Talking about that Christmas years ago got me thinking about the Marx toy company. After being around since the 1920's they went out of business in 1978. Their last successful toy was the "Big Wheel". They were also the makers of the original Rock-em Sock-em robots.

Anyhow, I did some searches of their play sets and ended up at EBay. It appears that the castles sets were pretty common and have even been reproduced, and don't bring extraordinarily high collector prices.

All of the sets look pretty crappy by today's standards since all the figures were molded in single colors of plastic like red or yellow much like the ubiquitous green army men. Somehow these toys looked so much better when I was 8 years old.

However, the military academy set that I was so unhappy with, is actually very rare and very collectible.

I found only one example for sale and it consisted of nothing but the buildings. There were no figures, cannons, or box, and the bidding was already at almost $300. There is no telling what complete set with box and all figures might be worth.

Here's a picture:



In retrospect, it appears that I should have been happy about the set I got and hung on to it. Go figure.

Cheers