Snap On and Blue Point's Relationship

[FJ 432]

Digging through my dad's tool box I found what appears to be an old box wrench from Blue Point (a barrel type design that's marked made in the USA). I did a search with a million different results and I need help answering a question.

My original opinion was that Blue Point is presently a company that sells a lower line of tools for Snap On (although I've only seen recently comments about blue point carts and no tools).

Did these two companies merge at one point and Blue Point is a cheaper alternative to Snap On that sold in trucks?

Thanks for any responses.

Randy

 

[chadster1]

Snap-on owns the Blue Point brand. The use the brand to sell a value priced line of hand tools as well as a lot of specialty tools that are made by other manufacturers. All of the Blue Point branded air tools are imported. Some of the air tools are copies of older Snap-on designs. For example, the AT380 is a copy of the old Snap-on IM31A.

 

[plumber84]

Blue point was created by snap-on and started life as snap-ons wrench line many decades ago, in the late 20s and early 30s snap-on almost exclusivley made sockets and socket wrenches(not ratchets), the blue-point brand was assigned to wrenches that snap-on listed in their catalogues but were made by another manufacturer for example the adjustable wrenches were diamond brand but re-labled as blue-point. check out Alloy-artifacts for a more in depth history.

 

[snapmom]

Blue Point tools with made in the usa on them, show up in about 1937.
Snap on did make some wrenches in the 20s-30s, but most were specials. In about 48 the blue point wrenches, like the oex wrenches there changed to the Snap on name.

 

[billymade]

http://home.comcast.net/~alloy-artifacts/so-early-sockets-p4.html

http://home.comcast.net/~alloy-artifacts/snapon-bluepoint-tools.html