By Roland Digilio

When meeting another collector for the first time, the conversation will invariably turn to what we collect. Often, upon explaining that I collect fountains, among other things, I usually get a puzzled look, so I thought I would share some of my fountains and the history behind them.

I don’t know when the first toy fountains were made, but they do appear in the German toy catalogs of the late 1800s. Some of them were operated by gravity: there is generally a landscape with a tank or reservoir close to the top, and below a spout of some sort, such as a spray head or possibly an imitation pump and water trough. Image A is such a piece. The reservoir is the rocky outcropping near the top. The water flows over the water wheel, causing the trip hammers to move up and down.

Many of the fountains I have encountered are the types that use a pump to move the water. These typically have a pulley operated pump.

The companies that made this […]

By Marty Maloy

A bit of historical background is in order for full appreciation of this extremely rare find, an early American-style toy locomotive found quite dirty on a mantle in Philadelphia where she sat for many years.

England was responsible for all the major developments in early steam locomotives. Consequently, America imported its first locomotives in the 1830s from Britain (usually the rigid 0-4-0 types). The British railways at that time enjoyed some major advantages over ours: they were sufficiently financed, covered shorter distances, had superior track, and carried more passengers and freight. Conversely, the United States was a poor and wild country—with inexpensive track stretched to its limits by necessity—which in turn caused the imported British locomotives to frequently derail. This led to the development in the US of locomotives with better tracking thanks to the addition of an “equalized” front truck and two large driving wheels. This development occurred around 1840. For the next 10 years or so, many of these 2-4-0 types were constructed.

The “Brother Jonathan” is an excellent early example of an engine […]

By Anne Cartwright

This hand colored, linen-backed game was published in 1798 by John Wallis, London. It is a race game in spiral form designed as an educational tool. As its subtitle explains, it was “intended to infuse the rudiments of arithmetic, under the idea of amusement.”

There are 100 spaces, each having either a number or a picture. Starting at the lower left, one spins the tee-totum(s) with the object of the game being to reach No. 100, the “Laurel Wreath” goal in the center. There are two tee-totums. These are 10-sided spinning tops, the sides numbered 1-10.

“To learn addition” only one tee-totum is used. With each spin you add your new result to your previous position.

For subtraction you spin both, “take the least from the greatest, and move with the remainder.”

In multiplication, you multiply the numbers on the two tee-totums but you only “move with the last figure of their product.”

For division, “Divide the greatest number which come us by the […]

By Anne Furnish Cartwright

The earliest reference we have to the game of dominoes dates back to Chinese writings of around 900 AD. The earliest set of dominoes known, also Chinese, dates from 1120 AD.

A set of Chinese dominoes (not to be confused with mahjong), is composed of 32 tiles representing various (but not all) combinations of throwing a pair of dice and includes some duplicates. Western sets have only 28 tiles: every possible result for throwing a pair of dice plus an additional seven blank tiles. The Chinese tiles are longer and narrower than Western tiles and are played like cards whereas, the “double square” tiles used in Western games all involve the formation of chains of tiles. These flat domino tiles may have evolved from early dice (cubes) and were made of bone with black spots (pips) with the two ends of the tile representing a pair of dice.

Dominoes first appeared in Italy in the early 1700s. They quickly became popular and by the end of the 18th century spread to […]

By Ken Vliet

In collecting children’s tool chests it is difficult to find them with their original tools. It is a great joy to find a complete or nearly complete tool set because it provides the source for what to look for at toy shows, antique shows, and thank goodness for flea markets. Several of the early tool chests from the 1880s and 1890s will list the child-size tools included on an inside paper label. The larger tool sets would comprise 20 to 30 different tools.

One available source has been the early catalogs of the R. Bliss Manufacturing Company from Paw- tucket, Rhode Island. Besides the children’s tool chests, Bliss was in business from 1835-1935, they made many children’s wood toys and dolls houses. While on vacation, we often try to locate the building sites of early American toy manufacturers. Unfortunately, a visit to Pawtucket ended with photos of 80-year-old row houses on the original company site.

The following are names of some of my labeled children’s tool chests:
1. Boys […]

By Jurgen and Marianne Cieslik

Rare luck. While researching our book Ein Jahrhundert Blechspielzeug: Ein Jahrhundert E.P. Lehmann (Lehmann Toys, the History of E. P. Lehmann 1881-1981), we had a chance meeting with Artur Adam, the son of Carl Adam, in August 1980. Artur was living in modest circumstances in Frankfurt am Main where we met in his apartment and talked about his father. From this initial contact a fruitful and cordial acquaintance developed. Adam was aware of the importance of his father in the development of the early tin toy industry and supported us in our research by providing biographical information and family documents. He was a great help with our description of his father’s business. The research, however, on the Minkowski’s, who supported Carl Adam in his endeavors, took us several months.

Carl Adam was born on January 20, 1864 in Osterode, East Prussia, the son of the painter Carl Adam. After attending high school, he devoted himself to technical studies and an apprenticeship as a watchmaker in Koenigsberg (today named Kaliningrad). As early as 1887, at the age of […]

By Roy Blomster

I am a toy collector. I have been collecting since the mid-1970s, and as a member of the ATCA, I enjoy going all over the country viewing other people’s collections. Most of the collections date prior to 1941–a year that was to become a major turning point for toys because the metal and lead used in their production was needed to build the weapons for World War II. Many of the toys produced before the war were never to be made again, and by the time the war ended, new, more streamlined methods of manufacturing and the introduction of plastics changed the toy industry.

I am also an artist. I use metal in creating my artwork, and as such, have been fortunate in being able to find broken metal toys that I have been able to repair. Although time-consuming and labor-intensive, making a careful repair is another way to acquire more toys if one is fortunate enough to possess the skills required.

Some time back, my friend Bob, a fellow collector, […]

By Christina Rubin

Charles Martin Crandall, born May 30, 1833, started inventing toys at the tender age of 12, and took over the Crandall Toy Company at age 16 upon his father’s death in 1849. The company under the guidance and ingenuity of Charles, became famous for its toy blocks, Crandall’s Acrobats, and numerous other well-known games and toys made of wood.

In January 1889, Crandall invented and brought to market a new toy which took the country by storm. It rapidly became the most popular toy nationwide and was being played everywhereÑon street corners, trolley cars, drawing rooms, pool halls, and even in the halls of Congress. Cleverly named “Pigs in Clover” the game required a skillful manipulation of marbles–“the pigs”–to be rotated around a series of concentric circles in order to corral all the pigs in the center –“the pen.”

The game’s success created many imitators, with many of them succeeding in cashing in on the toys popularity. Industrialist Moses Lyman, a financial backer of Crandall’s […]

By Jeanne Solensky, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library

One of the joys of my job is to search through manuscripts and ephemera for related items after finding something that grabs my fancy. One day, by chance, I found a cigar label depicting writer and illustrator Palmer Cox (1840Ð1924), creator of the Brownies. Although the Winterthur Library does not have a centralized collection of his papers, I found Cox and his Brownies in several of the Winterthur’s collections: children’s books and periodicals; advertising trade cards and catalogues; toys and games; and personal letters. Using the cigar label as my springboard, it was time to track all these down and “play.”

Based on Scottish folklore, the Brownies were an adventurous and mischievous group of little men who evolved from being similarly illustrated characters into many individuals with their own personalities, nationalities, and occupations. They all lived, traveled, and performed good deeds together. The Brownies first publicly appeared in “The Brownies’ Ride” in the February 1883 issue of St. Nicholas, a children’s periodical that published stories by writers such as Louisa […]

By Paul Stimmler

The toy company we know as Structo was formed in 1908 by partners Louis Strohacker and C.E. Thompson. Located in Freeport, Illinois at 122 North Powell Avenue, they were originally known as the Thompson Company. The company started by making erector-type toy steel construction sets which they sold directly to the retailer as well as being marketed to A.C. Gilbert and Company of Connecticut who had construction sets of their own. Thompson sold the construction line to Gilbert in 1915.

From 1916 to 1919 Thompson made electric motor-driven toys and highly detailed automotive assembly kits including those illustrated here. Over the succeeding years they had a close and cooperative relationship with an equally famous neighbor company in the same town–Arcade. Structo made stamped-steel parts for Arcade toys and Arcade made cast-iron parts for Structo toys.

By the 1920s, the company was making stamped-steel windup and push toys, some with spring motors and others without. In the late 1920s and into the early 1930s the Structo line was also marketed […]