TruModel Hoist and Derrick. Noble Mfg Company

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  • April 26, 2024 at 1:46 am #11844
    John Secord
    Participant

    I am starting this thread to gather knowledge about the Noble Manufacturihg Company and the hoist and Derrick that he designed, built and marketed until A.C. Gilbert took over the product. I know that Mr. Noble was a mechanical engineer who built the hoist and Derrick for his son. It is far and away the finest quality toy that I have ever seen. I have a reproduction copy of the TruModel fourteen page brochure. I will post photos of it. I hope that someone knows more details about the company and a parts list would be helpful. I do look forward to this thread growing.

    April 27, 2024 at 6:24 pm #11846
    Greg Briggs
    Participant

    Looking forward to the pics. The quality of TruModel is amazing.

    May 15, 2024 at 10:11 pm #11857
    John Secord
    Participant

    Since starting this thread, I bought several AC Gilbert booklets that had some info on TruModel. One is a 1927 Kelmet Catalog that shows most of the pages from the TruModel booklet that I have had for years. It looks like Kelmet had an agreement with TruModel to sell the hoist, the Derrick and the trolley unchanged from the TruModel Toys. I am guessing the later, AC Gilbert bought out Kelmet and TruModel. Both products were too costly for his business plan. He did include the tipping bucket and the clamshell from TruMode and the fenders, hood and steering from Kelmet. He had the hoist redesigned to use Erector parts and cost a great deal less. He dropped the Kelmet name, but used the TruModel name for the Erector sets that were sold through Sears and Roebuck. With the onset of the depression in 1929, he dropped about a hundred items in the various sets to reduce costs. He also stopped using the TruModel name.
    That is the story as I have been able to piece it together. I would be grateful to anyone that can correct any errors in that story. Thank you.

    • This reply was modified 3 days, 15 hours ago by John Secord.
    May 16, 2024 at 10:41 pm #11859
    Greg Briggs
    Participant

    As information comes in it looks like Trumodel was part of Gilbert’s back room family for a decade. When the decision was made to dissolve it for what ever reason many of the models were modified and did morph into reg. Erector items in the larger sets.

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