Soccer Extreme : In 1923, the young export merchant from Schwenningen, Edwin Mieg, was deployed to take over the Indian sales office of the Junghans clock company. A career adventure stood before him! But events took an entirely different course.Junghans awarded the promised position to another applicant. This was reason enough for Edwin Mieg to change from the timepiece to the toy industry. A different kind of career adventure.
Edwin Mieg developed a, from the perspective of today, brilliant game idea to the point of market readiness and made himself a household name with TIPP-KICK in 1924. Equipped with a certain amount of courage, Edwin Mieg dared the first step in realizing his game idea and actively promoted the production of this game.
The game was played with the prototype as it is today: the aim was to shoot a two-coloured cork die into a goal with a sheet metal figure whose foot moved at the push of a button on the head. This was not easy due to the low weight of the sheet metal players. The kickers were very soon improved: as of 1925, Edwin Mieg had the figures moulded in lead. The patent was purchased from the Swabian tinkerer Carl Mayer. The one-man company of EDWIN MIEG was founded.
The young company introduced the game "unofficially" for the first time at the Leipzig toy fair of 1926. With very little money, Edwin Mieg was unable to afford his own stand, and thus transferred his activities to the front of the exhibition hall. He set up his game on the staircase landing before the entrance of the exhibition hall and let interested visitors to play TIPP-KICK. Many people remained to form clusters of spectators. This of course did not escape the attention of the watchmen, who "ousted" Edwin Mieg.
Unimpressed by this and motivated by the positive reception of his game, Edwin Mieg went to the next entrance and sold his first few hundred TIPP-KICK games in Leipzig. This marked the modest beginnings of a classic German success story.
In 1938, Edwin Mieg built his own factory at Hardtstraße 21 in Schwenningen on the Neckar. The steadily growing demand for TIPP-KICK games made this investment possible. The zinc kickers could now be moulded in his own factory.Edwin Mieg passed away in 1948, after which his sons Peter and Hansjörg Mieg took over the running of the company. The game remained unchanged into the 1950's. 1954, the World Cup victory year, resulted in the great breakthrough of TIPP-KICK.
Together with his dedicated plant manager, Franz Rusch, Peter Mieg developed the diving "Toni" goalkeeper. This goalkeeper, unchanged to the present day, is made of plastic, and can dive to the right or the left at the push of a button.
180,000 games were sold in Germany in the year of Germany's World Cup victory alone. (tipp-kick.de)