December 4, 2023 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, for nearly 60 years, Hess trucks have brought smiles to children, and adults, up and down the East Coast. They were an energy entrepreneur's gift to children that he wished he could have gotten growing up. Hear the story from both a Hess Toy Truck Director, Justin Mayer, and a superfan, Mike Roberto.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
And we're back with our American stories. For nearly sixty years,
Hess Trucks have brought smiles to children and adults up
and down the East Coast. Today we bring you the
story behind this iconic brand, both from the Hess Toy
Truck director and a super fan. Here's Robbie with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
For many families across the country, the holiday season doesn't
start until they hear the Hes jingle come across the airwaves.
These green and white toy trucks and race cars and
spaceships have been found underneath Christmas trees since nineteen sixty four.
But where did this all start? Here's Justin Meyer, director
of Brand Marketing and general manager of Hess Toy Trucks,
(00:58):
to tell us more.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I have to start at the very beginning of where
the legacy is, and that is really with Leon Hess,
who is the Heuse Corporation founder. Before he started the company,
his family emigrated here in the early nineteen hundreds. He
was born in nineteen fourteen. His father was originally a butcher,
(01:21):
but when he came here to the States, he actually got.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Into the cold delivery business.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
And as everybody knows, as you get into the twenties
and the thirties, times were a little tough here in
America and people are.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Doing what they can to make ends meet.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
That business went bankrupt, and Leon Hass was working for
his father at the time. So here we are in
the Great Depression. The family is not doing well, to
be frank. But in nineteen thirty three, when his family's
business goes bankrupt, he essentially reorganizes it and turns it
from a coal business into a oil delivery business. He
(02:01):
buys a nineteen twenty six Chevy six hundred and fifteen
gallon tanker truck, which is very iconic and people will
recognize it because it's a toy that we've produced since
then and replicated that and the original one sits in
our corporate offices today. But he reorganizes the assets of
his father's bankrupt business and he starts this house corporation,
(02:22):
which is really the start in nineteen thirty three of
hes today. Over the next couple of years, he grows
his fleet to a handful of fueld delivery trucks and
he's going door to door seven days a week, starting
in perth Amboy, New Jersey.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Then World War II.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Comes Leon and List and he actually ends up working
for General Patton as a fuel delivery logistics expert. But
he comes back from the war with all of this
extra learning about fuel supply and how to move in logistics,
and he says, you know, we can do more than
just deliver fuel oil. So he starts expanding the fleet
(03:00):
of fuel delivery, but he also builds his first refinery
so that way he can have different types of fuel
that he's delivering with all of his truck fleets. And
then he says, oh, well, we can make all these
different types of fuel, including gasoline. Why am I just
selling that to other people? I can sell direct to
customers if I build gas stations, right, So he's so entrepreneurial.
(03:21):
The entrepreneurial was spirit right, the idea that I can
do anything against the American dream. I can build it
from scratch, and he does so. About nineteen sixty the
first Hess gas station.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Is built.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Now I say that because many of your listeners may
not never have heard of a Hess gas station. But
what they will recognize around this time, because he was
so successful with his fuel oil delivery business and then
his refinery and then his gas stations, is he actually
becomes wealthy enough to become a partial owner and what
ultimately will become the New York Jets, the NFL football team.
(03:55):
By nineteen sixty three, he's got a bunch of gas
stations in New Jersey. He's a partial owner of the Titans,
which become the New York Jets, which, by the way,
they're green and white for a reason. And the history
of the hes toy truck actually starts at a Jet game.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
The story goes.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
That Leon has his out of Jets game with a
friend of his longtime friend that he grew up with
from the neighborhood in Perth and boy who happened to
be in the toy business. Marx Toys was a Virginia
based toy manufacturer, very popular in the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
They're no longer in business today.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
But apparently during the conversation of the game, hey, Leon, have
you ever thought about offering something other than guess at
your gas stations? You know, we can make a really
cool toy that would be really interesting and so then
you can start seeing the wheels turn with Leon, he goes, well,
one of the things that always stuck with him as
a kid. As he later recounted, the story was that
(04:55):
during the Great Depression, you know, he didn't have at
the holiday times. He saw others didn't have at the
holiday times, so he wanted a toy. Then I just was, Oh,
I can sell this at my gas station. It was
something special and different and unique to hass. It was
going to be of quality that nobody could match.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
It was going to be.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Innovative, and above all else, besides the quality innovat it was.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Going to be affordable.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
And so in nineteen sixty four, the HES toy truck
hits the market for the first time.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
And what is it. It's an oil tanker.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
So it's a truck with one of those long oil tankers.
You would see them deliver fuel oil directly into the
gas stations. And the actual toy itself was really innovative
in a couple of ways. One it had batteries included,
which before that time didn't exist. People weren't putting batteries
in the toys. So one, from an affordability standpoint, you
didn't have to go out and buy extra batteries.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
And two, it was really easy to give because the
minute you could open it, the kids could play with it.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Now it also had working lights, very few toys back
then actually had electronics. If you could think back to
the early nineteen sixties, there wasn't like a lot of
electronics in any toy vehicles, very few in fact. And
we also have the ability to fill up water into
the tank and a hose that could empty the water
out of it, so it was really something special. Our
history all says that the first retail price is a
dollar twenty nine. Now others will say, you know, we
(06:10):
can't we actually can't fight anything other than signs that'
say a dollar thirty nine as the prayers.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Do we know that for sure?
Speaker 3 (06:16):
So there's all speculation about where the one twenty nine
comes from. But let's just call it dollar thirty to
make it easy. But that was the first, you know,
the first hes toy truck back in nineteen sixty four.
And because it was such a cool toy and it
was so affordable, it sold out really fast, and so
they said, wow, this is it's great, Thita, we should
(06:37):
do this again next year. So they did it again
next year. Wow, sold out even faster, and we should,
we should, you know, we should. Let's figure out what
else we can do here. Now where do we go
with this thing, and so what happened was it really
created this this you think about the cabbage patch kid
type craziness in the nineteen eighties, well has predated that
quite a long time because you couldn't go to Toys
(07:00):
US or today Walmart, Target or Amazon or whatever. The
only way that you could get the most popular toy
is to stand in line at a gas station. They
would go out and sale on Thanksgiving Day, and so
it became this really interesting holiday tradition. You know, mom
would get up and start the turkey, and Dad would
get up, you know, go to the gas station, stand
(07:22):
in line with his coffee and he could be out
there a couple of hours waiting in line that goes
wrapped around the block to get two hast trucks cash
only and if you wanted more, back of the line
start again.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
And it became this this.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Tradition where family started to look forward to this, and
people would meet other families in line and they would
get to know these people and every year they would
make a tradition out of getting up and sometimes when
the kids were old enough, they would join in on
this and they would go out with dad as like
this cool tradition like some people go to the Basy's parade,
other people were going to the best locations and just
(07:58):
hanging out for a couple of hours. So they got
the trucks and they would sell out very fast, and
so people would line up and for the fear of
not wanting to miss out. And what was really also
pretty cool about it is for years and years and
years it was all in Thanksgiving. But it got to
the point where the police effectively needed to be involved
(08:20):
to mitigate the traffic issues around the stations. And so
a call from the governor basically saying, look, look, look, Leanna,
please can we do this not on a holiday, because like,
we really don't want to have all of our officers
out there.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
It's not fair. They want to be home.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And we said, yes, of course we can accommodate that,
and so we ended up shifting the on sale date
off of the traditional Thanksgiving day out of understanding of
the issues that we were creating with all the traffic
jams and are already very busy travel holiday holiday time.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
But it became this.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Spark for this frantic collectibility of these toy trucks, and
because they were hard to get like anything else, that
it became really val in the resale market.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
And you've been listening to Justin Meyer, director of brand
Marketing and general manager of Hesse Toy Truck. And when
we come back more of the story of Hesse Toy
Trucks here on our American Stories. And we're back with
(09:40):
our American stories and the story of Hesse Toy Trucks
the East Coast holiday phenomenon that is now spread across
the country. When we last left off, we heard how
folks would line up around the block to buy a
toy truck. I did that myself with my brothers and
at all places at a gas station, and there was
not a hess station in our town. We had to
(10:02):
go to the next town to do it and walk there.
Back to Justin Mayer, director of Brand Marketing and general
manager of Hestoy Truck with the rest of the story.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
So early on, the goal of the Hestoy Truck was
to produce a very realistic vehicle that was something that
existed in the real Hasse business. So the example, the
first one of that oil tanker that would am I
say oil tanker, I mean one that drives on the road.
And that's important clarification. I'll get to that in a second.
(10:37):
Then you would drive to the gas station and then
the fuel jumps into the big containers underground. So that
was the first one, and shortly after that we did
the actual ocean freight oil carrier, right tanker as they
call it. It was the Voyager, which was really a
large vessel, an oil vessel carrier carrying boat vessel that
HES did own, and that was that I was highly
(11:00):
successful nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
So it was like this awesome mab was like eighteen
inches long.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
It was ginormous, highly detailed, had lights, really cool. In fact,
if you can get your hands out one of those
today they go for like four thousand dollars, so really
you know, a collector's piece today. But after that, they
kept on with other things that hasted, ranging from fire
(11:25):
trucks and people like well, well any fire trucks, Well
at refinery, it's really important to have emergency services vehicles,
so we had fire trucks. We had box trucks that
we would use that would have a little drum barrels
of oil that would be used for transportation. So they
were very popular for a number of years. Different box
trucks and things of that nature. All the way really
up until the nineteen late nineteen eighties, and in the
(11:47):
late nineteen eighties they said, you know, kids are sort
of they love these toys, they love to play with them.
We shild really do something that's a little bit more
fun to play with. You know, we know that the
collectors love, like, yes, it's a Hess product, but this
is made for kids, the kids toys. So let's let's
do some some cooler things, some fun things. And we
started introducing products that really had nothing to do with
the Hess traditional business of you know, running gas stations
(12:11):
and refineries and drilling for oil and natural gas and.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
All of that. And so.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
You started seeing, you know, the whole racing theme. A
lot of race cars came in the years after that,
and then we started pushing the boundaries further and you
ended up with all right, well, now we're actually giving
you one toy. Now we're going to give you two toys.
So so here's a truck and race car. And so
you started seeing all of this sort of innovation and product,
but again, only one toy was released a year, and
(12:39):
so you didn't know what it was going to be.
It was top secrets till it came out on tal
and with this ever expanding type of vehicle. What we
started seeing was that, you know, on Christmas morning, people
weren't just playing with the gift they got that year.
They would go out dig up all the old ones
out of their basement or take them out of the
closet and use them either as holiday decoration because they
(13:03):
all lit up and they look beautiful under the Christmas
tree or on the mantle. But then they would play
with all of their collection and create this amazing imaginary
play world of Hess And because well now I have
a fire talk, and I have a tanker, and I
have a race car, and I have a helicopter and
I have a station. All of a sudden it becomes
just a world of play. And so folks think about, oh, well, Lego,
(13:25):
you can play within so many different ways and that's.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Why you know it's got staying power.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Well that's really true of the Hess truck fleet too,
because there's so many different ways to create new play
scenarios with it. And as your collection grows, so does
who you play with. And I think that's an important
point too, because what we found was the trucks not
only were they just fun to play with. But they
(13:49):
became a very emotional bond between the gift recipient and
the gift giver. Somebody had to care enough to wake
up on Thanksgiving morning and stay in line in the
freezing cold in some parts of the country, right and
make sure they got you that hash truck before it
sold out. And it became a tradition. So every year,
you know, people will come up to me and say, oh,
(14:10):
I used to get it as a kid, and the
next line is always it was my uncle who or
my aunt whatever. It's not just the toy, it's who
gave me the toy. And that's something that's really unique.
And the tradition of that continues today where people are
always like, well, you know, my dad passed now, but
now I carry on the tradition for my kids and
(14:31):
their kids, and that handing off of the tradition, and
it sometimes we hear fights within a family over who
gets to be the one that gives the has toy
trucks when the older generation has passed on. Because it's
been almost sixty years and we see that that transition.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
It's one thing to talk about customer loyalty and the
impact test trucks have had on generations. But it's another
thing to hear from those people themselves. Here's Mike Roberto,
author of the hes Truck Encyclopedia.
Speaker 5 (15:00):
Here's how my story starts. It's nineteen seventy seven. I'm
five years old. I believe it was like a Wednesday night.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
It was a school night.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
I remember that I was going to probably kindergarten at
the time, right, And my dad didn't get home till
about five thirty six o'clock. And I remember my mom
telling me something about wait until like your dad gets home,
but in the good way, not the oh, wait until
your dad gets home, you know. And I remember it
was cold and dark, and we lived in the Bronx
at the time in New York. I remember my dad
(15:31):
let me sit in the front seat, okay, which was,
you know, a big thing for a little kid. And
I remember and he and he took me to he
took me to the hest station to get a toy truck, right.
And what was interesting is we had a family mechanic.
His name was Rocco. And I remember, you know, whenever
(15:51):
we brought the cars to him, because my mom had
a car and my dad had a car, and I
remember everything there was all dirty and greasy and grimy.
You know, it's it's a mechanics garage, right, And when
we got to the station, you know, everything was just
lit up so white and clean and pretty. And I
remember looking asking my dad, you know, how how could
(16:13):
they be so so all like white and clean? I mean,
to me, it looked like I was in heaven, right,
And my dad had explained to me that he well,
he said that, you know, they don't fix cars here,
they just sell gas. So that's how it can, you know,
be all white and clean. And I remember, as a
five year old, it blew my mind. I understood the reference,
(16:37):
like it made sense to me, you know, and I
felt I felt like a big kid for that, you know,
And I remember being I remember that moment more than
getting the physical truck at the station. But I do
remember we went inside and there was a guy with
a metal desk, and you know, they had the trucks
inside what they call the fish bowl or the fish tank.
(16:58):
So and I remember with a toy of course, and
so not too long after that, uh, it's my dad
had he became terminal. He had a form of muscular dystrophe. Anyway,
(17:19):
That memory went on to become only one of three
positive memories that I have of my dad before he
became sick. And you know, years later, not too long
after his passing, I remember driving in Long Island because
(17:40):
at this point we lived in Queens and naturally there
wasn't many hestations around where we lived. But every time
I drove past a hestation, you know, going to Long Island,
I always thought of my dad, you know, and I
was like, oh, you know, it was it was. It
was that positive neural association.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
The Hess fandom truly is something amazing. It includes everyone
from little boys from the Bronx to Olympic gold medallists
and it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Like every year I hear of other people who are
fans of the hesttruck and have some relation to the Heststruck.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
I don't know, two or three years ago, we.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Sold out really early, and all of a sudden, I
get like this direct DM from Michael Phelps. I'm like,
this has to be like a joke, right, sure enough,
Now he waited too long and we sold out, and
he's like, I got three boys, I've got my whole
He grew up in Baltimore on that line. If I got,
I gotta get these things.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
What do I do? I'm like, may we sold out?
Yeah yeah, bye bye fast.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
But it's funny we hear those kinds of stories that
we get reached out by people all the time that
have sean connection to that, a lot of celebrities, and
so it's just great. It's a great tradition that lives
on and so many people are part of it that
you don't even realize it. But it really touches my
heart every year when I get you know, every day
I wake up to a new set of emails or videos.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Well, I gave it for Hanka.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Last night, and so it's like I get all these
oh look, here's the video of my kid opening it.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
They all just love it, and it's really it's heartwarming,
it's heart working.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
And a special thanks to Robbie on the production of
that piece. What a delight, And a special thanks to
Justin Mayer from Hess Toy Truck. And also a special
thanks to Mike Roberto Fandom defined right there, folks, The
Hess Truck Encyclopedia is his contribution to this world that
I know in so many East Coast people grew up
(19:35):
with what I did not know is the story of
Leon Hess and his father. A Lithuanian Jew comes to
this country, starts a cold delivery company, goes into bankruptcy.
His son takes up the mantle, turns it into a
oil delivery company, a mini empire. By the way, he
learned a lot of what he needed to learn from
General Patton. What a beautiful and big and bold story
(19:57):
about a man his dream and how his family kept
did going. The story of the hes Toy Truck. Here
on our American stories
And we're back with our American stories. For nearly sixty years,
Hess Trucks have brought smiles to children and adults up
and down the East Coast. Today we bring you the
story behind this iconic brand, both from the Hess Toy
Truck director and a super fan. Here's Robbie with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
For many families across the country, the holiday season doesn't
start until they hear the Hes jingle come across the airwaves.
These green and white toy trucks and race cars and
spaceships have been found underneath Christmas trees since nineteen sixty four.
But where did this all start? Here's Justin Meyer, director
of Brand Marketing and general manager of Hess Toy Trucks,
(00:58):
to tell us more.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I have to start at the very beginning of where
the legacy is, and that is really with Leon Hess,
who is the Heuse Corporation founder. Before he started the company,
his family emigrated here in the early nineteen hundreds. He
was born in nineteen fourteen. His father was originally a butcher,
(01:21):
but when he came here to the States, he actually got.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Into the cold delivery business.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
And as everybody knows, as you get into the twenties
and the thirties, times were a little tough here in
America and people are.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Doing what they can to make ends meet.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
That business went bankrupt, and Leon Hass was working for
his father at the time. So here we are in
the Great Depression. The family is not doing well, to
be frank. But in nineteen thirty three, when his family's
business goes bankrupt, he essentially reorganizes it and turns it
from a coal business into a oil delivery business. He
(02:01):
buys a nineteen twenty six Chevy six hundred and fifteen
gallon tanker truck, which is very iconic and people will
recognize it because it's a toy that we've produced since
then and replicated that and the original one sits in
our corporate offices today. But he reorganizes the assets of
his father's bankrupt business and he starts this house corporation,
(02:22):
which is really the start in nineteen thirty three of
hes today. Over the next couple of years, he grows
his fleet to a handful of fueld delivery trucks and
he's going door to door seven days a week, starting
in perth Amboy, New Jersey.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Then World War II.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Comes Leon and List and he actually ends up working
for General Patton as a fuel delivery logistics expert. But
he comes back from the war with all of this
extra learning about fuel supply and how to move in logistics,
and he says, you know, we can do more than
just deliver fuel oil. So he starts expanding the fleet
(03:00):
of fuel delivery, but he also builds his first refinery
so that way he can have different types of fuel
that he's delivering with all of his truck fleets. And
then he says, oh, well, we can make all these
different types of fuel, including gasoline. Why am I just
selling that to other people? I can sell direct to
customers if I build gas stations, right, So he's so entrepreneurial.
(03:21):
The entrepreneurial was spirit right, the idea that I can
do anything against the American dream. I can build it
from scratch, and he does so. About nineteen sixty the
first Hess gas station.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Is built.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Now I say that because many of your listeners may
not never have heard of a Hess gas station. But
what they will recognize around this time, because he was
so successful with his fuel oil delivery business and then
his refinery and then his gas stations, is he actually
becomes wealthy enough to become a partial owner and what
ultimately will become the New York Jets, the NFL football team.
(03:55):
By nineteen sixty three, he's got a bunch of gas
stations in New Jersey. He's a partial owner of the Titans,
which become the New York Jets, which, by the way,
they're green and white for a reason. And the history
of the hes toy truck actually starts at a Jet game.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
The story goes.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
That Leon has his out of Jets game with a
friend of his longtime friend that he grew up with
from the neighborhood in Perth and boy who happened to
be in the toy business. Marx Toys was a Virginia
based toy manufacturer, very popular in the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
They're no longer in business today.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
But apparently during the conversation of the game, hey, Leon, have
you ever thought about offering something other than guess at
your gas stations? You know, we can make a really
cool toy that would be really interesting and so then
you can start seeing the wheels turn with Leon, he goes, well,
one of the things that always stuck with him as
a kid. As he later recounted, the story was that
(04:55):
during the Great Depression, you know, he didn't have at
the holiday times. He saw others didn't have at the
holiday times, so he wanted a toy. Then I just was, Oh,
I can sell this at my gas station. It was
something special and different and unique to hass. It was
going to be of quality that nobody could match.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
It was going to be.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Innovative, and above all else, besides the quality innovat it was.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Going to be affordable.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
And so in nineteen sixty four, the HES toy truck
hits the market for the first time.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
And what is it. It's an oil tanker.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
So it's a truck with one of those long oil tankers.
You would see them deliver fuel oil directly into the
gas stations. And the actual toy itself was really innovative
in a couple of ways. One it had batteries included,
which before that time didn't exist. People weren't putting batteries
in the toys. So one, from an affordability standpoint, you
didn't have to go out and buy extra batteries.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
And two, it was really easy to give because the
minute you could open it, the kids could play with it.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Now it also had working lights, very few toys back
then actually had electronics. If you could think back to
the early nineteen sixties, there wasn't like a lot of
electronics in any toy vehicles, very few in fact. And
we also have the ability to fill up water into
the tank and a hose that could empty the water
out of it, so it was really something special. Our
history all says that the first retail price is a
dollar twenty nine. Now others will say, you know, we
(06:10):
can't we actually can't fight anything other than signs that'
say a dollar thirty nine as the prayers.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Do we know that for sure?
Speaker 3 (06:16):
So there's all speculation about where the one twenty nine
comes from. But let's just call it dollar thirty to
make it easy. But that was the first, you know,
the first hes toy truck back in nineteen sixty four.
And because it was such a cool toy and it
was so affordable, it sold out really fast, and so
they said, wow, this is it's great, Thita, we should
(06:37):
do this again next year. So they did it again
next year. Wow, sold out even faster, and we should,
we should, you know, we should. Let's figure out what
else we can do here. Now where do we go
with this thing, and so what happened was it really
created this this you think about the cabbage patch kid
type craziness in the nineteen eighties, well has predated that
quite a long time because you couldn't go to Toys
(07:00):
US or today Walmart, Target or Amazon or whatever. The
only way that you could get the most popular toy
is to stand in line at a gas station. They
would go out and sale on Thanksgiving Day, and so
it became this really interesting holiday tradition. You know, mom
would get up and start the turkey, and Dad would
get up, you know, go to the gas station, stand
(07:22):
in line with his coffee and he could be out
there a couple of hours waiting in line that goes
wrapped around the block to get two hast trucks cash
only and if you wanted more, back of the line
start again.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
And it became this this.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Tradition where family started to look forward to this, and
people would meet other families in line and they would
get to know these people and every year they would
make a tradition out of getting up and sometimes when
the kids were old enough, they would join in on
this and they would go out with dad as like
this cool tradition like some people go to the Basy's parade,
other people were going to the best locations and just
(07:58):
hanging out for a couple of hours. So they got
the trucks and they would sell out very fast, and
so people would line up and for the fear of
not wanting to miss out. And what was really also
pretty cool about it is for years and years and
years it was all in Thanksgiving. But it got to
the point where the police effectively needed to be involved
(08:20):
to mitigate the traffic issues around the stations. And so
a call from the governor basically saying, look, look, look, Leanna,
please can we do this not on a holiday, because like,
we really don't want to have all of our officers
out there.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
It's not fair. They want to be home.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And we said, yes, of course we can accommodate that,
and so we ended up shifting the on sale date
off of the traditional Thanksgiving day out of understanding of
the issues that we were creating with all the traffic
jams and are already very busy travel holiday holiday time.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
But it became this.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Spark for this frantic collectibility of these toy trucks, and
because they were hard to get like anything else, that
it became really val in the resale market.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
And you've been listening to Justin Meyer, director of brand
Marketing and general manager of Hesse Toy Truck. And when
we come back more of the story of Hesse Toy
Trucks here on our American Stories. And we're back with
(09:40):
our American stories and the story of Hesse Toy Trucks
the East Coast holiday phenomenon that is now spread across
the country. When we last left off, we heard how
folks would line up around the block to buy a
toy truck. I did that myself with my brothers and
at all places at a gas station, and there was
not a hess station in our town. We had to
(10:02):
go to the next town to do it and walk there.
Back to Justin Mayer, director of Brand Marketing and general
manager of Hestoy Truck with the rest of the story.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
So early on, the goal of the Hestoy Truck was
to produce a very realistic vehicle that was something that
existed in the real Hasse business. So the example, the
first one of that oil tanker that would am I
say oil tanker, I mean one that drives on the road.
And that's important clarification. I'll get to that in a second.
(10:37):
Then you would drive to the gas station and then
the fuel jumps into the big containers underground. So that
was the first one, and shortly after that we did
the actual ocean freight oil carrier, right tanker as they
call it. It was the Voyager, which was really a
large vessel, an oil vessel carrier carrying boat vessel that
HES did own, and that was that I was highly
(11:00):
successful nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
So it was like this awesome mab was like eighteen
inches long.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
It was ginormous, highly detailed, had lights, really cool. In fact,
if you can get your hands out one of those
today they go for like four thousand dollars, so really
you know, a collector's piece today. But after that, they
kept on with other things that hasted, ranging from fire
(11:25):
trucks and people like well, well any fire trucks, Well
at refinery, it's really important to have emergency services vehicles,
so we had fire trucks. We had box trucks that
we would use that would have a little drum barrels
of oil that would be used for transportation. So they
were very popular for a number of years. Different box
trucks and things of that nature. All the way really
up until the nineteen late nineteen eighties, and in the
(11:47):
late nineteen eighties they said, you know, kids are sort
of they love these toys, they love to play with them.
We shild really do something that's a little bit more
fun to play with. You know, we know that the
collectors love, like, yes, it's a Hess product, but this
is made for kids, the kids toys. So let's let's
do some some cooler things, some fun things. And we
started introducing products that really had nothing to do with
the Hess traditional business of you know, running gas stations
(12:11):
and refineries and drilling for oil and natural gas and.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
All of that. And so.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
You started seeing, you know, the whole racing theme. A
lot of race cars came in the years after that,
and then we started pushing the boundaries further and you
ended up with all right, well, now we're actually giving
you one toy. Now we're going to give you two toys.
So so here's a truck and race car. And so
you started seeing all of this sort of innovation and product,
but again, only one toy was released a year, and
(12:39):
so you didn't know what it was going to be.
It was top secrets till it came out on tal
and with this ever expanding type of vehicle. What we
started seeing was that, you know, on Christmas morning, people
weren't just playing with the gift they got that year.
They would go out dig up all the old ones
out of their basement or take them out of the
closet and use them either as holiday decoration because they
(13:03):
all lit up and they look beautiful under the Christmas
tree or on the mantle. But then they would play
with all of their collection and create this amazing imaginary
play world of Hess And because well now I have
a fire talk, and I have a tanker, and I
have a race car, and I have a helicopter and
I have a station. All of a sudden it becomes
just a world of play. And so folks think about, oh, well, Lego,
(13:25):
you can play within so many different ways and that's.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Why you know it's got staying power.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Well that's really true of the Hess truck fleet too,
because there's so many different ways to create new play
scenarios with it. And as your collection grows, so does
who you play with. And I think that's an important
point too, because what we found was the trucks not
only were they just fun to play with. But they
(13:49):
became a very emotional bond between the gift recipient and
the gift giver. Somebody had to care enough to wake
up on Thanksgiving morning and stay in line in the
freezing cold in some parts of the country, right and
make sure they got you that hash truck before it
sold out. And it became a tradition. So every year,
you know, people will come up to me and say, oh,
(14:10):
I used to get it as a kid, and the
next line is always it was my uncle who or
my aunt whatever. It's not just the toy, it's who
gave me the toy. And that's something that's really unique.
And the tradition of that continues today where people are
always like, well, you know, my dad passed now, but
now I carry on the tradition for my kids and
(14:31):
their kids, and that handing off of the tradition, and
it sometimes we hear fights within a family over who
gets to be the one that gives the has toy
trucks when the older generation has passed on. Because it's
been almost sixty years and we see that that transition.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
It's one thing to talk about customer loyalty and the
impact test trucks have had on generations. But it's another
thing to hear from those people themselves. Here's Mike Roberto,
author of the hes Truck Encyclopedia.
Speaker 5 (15:00):
Here's how my story starts. It's nineteen seventy seven. I'm
five years old. I believe it was like a Wednesday night.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
It was a school night.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
I remember that I was going to probably kindergarten at
the time, right, And my dad didn't get home till
about five thirty six o'clock. And I remember my mom
telling me something about wait until like your dad gets home,
but in the good way, not the oh, wait until
your dad gets home, you know. And I remember it
was cold and dark, and we lived in the Bronx
at the time in New York. I remember my dad
(15:31):
let me sit in the front seat, okay, which was,
you know, a big thing for a little kid. And
I remember and he and he took me to he
took me to the hest station to get a toy truck, right.
And what was interesting is we had a family mechanic.
His name was Rocco. And I remember, you know, whenever
(15:51):
we brought the cars to him, because my mom had
a car and my dad had a car, and I
remember everything there was all dirty and greasy and grimy.
You know, it's it's a mechanics garage, right, And when
we got to the station, you know, everything was just
lit up so white and clean and pretty. And I
remember looking asking my dad, you know, how how could
(16:13):
they be so so all like white and clean? I mean,
to me, it looked like I was in heaven, right,
And my dad had explained to me that he well,
he said that, you know, they don't fix cars here,
they just sell gas. So that's how it can, you know,
be all white and clean. And I remember, as a
five year old, it blew my mind. I understood the reference,
(16:37):
like it made sense to me, you know, and I
felt I felt like a big kid for that, you know,
And I remember being I remember that moment more than
getting the physical truck at the station. But I do
remember we went inside and there was a guy with
a metal desk, and you know, they had the trucks
inside what they call the fish bowl or the fish tank.
(16:58):
So and I remember with a toy of course, and
so not too long after that, uh, it's my dad
had he became terminal. He had a form of muscular dystrophe. Anyway,
(17:19):
That memory went on to become only one of three
positive memories that I have of my dad before he
became sick. And you know, years later, not too long
after his passing, I remember driving in Long Island because
(17:40):
at this point we lived in Queens and naturally there
wasn't many hestations around where we lived. But every time
I drove past a hestation, you know, going to Long Island,
I always thought of my dad, you know, and I
was like, oh, you know, it was it was. It
was that positive neural association.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
The Hess fandom truly is something amazing. It includes everyone
from little boys from the Bronx to Olympic gold medallists
and it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Like every year I hear of other people who are
fans of the hesttruck and have some relation to the Heststruck.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
I don't know, two or three years ago, we.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Sold out really early, and all of a sudden, I
get like this direct DM from Michael Phelps. I'm like,
this has to be like a joke, right, sure enough,
Now he waited too long and we sold out, and
he's like, I got three boys, I've got my whole
He grew up in Baltimore on that line. If I got,
I gotta get these things.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
What do I do? I'm like, may we sold out?
Yeah yeah, bye bye fast.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
But it's funny we hear those kinds of stories that
we get reached out by people all the time that
have sean connection to that, a lot of celebrities, and
so it's just great. It's a great tradition that lives
on and so many people are part of it that
you don't even realize it. But it really touches my
heart every year when I get you know, every day
I wake up to a new set of emails or videos.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Well, I gave it for Hanka.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Last night, and so it's like I get all these
oh look, here's the video of my kid opening it.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
They all just love it, and it's really it's heartwarming,
it's heart working.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
And a special thanks to Robbie on the production of
that piece. What a delight, And a special thanks to
Justin Mayer from Hess Toy Truck. And also a special
thanks to Mike Roberto Fandom defined right there, folks, The
Hess Truck Encyclopedia is his contribution to this world that
I know in so many East Coast people grew up
(19:35):
with what I did not know is the story of
Leon Hess and his father. A Lithuanian Jew comes to
this country, starts a cold delivery company, goes into bankruptcy.
His son takes up the mantle, turns it into a
oil delivery company, a mini empire. By the way, he
learned a lot of what he needed to learn from
General Patton. What a beautiful and big and bold story
(19:57):
about a man his dream and how his family kept
did going. The story of the hes Toy Truck. Here
on our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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