Fishing Lures

There have been several companies that have produced molds to make fishing lures using a method similar to Mattel's Thingmaker. As information is collected, it will be added below. When the source of a particular mold isn't known, it will be added to the Miscellaneous section at the bottom of this page.

There are also molds that appear to have been made by private individuals. They tend to be random sizes with poor detail but they probably caught just as many fish!

Mak-Ur-Bait

The Mak-Ur-Bait line was produce by Clinton Sales, Inc. of Cleveland, OH. The molds are smaller and thinner than a Thingmaker mold. They seem to be made of solid aluminum. The hot plate that was sold for Mak-Ur-Bait was different than Thingmakers, it required a spatula to scoop the mold off the hot plate.

Flyer 1

Flyer 2

Flyer 3

1 Cricket Cockroach Hellgrammite	2 Large Frog	3 Large Crayfish	4 Large Shrimp	5 Small Frog Small Crayfish	6 Mayfly - Adult Nymph
7 Grasshopper Silverfish Ant	8 Small Grub Manure Worm Large Grub	9 Night Crawler	10 Stone Fly - Adult Nymph	11 Water Boatman Backswimmer	12 Minnow

Herters

A reader sent me the following information about these molds...

After getting my Creepy Crawler set in 1964 for my birthday, I had noticed in a sporting goods catalog called Herters from Waseca, Mn. the ad for the molds you pictured on your site. I purchased the large crayfish, the hellgremmite, the grasshoppers, the damselfly larva, and the minnow molds, along with some of their plastic. I seem to remember that the catalog indicated that the curing process could be done in an ordinary oven, although I could be wrong. I unfortunately became very allergic to the plastic, resulting in skin peeling from my fingers, so my parents nixed me buying any more. I do remember that the colors were very vibrant, and the cured plastic creatures were very flexible, much more so than Mattel's Plastigoop, which I thought was stiff and unnatural. To fit the molds in my Thingmaker, dad hack-sawed the molds into correct sized sections. I do remember now that the ad said that the molds were cast from actual live creatures (!?) but even I could tell at age 11 that they were not. They appear to be from a sand cast method as the detail is fuzzy.

Plastic colors from Herter's included brown, black, translucent purple, green, along with the usual red, yellow, etc. I remember there was quite a selection of colors compared to what Mattel offered at the time. There may have also been a clear. The plastic came in glass jars which were hard to pour into the molds.

1
2 5/8" x 4 1/4"

2
2 3/4" x 1 5/8"

3
2 7/8" x 1 7/8"

4
3" x 1 7/8"

5
2 7/8" x 1 7/8"

6
2 7/8" x 1 3/4"

7
2 3/4" x 1 3/8"

8
2 1/2" x 1 3/8"

9
2 1/8" x 1 3/8"

10
1 1/4" x 2 1/4"

11
3 5/8" x 2 1/8"

12
6 1/4" x 3"

13
4" x 2"

14
6 1/4" x 3"

15
4 3/4" x 3"

16
3 3/8" x 2 1/8"

17
3 1/2" x 2 1/8"

18
4 1/4" x 2"

Courtesy of Steven Rich

19
3 5/8" x 2 1/8"

20
1 7/8" x 1 1/2"

21
4" x 1 7/8"

22
5 5/8" x 2 7/8"

Miscellaneous

These molds look suspiciously similar to Herters' molds but I'm not sure if they were made by Herters or not.

Miscellaneous

These molds were made to be used with Thingmaker ovens. They are approximately the same dimension and have a hole for tongs so the mold can easily be removed from the oven.

Miscellaneous