D. Dudley Bloom

At AMSCO, Bloom expanded the company's line of reality-based toys that eschewed traditional military themes for boys and encouraged children of both genders to imitate constructive adult roles.

Children played doctor and nurse with toy stethoscopes and reflex hammers; playwright, actor, and stage director with magnetic puppet theaters; and astronaut with rockets and launching pads.

[25] In 1958, Bloom, who'd long suffered from back pain, proposed that Atlantic manufacture travel luggage that could be pulled on wheels through airports, bus terminals, and train stations, so he built a model—called in the trade a "mock-up"—of a suitcase attached to a platform with castors and a handle.

With the help of Asian engineers, in early 1964 he began working on the design of a tape recorder that would play continuously—i.e., without rewinding—and founded International Audio Corporation in Philadelphia to market the device, mainly to department and specialty stores.

Like his former commanding officer, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, he returned in April 1964 to discuss the tape recorder's design with Hong Kong engineers and oversee its manufacture by the Pioneer Electronics Corporation of Kobe, Japan.

[38][39] Bloom retired from the consumer products industry in 1965 and in 1966, after having earned the highest score ever recorded on the Pennsylvania real estate brokers exam, spent the rest of his active business career as a residential and commercial real estate broker, representing developments such as Freeport/Lucaya[40] on Grand Bahama Island and Palm Coast, Florida, a community built and marketed by ITT Community Development Corporation, builders of the Levittowns[41] (formerly Levitt & Sons).

[42][43][44][45] In 1970, he and his wife, Nancy, founded D. Dudley Bloom & Associates of Ardmore and, later, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, and for the remainder of their careers, together marketed residential properties along Philadelphia's Main Line.

[46][47][48] Early on the morning of August 20, 2015, D. Dudley Bloom died in his sleep, one month to the day short of his 93rd birthday, at Bryn Mawr (PA) Terrace Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and factors relating to diabetes mellitus.