Karl Bub founded this company in 1851 in Nuremberg, Germany.
Bub made a superbly enameled and later lithographed line of clockwork tin
transportation toys including trains. They started making trains that ran by clockwork in 1903. Then in
1914 an electric train was added to the collection. A partnership with Issmayer and
Carette allowed all three companies to produce similar looking
trains which often had only the logo that was different. Many Bub toys reached the American market via exclusive
distributor F.A.O. Schwartz, New York City, during the 1920s-1930s. Bub is known to have
acquired the tooling for Bing toy trains when Bing went out of business in 1932. Bub
restarted production of the Bing models in 1934 for the German market but this in turn ceased at the outbreak of
World War II. After 1945 a production of trains in gauge 'S' was created, but this could not compete
with the upcoming trend of the HO gauge and was a commercial failure. Production was completely ceased in
the early 1960's and the company went out of business in 1966.
