Charles Martin Crandall

By 1866, Crandall moved the company to Montrose, Pennsylvania and was into the manufacturing of croquet sets. He experimented with fastening the corners of boxes by using grooves and tongues instead of nailing. As his sons were convalescing from scarlet fever, he took some pieces home and his children built various structures such as a house, bridge and fence from them. His children's physician saw the blocks and ordered some. As Crandall would later say, this "was the first sale of the famous Crandall's Building Blocks."[2] In order to sell the blocks, rather than go to jobbers or dealers, Crandall went to P. T. Barnum. Mr. Barnum was so impressed that he gave them a place in his museum for several weeks.[3] Sales of that product amounted to about $10,000 ($209,381 today).[4] The following year sales tripled. Later, Crandall entered into a contract with Orange Judd and Company naming them sales agents for his blocks.

Other block designs included:

• Masquerade Blocks, which advertised 300 different pictures
• Expression Blocks, decades later to be known as "Changeable Charlie" ability to alter expressions by turning one or more blocks over
• Sectional Blocks, each block containing a part of a letter and all blocks would display the alphabet when completed
• Illuminated Pictorial Alphabet, touted as waterproof, non-toxic and durable
• Noah's Dominoes, domino markings on one side with half an animal printed on paper and pasted on the other side

An 1874 advertisement of Crandall's acrobats

By adopting from his interlocking blocks, Crandall hit upon the idea of joining body parts such as arms and legs and fitting them onto horses or trapezes. The American Agriculturist (owned by Orange Judd and Co.) in its November 1874 issue advertised "The manufacturers are now making and selling 1500 boxes a day".[5] By 1875, Crandall's factory building had grown to three stories. Crandall's Menagerie toy had a similar concept which incorporated a zebra, camel, giraffe, toucan and monkey holding a US flag all atop an elephant.

In 1885, financed by industrialist Moses Lyman, Crandall moved to Waverly, New York and started the Waverly Toy Works. The factory in Montrose then was managed by Fred W. Crandall, one of Charles' sons. The factory burned in August 1886 and was relocated in January 1887 to Elkland, Pennsylvania where it was reported to have a staff from between sixty and seven-five employees.[6] Although Lyman was listed as proprietor and Crandall as general manager of the Waverly firm, Crandall was the genius behind its success as was soon to be seen.

illustration from patent

In early 1889 Crandall invented a new game that swept the country simply called "Pigs in Clover". This was among the first or at least the most popular ball-in-a-maze puzzles in America. The "pigs" were marbles and the solver was required to manipulate them in such a manner as to locate each within a set of concentric circles on the puzzle. As the Waverly Free Press reported, "The toy works are turning out eight thousand of 'Pigs in Clover' a day, and are twenty days behind with their orders".[7] It was reported a philanthropist in Kingston ordered enough puzzles for every inmate in the Ulster county jail and the almshouses of the city and county.[8] The popularity of this invention, like many of Crandall's toys, reached beyond the American borders. An article in the Chatham (NY) Republican stated "The English are squealing because our American 'Pigs in Clover' have been introduced at the Court of St. James. They are declaring them not puzzles at all, only Yankee bu[n]kum."[9] American author, Mark Twain mentions the game in his book, The American Claimant.[10]