CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION

Despite the changes and new challenges of the pandemic, Mold-A-Rama Inc. primarily works in the name of keeping a dream alive. Consistency is part of the key to the machines’ success- while other souvenirs have constantly tried to one-up each other, Mold-A-Rama and its quaint simplicity have made it a favorite among generations of Chicagoans. When an adult walks up to a Mold-A-Rama machine, it is the same one that greeted them all those years ago when they were a child.

“We want every person who walks up to a Mold-A-Rama to get the exact item they want,” said Jones.

Perhaps there is something that can be learned from that nostalgic wonder. There is a sense that the past is part of the key to the future. While some of these changes to Mold-A-Rama’s business formula will likely persist long after the pandemic ends, it’s the sense of a great, magnificent thing, an eighth wonder of the Chicagoan era, being kept alive that truly breeds that sense of innovation. What makes Mold-A-Rama machines and their menagerie of waxy plastic figures special is not the machines or figures themselves or anything within them. It is the sense of partaking in a momentous, almost mystical little urban miracle, the sense that something truly indescribable, an ancient-yet-new emotion is being poured into the metal molds alongside the wax.

When I asked Paul Jones what his favorite of all the molds, he hesitated for a moment before deciding on the gorilla mold that populates many of the zoos Mold-A-Rama is tied to. He reasoned that it was tied back to a lot of things for him and that the gorilla was not only popular but constant, always the same black animal with a single arm raised in a friendly wave. I think that sums up a lot of the magic of Mold-A-Rama- and why the Automatic Miniature Plastic Factory will certainly survive for generations to come.

Correction: This article has been edited since it was published to correct the CEO’s name- it is Paul Jones.