If I mention Dukes of Hazzard action figures, KISS make-up kits, or a Star Trek utility belt to readers of a certain age, you might be remembering your old toys. I lost my phaser on the first day. These toys and more were products of Remco Toys and its founder, Isaac “Ike” Heller. He is credited with bringing toys directly to the consumer. Heller and Ellenville are forever linked.

I was fortunate to talk to Heller’s niece, Kim Hirsh, about her late uncle. Heller was born in Brooklyn on June 23, 1926. He was preceded by a sister named Mildred, who was three years older.

Shortly after his birth, his family relocated to a small farm they owned outside of Ellenville in Greenfield Park. According to the 1925 New York State Census, the family resided on East Mountaindale Road. The New York Times reported that Heller’s parents, Morris and Yetta (Shapiro), were Russian Jewish immigrants who came to the Ellenville area with the assistance of the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society.

According to the 1930 census, the Hellers' principal occupation was poultry farming. In his family memoir, Heller recalled that “every morning before walking the three miles to the one-room schoolhouse, which had neither electric lights nor indoor plumbing…” he had to complete his “chores, including feeding and milking their three cows…”

There is no doubt that the demanding life of farming shaped young Heller’s character. It instilled in him the value of hard work. His niece stated: “They don’t make them like him [Heller] anymore.”

According to the 1930 Federal Census, the family still resided on East Mountaindale Road. In addition to owning their farm, they had even saved enough to purchase a radio set. They achieved this with the income generated from their thousands of chickens. The family also took in tenants during the summer months. During these times, the family would sleep in their cellar or in empty chicken coops.

Heller’s brother, Paul, was born in 1932. His family later fell on hard times and left Greenfield Park in 1938, when Heller was 12. He remembered that an epidemic of croup led to the deaths of thousands of their chickens.

Once Heller returned to New York City, his life changed dramatically. He enrolled in Brooklyn Technical High School, where he focused on engineering. According to his military records, he was drafted two days after his 18th birthday. He would serve in the U.S. Navy until the end of World War II.

During this period, Heller was an electronics technician. He began crafting toys from discarded equipment. Fellow sailors would send these toys home to their children.

When he left the Navy in 1946, he attended Cooper Union at night and graduated in 1952. A few years earlier, in 1948, he began building toys with his cousin, Saul Roberts, using surplus supplies purchased from the U.S. Army.

Eventually, Heller and Roberts formed Remco, which is short for “remote control” – that’s because Remco was always interested in integrating technology in their toys, through lights and sounds. By the 1960s, it had become one of the largest toy manufacturers in the United States. It was sold in 1966, and a few more times until it was bought by Jakks Pacific and absorbed into their existing line.

Heller never forgot his Greenfield Park roots. His niece explained that he and his family visited occasionally. In 2008 they traveled to his boyhood home and the one-room schoolhouse he used to walk to as a child. Heller died in 2015 at the age of 88 in New Jersey.