of Waddington's Printing Works, Wakefield Road, Leeds, 10. London Offices: 22 Charing Cross Road.
John Waddington was the largest printer in the North of England (1937) and a lithographic printer, and became well known to the public as a publisher of card and board games.
1901 July. Advert. John Waddington, Theatrical Printer, 38 Great Wilson Street, Leeds.[1]
Company founded and initially established as a printing business. The company was founded by John Waddington and Wilson Barratt, under the name Waddingtons.
1915 Works in Elland Road destroyed by fire but moved directly to other premises and continued the business.[2]
1921 March 14th. Incorporated as a private company.
1922 The company started producing games, due to a boom in demand for playing cards during World War I.
1928 Public company. John Waddington Ltd. High-Class Lithographers, Printers and Playing Card Manufacturers. Directors - Sir Frederick Eley (Chairman); Edgar Lupton; Sir Arthur Copson Peake; Ralph Bernard Stephens; Andrew Henry Beatty; Victor Hugo Watson (Managing Director).[3]
1935 Waddingtons became the UK publisher of Parker Brothers' Monopoly, while Parker licensed Waddington's Cluedo.
1937 Makers of the games 'Monopoly', 'Lexicon' and 'Strip Tease'.[4]
1941 the British Secret Service had the company create a special edition of Monopoly for World War II prisoners of war held by the Nazis. Hidden inside these games were maps, compasses, real money and other objects useful for escaping. They were distributed to prisoners by the International Red Cross.
1947 Listed Exhibitor - British Industries Fair. Printing by Lithography, Photo-Offset Lithography, Letter-press, Photogravure. Makers of Playing Cards, Cartons for Liquids, Fats, Solids. Advertising Novelties, Jig-Saws, Lexicon, Monopoly and other Games. (Olympia, 1st Floor, Stand No. H.2108) [5]
1957 John Waddington (Sales) Ltd was registered as a subsidiary to carry on business as makers and dealers in playing cards, greetings cards, etc[6]
1957 Formed Plastic Packaging,a JV with Mono Containers to exploit the research done on the impact of plastic materials on food packaging[7]
1960 "Merger of interest" with Valentine and Sons made Valentines a subsidiary of Waddingtons in all but name; this unusual approach was necessary because of the agreement with Norcros that any change of control in Valentines would allow that agreement to be terminated[8]
1961 Printers, lithographers, and manufacturers of playing cards, aluminium foil wraps and games. [9]
1961 Jointly-owned company, Liquid Packaging Ltd, was formed by Metal Box Co, John Waddington Ltd and International Paper Co of New York, to handle the distribution and sale of machines for making and filling Pure-Pak paper containers for liquids[10]
1961 John Waddington acquired one quarter of the share capital of Eagle Transfers; Eagle purchased from Waddingtons its Jenson transfer division[11]
1962 Norman Victor Watson retired as joint-MD of John Waddington and was appointed Chairman.[12]
1963 Acquired the remaining shares in Valentine and Sons[13]
1965 International Paper purchased Waddingtons' share in Liquid Packaging Ltd and sold Waddingtons their shares in the Waddington-International Paper JV which was renamed Plastona (John Waddington) Ltd[14]
1966 Acquired Tower Press (London) Ltd, makers of Tower jig-saw puzzles[15]
1967 Plastona acquired the plastics container business of Monsanto Chemicals which would be integrated with the Leeds production of transparent containers[16]
1980 After making losses on video games, Waddingtons sold Valentines to Hallmark Cards, another greeting card publishers[17]
1983 BPCC acquired control of John Waddington, the Monopoly games group[18]
1994 Acquired Imca, a Netherlands-based folding cartons producer. The company had 3 areas of activity - packaging, specialist printing, and games (which represented 12 percent of turnover)[19]
1995 The John Waddington part of the company, handling games, was bought by Hasbro after the government overturned an Office of Fair Trading recommendation[20]. The packaging part seems to have continued as Waddingtons
2000 Waddington, the packaging group, was acquired by Mansfield a timber company which was an acquisition vehicle for UK Active Value[21]
The Waddington printing business was renamed Communisis, to offer "smart direct mail" but failed to live up to its promise[22]
See Also
Sources of Information
- [1] Wikipedia
- ↑ The Era - Saturday 06 July 1901
- ↑ The Stage - Thursday 08 April 1915
- ↑ Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer - Monday 09 July 1928
- ↑ Daily Express - Tuesday 02 November 1937
- ↑ 1947 British Industries Fair p288
- ↑ The Times, Mar 19, 1957
- ↑ The Times , Dec 19, 1957
- ↑ The Times, Apr 27, 1960
- ↑ 1961 Dun and Bradstreet KBE
- ↑ The Times, Jan 10, 1961
- ↑ The Times, Jun 26, 1961
- ↑ Halifax Evening Courier - Wednesday 18 September 1963
- ↑ The Times, May 15, 1963
- ↑ The Times, Feb 08, 1965
- ↑ The Times, Apr 22, 1966
- ↑ The Times, May 31, 1967
- ↑ The Times, Sep 24, 1980
- ↑ Wolverhampton Express and Star 01 August 1983
- ↑ The Times (London, England), Wednesday, July 13, 1994
- ↑ The Times March 01, 1995
- ↑ The Times, December 08, 1999
- ↑ The Times October 06, 2004