Marx Toy Museum: The Ballad of Big Loo

The Marx Toy Museum, in Moundsviille, WV, closed in June, 2016, but every year since its closing, the museum’s curator, Francis Turner (right, with an inset of Big Loo), has agreed to reopen it during the annual Marx Toy Convention, which takes place at the Kruger Street Toy and Train Museum in nearby Wheeling. Francis founded the museum, which was created to share his comprehensive collection with the public.  His original goal was to preserve the legacy of Marx Toys and their founder, Louis Marx, by trying to find at least one example of every toy they made.

For sixteen years The Marx Toy Museum did just that. Since the museum closed in 2016, Francis has slowly been selling off pieces of his massive collection, and his annual open house sale is a chance for collectors to own a part of history.

In 2017, the History Channel show, American Pickers, visited the museum, and made a star out of one of its exhibits, the only sealed Marx Big Loo known to exist. In this clip, recorded last June, PopCult visits the museum, and finds out what happened to everyone’s giant robot pal from the moon as Francis Turner explains The Ballad of Big Loo.

It’s always a treat to get to visit the Marx Toy Museum, and it’s one of the perks of being a regular attendee at The Marx Toy Convention. Francis and the rest of the Turner family are always so welcoming and the only sad part is that there wasn’t enough public support to keep the museum open on a permanent basis. There are plans in the works for part of the Marx Toy Museum collection to be loaned out to other museums in the future, and we’ll keep you updated on the details when that happens.

Below you can see a clip I posted a few weeks ago, showing the famous encounter between American Picker’s Mike and Frank, and Big Loo…