Jones and Max Limited were in Queen Street, Auckland around 1953, It appears that many of their products, nursery furniture, doll's chairs, etc., were composed largely of wooden dowelling obtained from a firm in Brinstead, or Stock Road, called Northern Dowelling.

Northern Dowelling was run by a brother of Hec Ramsey, of Busy-Bee fame. Hex Ramsey had a manufacturing and timber company in nearby Portage Road.

Seemingly, Jones and Max meta-morphosed into Jomax Industries around 1966, being recorded as operating from 41 Veronica Street, New Lynn in 1975.

They were apparently owned by I. Yock Limited, a well known toy distributor. I. Yock had dealings with McKenzie and Bannister, and arranged for six of the Jumbo range to be marketed under the Joytime name. (See Jumbo)

The range of tinplate toys bear the name Jomax, so it is reasonable to assume that they were made around or after the name change.

This may or may not be the time when Hercules finished up and went back to Port Kembla. As well as a connection with Hercules Toys, as demonstrated by the similarity of some Jomax wheeled toys to Hercules products (apart from the distinctive cab structure), there also appears to be a link with Abingdons. Some Jomax toys have the distinctive rubber stamp on the base:

"Entirely made in New Zealand by
ABINGDONS ENGINEERING
WELLINGTON"

which seems to be evidential of contact of more than a casual type!

Jomax had certainly come into possession of the same tooling used by Hercules. The distinctive cab has been clearly redesigned and makes a clear difference to the two firms' products. Without this distinction, it would be hard to differentiate between the two, which suggested that it was not accidental, but carefully planned.

Jomax, along with other companies, have left us with a legacy of well made toys in their own field. If anyone reads this and knows something else, we would be glad to receive your comments - that is the whole purpose behind this series on the website. Can you help at all?

- Barry Young, 2002