Toy catalog advertising payments

No. 2. Toy catalog advertising payments.

The Commission was asked to express an opinion with respect to the legality of payments by toy manufacturers for advertising in toy catalogs published by a firm which, assertedly, (1) is strictly a publisher and has no connection whatever with any toy manufacturer or toy jobber, and (2) affirmatively offered the catalogs for sale to all jobbers. Previous Commission actions in this area have been concerned with ADVISORY OPINION DIGESTS 1595 catalogs which were at least in part owned by jobbers engaged in the sale of the toys advertised in the catalogs. With respect to the instant request, the Commission advised as follows: Payments for advertising in a catalog published by a firm which is not owned or controlled by, or in any way directly or indirectly affiliated with, any customer of the advertiser or group or class of such customers do not violate Section 2(d) of the Clayton Act where no discriminatory benefit is conferred by such payments on a particular customer, or class or group of customers, over competitors. The Commission notes that the catalogs projected are available at low cost to all toy jobbers and are apparently not designed to be usable only by particular jobbers, or classes or groups of jobbers; that you make every effort to distribute your catalogs as broadly as possible among toy jobbers; and that you do not limit distribution to any particular jobbers or group or class of jobbers. The Commission is of the opinion that if your catalogs are available, in a practical business sense, to all of the jobber customers of a manufacturer, then no objection could be raised to payments by that manufacturer for advertising in the catalogs. (File No. 648 7014, released Oct. 380, 1964.)