32 Years Later, Uncle Milton Industries’ Ant Farms Are Still Reaping Strong Sales
“Uncle” Milton Levine estimates that he has given the bug to 9 million children. And in the process, he has made a fortune building and selling his Ant Farms.
Ant Farm is a registered trademark of Culver City-based Uncle Milton Industries, although Steven Levine, Milton’s son and heir apparent notes that formicarium is the proper name for the narrow terrarium that holds between 25 and 50 of the industrious insects.
“We have grandparents who owned Ant Farms buying them for their grandchildren,” said Milton Levine, 75, who obviously has no intention of letting up. “We’re expecting our best year ever.” The company sold 500,000 Ant Farms last year.
Milton Levine, like many children, played with bugs as he grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. As an adult, he remembered how much fun it was to watch ants burrow and carry off their dead, so he decided to make a business of it.
He made his first Ant Farm in 1956, and the basic design of the plastic house has not changed much since then. Still, “every year, we upgrade something,” he said. A better method of production will be discovered, for example, or a clasp will be modified.
Secret Source
The Ant Farm is family entertainment. No sex is allowed. The box the Art Farm is shipped in has no ants. Instead, it contains a card to mail in for a crew of maiden ants.
Since it is against federal law to ship female ants, what is sent is a population of Pogonomyrmex colifornicus that live a year or more under optimum circumstances.
Yes, they carry off their dead, burying them in the northeast corner of the farm, for reasons unknown to hymenopterologists.
The ants come from a secret place in a Southern California desert that is zealously guarded by an army of professional ant diggers.
Every Ant Farm is entirely American-made, a rarity in this era of imported toys. In addition, they are assembled and packaged in Southern California by handicapped workers.
‘Man of the Year’
The workers are members of the Assn. for Retarded Citizens’ Southwest Industries in Gardena. The association, a nonprofit organization, employs 125 handicapped people on a piece-rate basis.
“We do contract work for Xerox and Nikon and a lot of different companies,” said Dawn Sanchez of the association, but he (Levine) is our largest customer. We bill him $6,000 or $7,000 a month.”
In fact, the association gave Levine its Man of the Year award two years ago, an honor of which he is quite proud.
As for how he got his name: “People asked me where all these ants came from. I would tell them that I’m their uncle.”
