McDonald Products Metal Bookends. Matching pair, label on bottom of one. 

Size: 5 1/4 x 4 1/4 x 8 1/2 in. 

#8347 . 

McDonald Products was founded in Buffalo, New York in 1930 by metalworker Edward McDonald, when he purchased the Serv-A-Light Company, a developer of smoker stands with attached battery-operated cigar lighters. With his background in metalworking, he expanded their development of a wide variety of ornamental smoking stands, pipe racks, ashtrays, floor stands, and a silent butler, which they marketed and sold primarily to gift shops. In 1934 McDonald put a small duck finger lever on top of his scissor-action ashtray, naming it the Duk-It Ashtray, and the novelty became their most well-known product. The duck icon developed from this went on to become the symbol for all McDonald Products, remaining an integral part of the logo to this day. In 1961 the company was sold to Adrian Bennett, and shifted its focus from gift shops to a more office-oriented product line. They also began to develop their own assortment of metal and plastic desk accessories, and branched out into non-smoking-related items. Over the next decade, ownership of McDonald Products changed hands several times, including a short stint as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Insilco Corporation, a Fortune 500 firm then headquartered in Meriden, Connecticut. In 1982 a group of McDonald Products executives acquired the company back from Insilco in a leveraged buyout, and in 1986 controlling interest was acquired by Smith Metal Arts, one of the longest and fiercest competitors, eventually leading to the formation of Smith McDonald Corporation in the 1990s. Since then they have almost completely shifted away from smoking products as market tastes and health concerns have arisen, although they still offer some of their most popular items that have been in demand since before the Second World War.