The Weirdest Acquisitions and Mergers

Welcome to The Chronicles of Trevor, a division of Mario Bros Plumbing.

Today, I'm gonna talk about a couple of those mergers and acquisitions that are weird, but true!

So sit back, relax, and enjoy.

1.) The Quaker Oats Company buys Fisher-Price (1969)

(This logo is from their home video division at the time)

Yup. In the year of 1969, The brand with Chuckie Finster's least favorite mascot acquired the famed toy company that make kid-tough toys that he might have played with. This reminds me of that one time Colgate toothpaste tried to market a line of TV Dinners.

That seems gross. Those white globs of cheese look like toothpaste blobs.

2.) SEGA acquired by Gulf+Western (1969, again)

Yes, the same SEGA that made Sonic the Hedgehog. But this was before the Blue Blur and his originating console, the Genesis (or Mega Drive, for you international folks). It seems like 1969 was the year of crazy acquisitions. Gulf+Western started as a bumper manufacturing company in the 20s, and in another weird acquisition, bought Paramount Pictures in 1960. Yup, Paramount Pictures. But when they acquired Sega, they moved their US headquarters to 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, the location of the Paramount lot! Other than that, I see why Silent Movie parodied them by making a fake conglomerate called "Engulf+Devour".