Quartet game

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From the Philips Koerier of Saturday 9 March 1968

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Philiform Post 1968 Germany

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In the Philips 100-year book there is follow information:

In 1968 appears for children age 8 years and higher a wide assortiment of buildingblocks and contruction-elements of a high quality plastic.

HIG
- International: Product groups ( HIG - Head Industrial Groups)
The HIG Elcoma delivered electrical components to the NO's

NO
- Nationale Organisations (NO)
There were 64 NO's.
Every country had his own laws, so every country build his ows televisions.

RGT
- Radio Grammaphon Television (RGT)

RGT was situated on the industrial-site Strijp (in Eindhoven):

The building SBP-development:

SL- quality-care.
De commercial department was situated in a wooden temporary-building.
This department was head of ERA:

ERA
- Educative Recreational Artikel (ERA)
The Educative Recreational Artikel (ERA) is responsible of: )
- communications
- development
- proces quality =lifespan, measurements and packaging
How many in one box, soon the people of Philips were too expensive for packaging, so it was outsourced.
Soon there are ERA-departments in other countries;

France:
hovercraft RC
orgen with punch card (cards to be made self)

bandrecorder

Italy:
Ferrari car RC

Germany:
Airplains RC

Arise

EE
For Philips in The Netherlands the department Elonco sold electrical components with scemes (Electronical Building-Boxes). It had his own lab and delivered also to other NO's.
With the introduction of semi-conductors (these were safer as tube amps),the market expanded to lower ages. So they made Electronical Building-Boxes for the youth “Pionier”, and later the EE-boxes. The prosperity was noticed by the HIG for consuments RGT, and the products were promoted internationaly. Soon they developed products in combination with the Electrical Engineer EE-boxes.

Later the EE-boxes activity was taken over by Marklin in Furth in Germany.
This company delivered some years the EE-boxes to Philips Netherlands Elonco. In +/- 1986 Philips pulled back out of the Elektronic Hobbyactivities. The interest of the youth for computers was certainly debet on this.

ME
With the Mechanical Engineer ME buildingsystem technical things could be made.
In the ME-boxes there were plastic parts, sheets and strips, and parts of metal (like axes, clips, and many spare parts. Examples that could be build; clocks, cars, mills, cranes, etc. For powering there were motors driven on air, electric, water or airpressure.

Philiform
ME and EE are for older kids, so for the young kids there was developped Philiform.
The development of the ME started in 1965, and the target group was too small. So to make the target group younger Philiform was developped. ME and Philform could be used with each other because lots of metal parts are the same. ME was used to build spacy, and Philiform was used to build compact.
With this decision tere was made wanted or not-wanted competition with Lego was wrong. Philiform uses of pin-hole-connections, and Lego uses suspension of walls.
When made with the Philiform-stones connections with 3 or more links, it was hard to disconnect the stones. Later they introduced a crowbar, perhaps too late. later they developped a kind of "DUPLO"-blocks, but these were not taken into production. It was found difficult to build most sets, building-instructions were little complicated. Soon profit stayed out, and activities were stopped.
One of four new-introduced-products is a success, so it's important to have a lots of development in stock.
The machines were sold to the english factory Mettoy Playcraft Ltd. They build and sold under own brand some more years Philiform-boxes.

See box 330, this box is same as 106 but without Philips-logo.

Commercial side
The RGT had well-oiled sales-channels to radio-television-stores. Problem of the ERA-department: how to sell? There were no links to the toy-store. The sales-department stood not 100% behind the products, the Philiform-project is also stranded because of missing sales-channels.
If the color-tv was introduced 5 years later, than there was put lots of money in the Philform-project.
The radio-television-store was not the ideal place to sell Philiform, and because of a price-war in the radio-television-branche, the toy-stores found Philips not reliable. In the toy-stores they were used to big margins, and protection of sale-prices.

Around 1967 there was a truck and trailer driving around (paris, London, etc) to show Philiform-models. Also were given Philiform-boxes to families who had Lego, and monitor the responses. The parants were enthausiastic (they found Lego childish) Also the idea behind Philiform is to introduce the brand Philips to the young people.
They attended Spielwarenmesse in Neurenberg 1966/67 and other expo's to make the people aware of the brand Philiform. The start for Philiform went well in Germany, England, The Netherland and the scandic-countries. In other countries the start went not well. All went well, even Lego was beginning to feel litte affraid.

Process quality
There were lots of molds needed to make the stones. In 1969 there should be made big factory in Lommel for producing stones. The management was saddled with lots of factories:
- Draka was bought, under Draka there was a mattress-factory
- in USA there was bought a television-factory, with a piano-factory attatched
All went too wide, too much activities, so all not-core-activities were stopped. The specialists needed for the molds were needed for color-tv's. Color-tv's were new in 1969. The company who made molds was the german company Friedrichs & Rath GmbH. They are situated near Hannover (Extertal). This company could produce the Philiform-stones with the wanted accuracy.
The ME-plastic parts were produced in Eindhoven.
Also a challange were the colors, is for instance the color yellow the same yellow in 20 years?. This is not important for a television. Also important measurements in long term, how many stones are produced with a mold. At the process, when the plastic cools, there must be given extra pressure, because plastic shrinks a litte when cooled. Beste way is to squirt (fill the mold) asymetrical, vortices are good for binding the melted plastic in the molds. Wenn a long mold is used, and is filled from both sides, the binding in the middle is not good. Below an example of the sunken cheeks in the first stones produced in Eindhoven, where lots of plastic is used, the cheeks sink.

Also the stones were covered with small layer of silver, to make sure the stones conduct electricity.

These text is made possible thanks to input of the follow men:
Gerard Johannes Wegter, 9 april 2008
Started1 January 1970 at ISA. Computers era was comming, and Philips needed computer specialists.
Harry Lefferts, March 2005
Henk Peels, 8 December 2004 (As a reaction to the artikel below from "Eindhovens dagblad".
The last years of Philiform 1967-1970, I was the youngest engineer.

Philiform. De eerlijkheid gebiedt me te zeggen dat ik er nog nooit van had gehoord. Toch behoorde ik destijds tot de door Philips beoogde doelgroep. Lego, dat kenden we wel. Maar voor die blokjes, waarmee je destijds niet veel verder kwam dan wat simpele huisjes, haalde deze toenmalige blaag van tien zijn neus op. Lego? Puh! Dat was voor kleine kinderen. Nee, bovenaan mijn verlanglijstje prijkte een stoere doos van Fishertechnik, 200 als ik me niet vergis. De mogelijkheden van dit Duitse, dus degelijke constructie speelgoed waren onbegrensd. Zelfontworpen achtbanen en draaimolens waren favoriet, liefst aangedreven met het bijbehorende elektromotortje.

Nog zie ik me in de ochtend van 6 december liggen op de grond, met een haastig uit zijn verpakking gerukte, half aangevreten chocoladeletter, veel marsepein en een kop warme chocolademelk binnen handbereik. Maar... we zouden het over Philiform hebben. De Philips bouwsteentjes onder deze naam haalden onlangs de kolommen van deze krant. Oma Keijzers uit Eindhoven was voor haar kleinkind Tim van twee naarstig op zoek naar mensen die nog wat van het spul hebben liggen. Die oproep heeft succes gehad. "Zeven reacties kreeg ik", zegt Keizers verheugd. "Allemaal van mensen die vroeger bij Philips werkten." Iemand die ook nog heel wat Philiform op zijn zolder heeft liggen, maar het niet weg doet, is Marco Meulendijks uit Mierlo-Hout. Een kloeke kist vol heeft hij. Nou is dat bepaald niet het enige Philips-product waar we op zijn zolder tegenaan lopen. Meulendijks blijkt er zijn eigen privé-museumpje op na te houden. Van gloeilampen tot de allereerste Philips cd-speler, van bakelieten schakelaars tot unieke, want in een kleine oplage gemaakt, jubileum-cassettebandjes én de-énige, ooit door Philips gemaakte fotocamera.

Nog meer zoet jeugdsentiment duikt op: in de collectie is ook het ronde Philips pickupje met luidspreker in transparante kap - destijds verkrijgbaar in rood en blauw - opgenomen. De een na de andere Beatlesplaat draaide ik hier op grijs. Maar... we zouden het over Philiform hebben. "Het was destijds de tegenhanger van Lego", zo weet Meulendijks. "Hartstikke leuk spul, dat Philiform. Je kon er echt van alles mee maken, treinen, motoren... Onze jongens hebben er nog veel plezier van gehad." Veel achtergrondinformatie is er niet te vinden over de plastic blokjes. Meulendijks koestert zijn exemplaar van Philips Honderd 'mijn bijbel', een lijvig boek dat uitkwam bij het eeuwfeest van de Eindhovense onderneming. Welgeteld één alinea over het speelgoed is er in opgenomen. "Ik heb het idee dat het geen groot succes was", zegt Meulendijks voorzichtig. "Ik heb ooit de ontwikkelaar gesproken. Hij werd nog net niet kwaad toen ik suggereerde dat Philiform geflopt was. "Het was een fiasco" erkent B Gordeijns, vrijwilliger bij het Philips Museum op industrieterrein De Hurk, waar ook wat van het speelgoed te zien is. "Het probleem was: het spul was niet vormvast. Na een paar keer in elkaar klikken viel het uiteen en kreeg je het niet meer in elkaar. Hier in onze vitrine staat een treinwagonnetje, dat ik met lijm in elkaar gezet heb. Ik zou er nu geen kinderen meer mee laten spelen; het is meer geschikt voor de verzamelaar.

"Wat ooit de overweging was van Philips om 'in het speelgoed' te gaan, weet Gordeijns niet. "Philips maakte al veel kunststof huishoudelijke spullen, schakelaars, stopcontacten... ja, zelfs wc-zittingen. Wellicht wilde men een graantje meepikken van het succes van Lego", suggereert zijn collega A, Cramwinkel. "Maar de concurrentie van datzelfde Lego bleek te groot. Zonde, want het was heel aardig spul, dat ook best populair was. En echt niet alleen bij de medewerkers van Philips." De interesse voor Philiform blijkt zelfs tot over de landsgrenzen te reiken. De in Duitsland woonachtige verzamelaar Johan Voskamp besloot tot het opzetten van een eigen website, toen hij niks over het speelgoed kon vinden. Overigens is Voskamp een heel andere mening over de plastic bouwsteentjes toegedaan: "De kwaliteit was prima. Zoals wel meer van Philips." Het Philips Museum is te vinden op het adres Looyenbeemd 14, gebouw BY.
Zie ook de websites www.philiform.com. en www.philipsmuseumeindhoven.nl

fabeltjeskrant puzzle:

presentation boxes

001 animals:
002 puppet and car:
003 red truck: