Greetings from Dyersville!

October has drawn to an end and it’s almost time for the National Farm Toy show. This year’s show is a little different than normal. The main show is being held in a different building here in Dyersville. The former “American Homes” building is just down the road from the National Farm Toy Museum. ERTL will also be participating in the show. We will have three tables in the American Homes building showing off our latest product. Our outlet store will be open for you to purchase your favorite toys and baby products but our product showroom will not be open due to some re-modeling that is currently happening in our offices.

Some of you have been following my blog for several years, so October is always the month where I post a picture of my granddaughter Lucy as she gets another year older. Lucy just turned 3 and we were able to spend a little time with her at a park earlier this year. Dawn and I are fortunate that we only live one hour away from Lucy and her parents. She also likes to video chat with us when everyone's schedule allows.

October of 2020 also marks a milestone for me as the 35th anniversary of me joining the U.S. Air Force back in 1985. That sure seems like a long time ago. I believe this picture was taken around 1990 in Saudi Arabia. For several years I worked in the command section of Ninth Air Force. Our commander at the time was Lieutenant General Horner, who also is a native of Iowa. He commanded all the air forces that took part in Desert Shield/Desert Storm. I followed General Horner around on many exercises and operations including Florida, California, Egypt and of course Desert Shield/Desert Storm.

Enough about me, let’s talk about farm toys. Unfortunately we can only show you so many of our new products with just three tables at the show. We will have several new items on our display that are just getting ready to ship including the Toy Farmer Allis Chalmers tractors and the National Farm Toy Museum 1:16th Allis Chalmers D-21 (Stock # 16407OTP) and 1:64th IH 4186 tractor. (Stock # 44237OTP). You will also get to see a first look at our new 1:64th John Deere X9 combine and our puller tractors.

We are very close to releasing our 2021 John Deere catalog. Keep checking the ERTL website (www.ertl.com ) for our new catalogs and flyers. I’m happy that we were able to use our 100 year old barn in the background of the cover image. Some of the biggest news about new John Deere products is what’s not included in the catalog. For those of you who enjoyed our 1:16th scale John Deere Prestige Select S780 combine, we’ll soon be announcing the second in the series. Stay tuned for more on that in upcoming blogs.

I always look forward to talking to many of you at the National Show. Please stay safe!!

Until next time,

Bill