COLLECTING THE MARX
MICKEY MOUSE METEOR TRAIN SET
By Jim Engelage

In the early 1950s Marx produced the Mickey Mouse Meteor Train set. It is a crossover collectible appealing to Disneyana collectors, tin toy collectors, and train collectors. The early version was a four-piece set including the locomotive, tender, gondola car and caboose (shown here). Later, a boxcar was added which resulted in the more limited five-piece version. The locomotive has a detachable key. Some versions have a rare flint mechanism that produces sparks out of the engine smoke stack thus earning the meteor train its name. Other versions have a ringing bell (scarce). The bell and the sparks operate only while the train is speeding around the track.
The Mickey Mouse Meteor train comes with eight curved, and two straight pieces of “O” gauge two-rail track. The four-piece set measures 35” long and the five-piece set measures 43” long. The most desirable version is the five-piece set with the locomotive that shoots sparks out of the smoke stack and has the ringing bell.

1. LOCOMOTIVE
The two engineers at the controls are Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Lithographed on the sides are Huey, Dewey, […]

By William Gallagher

A recent auction of a “Machine Man” robot selling for almost $160,000 created a stir about this robot and the associated

“Gang of Five” family of robots based on the same stampings. These 15-inch-tall, battery-operated robots, were produced by Masudaya of Japan. Masudaya is Japan’s oldest operating toy company, tracing its history back to 1724. Their MT (T over M) logo (for Masudaya Toy) has been used since the 1920s. In the 1930s it established a Modern Toy laboratory and later added Modern Toy to its logo causing many to think that MT stood for Modern Toys. It is hard to imagine a toy company that is approaching its 300th year in business.

Masudaya did not produce as many robots as some other Japanese toy companies. However, it is famous for producing a series of five skirted robots over a period of seven years. Robot collectors have affectionately named this very collectible group of robots the “Gang of Five.”

After spending almost two years in development, Masudaya completed the world’s first radio remote-controlled toy—a 14”long tin bus—in 1955. Among the “Gang of Five,” the first radio-controlled robot toy was the Radicon, produced in […]

By Ken Foust

Shovel All the Coal In

McLoughlin Brothers

picture blocks

In the 1890s, any boy who was on favorable terms with Santa Claus could assemble a sizeable toy fire department. Toy makers produced a nearly endless variety of pumpers and ladder wagons in every size a young man could want, but they didn’t stop there. Many also offered a good assortment of hose reel wagons and fire patrols wagons as well. And if that wasn’t enough, a few even included chief’s wagons, water towers, and at least one chemical ladder wagon. No imaginary fire stood much of a chance against the young fire chief who had seven different vehicles at his disposal. Until a month ago I figured those were all the types of fire fighting apparatus I’d ever see in toy form, but I was wrong. Oddly enough, the eighth one wasn’t made of tin or iron; it appeared on a set of blocks, and it was designed to carry coal.

Perhaps […]

By Morton Hirschberg

In Toys We Trust

by Morton A. Hirschberg

The history of toys and toy manufacturers has long been a subject discussed in books and articles. Yet, one of the most fascinating aspects of toy history has only been written about in fits and starts­­—monopolies.

In this article I attempt to cover, as completely as possible, the toy trusts or monopolies that were formed, and in two cases, still exist. A short description of the main items produced by each firm as well as individual membership information is given when known. Dates for when a company was in business are approximate, since sources often vary on this point.

National Novelty Corporation

In December 1902, the National Novelty Corporation was incorporated under New Jersey laws. The main purposes of the corporation were: 1) to reduce competition that severely reduced profits and 2) to counter the expanding imports from foreign markets, especially toys imported from Germany.

According to Playthings, a toy publication, the National Novelty Corporation consolidated […]

By Carl Lobel

FELIX FROLIC!

THE TOY THAT CHANGED THE  WORLD*

*(THE TOY WORLD)

by Carl Lobel

The Felix Frolic tin wind-up toy was made by J. Chein & Co. of Harrison, New Jersey, circa 1926-1927 [Figure 1]. It is an iconic toy for a number of reasons, the overall size being reason No. 1: it is by far the largest lithographed tin wind-up comic character toy made during the Golden Age of lithographed tin toy production—the 1920s and 1930s. Reason No. 2: it was the first licensed comic strip character lithographed tin wind-up toy made in the United States.¹ Reason No. 3: it represents a turning point in tin toy production, the point at which American manufacturing moved to the forefront and became the dominant source for tin toys sold in the U.S., ending the long run of German toy manufacturing dominance. As a collector specializing in comic character toys, I have chosen to anoint the Felix Frolic with the title, “The Most Important Comic Character Toy Ever Made.”² How and […]

By Dave Leopard

The Auburn Rubber Company, based in Auburn, Indiana, was originally the Double Fabric Tire Company, which was established in 1910 by Auburn residents William H. Willennar and A.L. Murray. As the Double Fabric Tire Company, they made inner soles and tire patches before expanding into a line of automobile tires and tubes. The company’s success led to expansion to a new site in 1912, but they were devastated by a fire in 1913 that destroyed the entire block surrounding their new building. They lost just about everything. Everything, that is, but their determination. Thanks to good insurance, Willennar and Murray were able to rebuild and quickly return to production. In the 1920s, the company reorganized as the Auburn Rubber Company. As the Auburn Rubber Company grew, its reputation grew as well and it was soon considered one of the most financially secure companies in the United States.

The Auburn Rubber Company naturally progressed to the business of making toys. It became known for producing toy soldiers, tractors, animals, games and sporting equipment. It released its first rubber toy car […]

By Carl Lobel

When viewed separately, three of the four Toonerville Trolley lithographed tin wind-ups appear to be the same toy. It is only when you have them side by side that you can see differences and sometimes the differences are very subtle. The three Toonervilles starting on the left, were made in Germany in the mid-1920s by H. Fischer, Nuremberg. The fourth Toonerville (far right) was made in Japan, maker unknown, probably circa 1930.

To understand why there were three different German wind-up trolleys that look to be the same toy, you only need to understand the economics of the toy trade. It was a very competitive business, and in the 1920s the German toy makers dominated the American market for tin wind-up novelty toys. In the second half of the decade, the U.S. government imposed a new, higher import tax on metal toys—Trade War! The German companies lost their price advantage while maintaining their quality advantage, but as the 1930s unfolded it was all about price. As a result of this import tax or duty on metal toys, by 1932, […]

By Mara Bosboom

Hi, my name is Mara Bosboom and I work for the Toy Museum in Deventer, the Netherlands. I recently completed a one-month internship at the Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood in England. As I have done a lot of work on optical toys in my own museum, my job at the V&A was to sort out the shelves of optical toys in the Museum of Childhood’s Store Six. The following article presents my research on two of the children’s optical toys in the V&A’s collection.

The lines of what is considered to be an optical toy are quite blurred, slipping over into the realm of paper theatres, myrioramas and image composition puzzles. I am limiting this article to discussing two of the more exceptional paper-based items, the “Polyrama Panoptique” and the “Geographical Panorama.”

Optics have always fascinated people, from making shadows appear on a wall to the camera obscura in the 13th century, which would allow you to see a projected image of the outside world upside down, to the creation of […]

Excerpted by Christina Rubin

Vying to be the World’s Oldest Toy:  Is it the 4,000-Year-Old Rattle Found in Turkey or the 4,000-Year-Old Doll’s Head Found in Pantelleria, an Island off the Coast of Italy?

A team from the Ankara University Archaeology Department discovered a ceramic rattle that contains small pebbles, and dates back to 2,000 BCE. It was found in an area that is now the central Anatolian province of Kayseri, once the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Kanesh, in the 2nd millennium BCE.

Professor Fikri Kulakoğlu, who heads the project, estimates that 4,000 years ago, the settlement was home to a population of up to 70,000 people who would have been a mix of Assyrian traders and the local Anatolian population.

“It is possible to find what we [commonly] find in houses today. We have found pots and pans, drinking vessels, an oven, seats, etc. We have seen all of these things in the excavations for nearly 70 years. There are also very interesting and unusual objects. Naturally, we find objects that we associate […]