Answer: Coleco

Most people know the company Coleco, if they know it at all, as the electronics company behind the early video game console the ColecoVision. What most people don’t know is that the ColecoVision was a small part of the stable of products Coleco dealt in.

In fact, the name itself is an acronym of the original company name, The Connecticut Leather Company. The company got its start in the early 1930s supplying leather and “shoe findings” to shoe makers and, in the late 1930s, branched out into rubber footwear. In the 1950s, the company got into the toy business by making leather crafting kits where children could stitch together their own moccasins. Producing toys proved to be so profitable that the company wholeheartedly went into the toy business (and through an acquisition in the early 1960s, even became the world’s largest manufacturer of above ground swimming pools).

If you think the “stuff you didn’t know about Coleco” train stops at leather and swimming pools, however, we’ve got one more gem. Coleco, thanks to their toy division, was the first producer and distributor of the iconic 1980s toy Cabbage Patch Kids.