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Wooden train, end of the 1950s
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Due to the increasing importance of direct pharmacy business, particularly for OTC products, the pharmaceutical and chemical industry legan to establish a special pharmacy sales force in the 1950s. As a supplier of vitamin preparations, the company took this opportunity to establish the “commercial and scientific sales force” in 1959. The name was intended to communicate that the pharmacy visits were not exclusively about acquiring orders, but that scientific topics could also be discussed there. The pharmacies were sometimes given gifts, such as this wooden rain, as a promotional item.
The train, which is almost 30 centimeters long, is pulled by a steam locomotive. The black “trailer” attached to it is noteworthy. This is not a train car, but rather a tender, i.e. a storage car that carries the fuel and water for the locomotive’s steam generation. Characteristically, the tender towed by the locomotive is black, as coal, light heating oil or heavy oil are usually used as fuels. Tenders usually have a short wheelbase due to the heavy mass when fully loaded with supplies. The wheelbase of the tender is also a few millimeters shorter in the model than on the longer cars. The tender is labeled with the Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, trademark used between 1942 and 1968. Four cars then follow, each advertising a Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, product.
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Even before the Second World War, the company had products to combat colds in its range, including Ephetonin, which was launched on the market in 1927; consequently, the first car advertises “Ephetonin cough syrup”. The second car advertises the multi-vitamin product “Multibionta” launched in 1952, and the third one “Cytobion-Tropfen”, vitamin B12 drops for the treatment of anemia, which were launched on the market in 1955. The last car of the promotional train advertises the “Ilvico” flu medication, which debuted in 1956.