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Antique and Vintage Wooden Toys
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Whether it's a set of blocks, a pull toy, or a child's rocking horse, wood has been a primary material of toys for as long as the idea of toys has existed. While wood was forced to make way for tin as a favored construction material among toy...
Whether it's a set of blocks, a pull toy, or a child's rocking horse, wood has been a primary material of toys for as long as the idea of toys has existed. While wood was forced to make way for tin as a favored construction material among toy manufacturers beginning in the Industrial Revolution, vintage wooden toys from the Victorian Era and the first half of the 20th century remain popular with collectors.
Wooden toys tended to revolve around a number of themes that offered children the chance to participate in such cultural institutions of the day as the circus. Schoenhut Humpy Dumpty Circus toys, manufactured from 1903 to 1935, included a ringmaster, acrobats, lion tamers, and horseback riders, along with a veritable Noah's Ark of animals, from lions and tigers and bears to even more exotic creatures like elephants, giraffes, rhinos, and zebras. The animals and their human-performer counterparts could be positioned under a circus tent, providing children with hours of open-ended play. One way to date vintage Schoenhut wooden circus animals is to look into their eyes—the earliest examples were made of glass, followed by eyes that were painted until that handmade technique was replaced by the application of decals.
Less expensive to buy at the time were the circus animals and props produced by Playthings Manufacturing Company, whose Pull-Apart Animal Circus was a hit with kids in the 1920s. Made of thin cutout pieces of wood, the circus animals and performers were designed to lock into other pieces of wood so they could be positioned into acrobatic poses—a bear standing on its paw, a clown walking a wooden tightrope, etc.
Another category of basic wooden toy is the block, sometimes stamped or embossed with a letter of the alphabet, other times just painted and left as a geometric shape. Between World War I and World War II, Halsam Products made colorful "Safety" blocks bearing letters, short words with their corresponding pictures, and Disney characters. The Embossing Company was another block maker from this period—both companies leveraged the machinery they had built to make blocks in order to produce other products, particularly the game of dominoes.
One of the most beloved basic wooden-toy brands was Lincoln Logs, which was the brainchild of John Lloyd Wright, the son of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The name of the product was an allusion to the log cabin the future 16th president of the United States grew up in as a boy in Kentucky. From a marketing perspective, though, Lincoln Logs proved to be a poor brand in states that lost the Civil War, which is why the almost identical Frontier Logs manufactured by Halsam Products sold better than Lincoln Logs did in the South.
Speaking of Halsam, it was hardly the only wooden-toy manufacturer to work with Walt Disney. In the 1930s, Nifty Toys made Mickey Mouse roadsters and wagons. Gong Bell made a chiming pull toy with Mickey lithographed on one side and Donald Duck on the other, and in the 1940s, General Toy of Canada made a toy that caused Mickey Mouse to beat a drum when the toy was pulled. Still, some manufacturers got a bit too cute—Performo was sued by Disney for its copycat line of "Micky" toys.
Poseable figures are another highly collected category of vintage wooden toys. Fun-e-Flex made poseable Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Pluto figurines, but the category is far broader than any one brand, even Disney. During most of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, Twistum made articulated wooden animals that could be twisted into different poses, thanks to the piano wire that was wound inside the company's cats, dogs, and other animals. Jaymar used a different internal armature to accomplish the same sort of thing, adding comic-book characters such as Popeye and Little Orphan Annie to its repertoire of animals and stock characters such as Santa Claus.
Repeated shapes was also a strategy of toy manufacturers. Tinkertoys made all sorts of creatures and characters, often on wheels, out of pieces of wood that looked like drawer pulls or finials. Ted Toys mined this terrain, too, as did the Scarey Ann family of toys. Fulton used raw materials that might have been repurposed wooden beads or pegs. Doing Fulton one better, Newton and Thompson made toys that were literally made out of wooden beads, which children were encouraged to stack by color and then pull around on a wooden cart.
Naturally there were plenty of companies that produced untold numbers of wooden trucks—United trucks were primitive while Strombecker's line of delivery trucks were slightly more detailed, although that company is better known among some collectors for its Bill Ding figures, which were designed to balance when stacked on each other's shoulders. Even more companies made traditional, if colorful, pull toys, from the grouches, goats, and ducks produced by All-Fair to the Warner Brothers cartoon characters (Elmer Fudd, Tweety Bird, Bugs Bunny) made in the 1950s by Brice.
For the most part, these were all small toys, but some companies went large with their hobby horses and single-seat rockers. Mengel Playthings made both rockers and gliders for children, as did S. A. Smith. But for pure fun, it was hard to beat the hobby horses and dogs made by Hollywood Hobby, which was founded in 1929 by the comedic movie star Harold Lloyd.
Continue readingWhether it's a set of blocks, a pull toy, or a child's rocking horse, wood has been a primary material of toys for as long as the idea of toys has existed. While wood was forced to make way for tin as a favored construction material among toy manufacturers beginning in the Industrial Revolution, vintage wooden toys from the Victorian Era and the first half of the 20th century remain popular with collectors.
Wooden toys tended to revolve around a number of themes that offered children the chance to participate in such cultural institutions of the day as the circus. Schoenhut Humpy Dumpty Circus toys, manufactured from 1903 to 1935, included a ringmaster, acrobats, lion tamers, and horseback riders, along with a veritable Noah's Ark of animals, from lions and tigers and bears to even more exotic creatures like elephants, giraffes, rhinos, and zebras. The animals and their human-performer counterparts could be positioned under a circus tent, providing children with hours of open-ended play. One way to date vintage Schoenhut wooden circus animals is to look into their eyes—the earliest examples were made of glass, followed by eyes that were painted until that handmade technique was replaced by the application of decals.
Less expensive to buy at the time were the circus animals and props produced by Playthings Manufacturing Company, whose Pull-Apart Animal Circus was a hit with kids in the 1920s. Made of thin cutout pieces of wood, the circus animals and performers were designed to lock into other pieces of wood so they could be positioned into acrobatic poses—a bear standing on its paw, a clown walking a wooden tightrope, etc.
Another category of basic wooden toy is the block, sometimes stamped or embossed with a letter of the alphabet, other times just painted and left as a geometric shape. Between World War I and World War II, Halsam Products made colorful "Safety" blocks bearing letters, short words with their corresponding pictures, and Disney...
Whether it's a set of blocks, a pull toy, or a child's rocking horse, wood has been a primary material of toys for as long as the idea of toys has existed. While wood was forced to make way for tin as a favored construction material among toy manufacturers beginning in the Industrial Revolution, vintage wooden toys from the Victorian Era and the first half of the 20th century remain popular with collectors.
Wooden toys tended to revolve around a number of themes that offered children the chance to participate in such cultural institutions of the day as the circus. Schoenhut Humpy Dumpty Circus toys, manufactured from 1903 to 1935, included a ringmaster, acrobats, lion tamers, and horseback riders, along with a veritable Noah's Ark of animals, from lions and tigers and bears to even more exotic creatures like elephants, giraffes, rhinos, and zebras. The animals and their human-performer counterparts could be positioned under a circus tent, providing children with hours of open-ended play. One way to date vintage Schoenhut wooden circus animals is to look into their eyes—the earliest examples were made of glass, followed by eyes that were painted until that handmade technique was replaced by the application of decals.
Less expensive to buy at the time were the circus animals and props produced by Playthings Manufacturing Company, whose Pull-Apart Animal Circus was a hit with kids in the 1920s. Made of thin cutout pieces of wood, the circus animals and performers were designed to lock into other pieces of wood so they could be positioned into acrobatic poses—a bear standing on its paw, a clown walking a wooden tightrope, etc.
Another category of basic wooden toy is the block, sometimes stamped or embossed with a letter of the alphabet, other times just painted and left as a geometric shape. Between World War I and World War II, Halsam Products made colorful "Safety" blocks bearing letters, short words with their corresponding pictures, and Disney characters. The Embossing Company was another block maker from this period—both companies leveraged the machinery they had built to make blocks in order to produce other products, particularly the game of dominoes.
One of the most beloved basic wooden-toy brands was Lincoln Logs, which was the brainchild of John Lloyd Wright, the son of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The name of the product was an allusion to the log cabin the future 16th president of the United States grew up in as a boy in Kentucky. From a marketing perspective, though, Lincoln Logs proved to be a poor brand in states that lost the Civil War, which is why the almost identical Frontier Logs manufactured by Halsam Products sold better than Lincoln Logs did in the South.
Speaking of Halsam, it was hardly the only wooden-toy manufacturer to work with Walt Disney. In the 1930s, Nifty Toys made Mickey Mouse roadsters and wagons. Gong Bell made a chiming pull toy with Mickey lithographed on one side and Donald Duck on the other, and in the 1940s, General Toy of Canada made a toy that caused Mickey Mouse to beat a drum when the toy was pulled. Still, some manufacturers got a bit too cute—Performo was sued by Disney for its copycat line of "Micky" toys.
Poseable figures are another highly collected category of vintage wooden toys. Fun-e-Flex made poseable Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Pluto figurines, but the category is far broader than any one brand, even Disney. During most of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, Twistum made articulated wooden animals that could be twisted into different poses, thanks to the piano wire that was wound inside the company's cats, dogs, and other animals. Jaymar used a different internal armature to accomplish the same sort of thing, adding comic-book characters such as Popeye and Little Orphan Annie to its repertoire of animals and stock characters such as Santa Claus.
Repeated shapes was also a strategy of toy manufacturers. Tinkertoys made all sorts of creatures and characters, often on wheels, out of pieces of wood that looked like drawer pulls or finials. Ted Toys mined this terrain, too, as did the Scarey Ann family of toys. Fulton used raw materials that might have been repurposed wooden beads or pegs. Doing Fulton one better, Newton and Thompson made toys that were literally made out of wooden beads, which children were encouraged to stack by color and then pull around on a wooden cart.
Naturally there were plenty of companies that produced untold numbers of wooden trucks—United trucks were primitive while Strombecker's line of delivery trucks were slightly more detailed, although that company is better known among some collectors for its Bill Ding figures, which were designed to balance when stacked on each other's shoulders. Even more companies made traditional, if colorful, pull toys, from the grouches, goats, and ducks produced by All-Fair to the Warner Brothers cartoon characters (Elmer Fudd, Tweety Bird, Bugs Bunny) made in the 1950s by Brice.
For the most part, these were all small toys, but some companies went large with their hobby horses and single-seat rockers. Mengel Playthings made both rockers and gliders for children, as did S. A. Smith. But for pure fun, it was hard to beat the hobby horses and dogs made by Hollywood Hobby, which was founded in 1929 by the comedic movie star Harold Lloyd.
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