Handheld Museum | Forum | Dev Kits | PSP Stuff | Conventions

(52 listed)
View Trade Magazine Ads / 1979 Toy Fair Catalog / 1981 Toy Fair Catalog / 1982 Toy Fair catalog / Corporate News Letter: 'The Bull's Eye'

Entex Industries, Inc. was founded in 1970 by G. A. 'Tony' Clowes, Nicholas Carlozzi and Nick Underhill. Originally started out making model kits, toys and construction blocks (Loc Blocs, in direct competition with Lego). In 1980, Entex achieved worldwide sales of $100 million in part due to their revolutionary electronic games based on sports and arcade games. Entex was based in Compton, California (303 West Artesia Blvd.) and was a big competitor with Mattel and Coleco, making head to head sports games similar to their sports games. Entex quickly moved into making very good quality VFD handhelds based on arcade games that competed directly with Coleco's mini-arcade line of games. They are no longer in business, Tony left in 1984 (to go to Tomy), and shortly after the company was sold off and all assets liquidated.

A little trivia: The name is a partial acronym of the two original founders (Nick Underhill joined them just after they came up with the name, but before the company was officially started). The First letter of Nicholas' name (N), the first letter of Tony's name (T), and add an X making NTX, which spells nicely into Entex.

The Logo was designed by Ben Templeton (creator of a comic-strip called 'Motley's Crew'), who kind of pictured Clowes (who is British) as an RAF type (Royal Air Force), so he took the RAF roundel logo and added a smiling face in the middle (rumored to be a caricature of Tony himself). Entex actually contacted RAF to get approval to use the design, and they actually approved their use of the logo.
Source: Entex corporate news letter called 'The Bull's Eye' (see scans above).