CHICAGO -- The world headquarters of Mold-A-Rama Inc. is tucked inside a colorless strip of businesses in Brookfield, Illinois, the kind of block so forlorn it’s hard to tell if anything is open or closed. There’s a small mailbox noting that Mold-A-Rama is inside, but nothing like a typical storefront sign. On a January morning, the scene is so winter beige, to even call this location a strip mall seems extravagant. Fans of Mold-A-Rama, collectors of its 60 years of colorful molded statues, show up occasionally, unannounced. “They assume they’ll find hundreds of employees, but nope,” said Sue Jones, wife of co-owner Paul Jones. He was out at the Museum of Science and Industry, servicing their Mold-A-Rama machines, making certain visitors receive tiny plastic chicks, submarines, steam trains.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day was the day before and Chicago museums were slammed, which meant Paul’s durable, decades-old Mold-A-Rama machines at MSI and the Field Museum were slammed. Some of the very same machines that pushed out three-inch Lincoln busts during the Nixon administration are still operating, seven days a week.
Few things are as they were in 1971, when the Jones family took over the world of Mold-A-Rama museum and zoo souvenirs, but the Mold-A-Rama experience remains the same.
