on white wheels and tires with metal axles.
For 25 cents and the mail-in proof of purchase card, customers received a metal ring and a Ford Sedan in one of three colors –
orange, yellow or blue. The idea was that the ring attracted the magnet, and
allowed the user to move the car without touching it, although over time, the
magnet often became separated from the car.
The same car without the “Ford” logo on the hood, and sans the ring and magnet
was offered in blue and red in 1951.
With its business growth, F & F rented second-floor
warehouse space in a building on Pine Street in Dayton. All the Pine Street inventory was destroyed by
fire in September 1951. Four young neighborhood boys admitted to playing with
matches which started the fire which destroyed $54,000 of F & F inventory and
cost the life of one Dayton firefighter, Clarence Dunkman, who died on the scene
of a heart attack.
During this period, F & F Mold and Die Works rented an
old tobacco warehouse in Verona Ohio, northwest of Dayton, and expanded its manufacturing
operations. The Verona facility grew to employ nearly 100 workers working three
shifts at its peak in 1955.
F & F offered a huge product line in 1954 for Post
cereal with both Ford and Mercury toy automobiles, with ten cars total in each
of seven different colors which simulated the real car colors. The Ford models
included the Thunderbird convertible, Crestline Sunliner, Victoria and 4-Door
Sedan, the Customline Club Coupe, and the Ranch Wagon.
The F & F four-car 1954 Mercury line included the XM-800
Dream Car (prized by collectors), and the Monterey 4-Door Sedan, Sports Coupe
and Convertible. Joseph Fiedler, Otto’s father and one of the founders of F
& F passed away in March 1954 at only 56 years of age. Otto and his uncle John
carried on with management of the F & F Mold and Die Works.
For 1955, F & F manufactured five different 1955 Ford
premium cars – the Thunderbird convertible, Fairlane Crown Victoria and
Sunliner convertible, Customline 2-Door Sedan, and the Country Sedan Wagon,
each in one of five colors.
In 1956, the Post cereal premiums moved away from cars with
Ford tractor cabs and five varieties of Fruehauf trailers - freighter, moving
van, tanker, gooseneck, and flatbed. The trucks and trailers came in four
different colors appeared on the scene with either black or white wheels. The
rigs came in four colors - orange, red, yellow and aluminum. F & F also
manufactured two styles of Greyhound busses, both cast in blue and two styles
of boats in five color-and-white combinations.
In 1957 F & F created and built five new Ford models. The
Ford Custom 300 2-Door Sedan Fire Chief are and the Ford Country Sedan Wagon Ambulance
came in red only. The rest of the 1957 Ford F & F lineup -
the Custom 4-Door Sedan, Fairlane 500
Town Victoria, Fairlane 500, and the Fairlane Sunliner came in one of seven colors which mimicked real Ford colors - Coral Sand, Dresden Blue,
Inca Gold, Cumberland Green, Colonial White, Silver Mocha, and Flame Red.
For 1959, there were only two cereal premium models - the Ford
Thunderbird hardtop or the convertible which F & F manufactured in six colors
- Raven Black, Brandywine Red, Cordovan, Flamingo, Starlight Blue (nearly
black), and Glacier Green. Instead of a mail-away premium, the Thunderbird cars
came packaged inside the cereal boxes.
During 1959, the Food and Drug Administration enacted new
consumer safety rules which prohibited packages of food items from containing
premiums with metal parts. F & F changed the design to white plastic one-piece
wheel and axles in order to comply with the new rule. The other big change in 1961
was that the cars were not Fords but Plymouths. The three models offered were the Fury
Convertible and Sports Coupe, and the Suburban Station Wagon, each one of six
different colors.
F & F returned to building Fords in 1961 with three Thunderbird
models – the Sports Roadster, the convertible and hardtop, each in one of five
colors. In December 1962 F & F suffered another disastrous fire, this one
at the Sachs Street facility which Fire Department investigators determined was
caused by a carelessly discarded cigarette by one of the company’s twenty-five
employees. The company lost a majority
of its inventory and suffered production delays as it took four months to
rebuild the facility.
1966 F & F produced three Mustang models for Post cereals.
The convertible, hardtop, and GT 2+2 fastback were offered in just three colors
- Springtime Yellow, Arcadian Blue, and Signal Flare Red. F & F completed
its automobile manufacturing in 1967 with the Mercury Cougar in one of six
colors with black instead of white wheels.
For 1969, Post Cereals switched suppliers - from F & F to the
John V. Zimmerman Company of St. Louis, Missouri. “JVZ” built four models of Mercury cars - the
Cougar Hardtop, Cyclone CJ Fastback, Maurader X-100 Sportsroof and Marquis
4-Door Sedan - in six different colors with black one-piece wheels and axles.
In 1973 Otto Fiedler suffered a massive heart attack while
on vacation in Germany and became the eleventh person in the world to receive a
battery powered heart pacemaker which lasted for five years before Otto
underwent a replacement procedure.
John Fiedler passed away in 1983 at age 82 which left Otto
solely in control of F & F. In June
1985 as the company approached being sold, F& F suffered another fire at Sachs
Street, which destroyed the warehouse and finishing side of the facility.
The Dayton Fire Department determined defective wring as the
cause of the fire. After the facility
was again rebuilt, Otto sold the business and retired in 1987 to his home in suburban
Kettering then passed away in 1989 at age 69.
In 2020, more than fifty years after the last car shipped, the
F & F Mold and Die Works building still stands at 103 Sachs Street in
Dayton Ohio and F & F cars and trucks have an active collector community.
