The History of Classic Western Toys - Award Winning - Documentary

[00:00:00] Speaker ?: Satsang with Mooji [00:00:30] Bob Terry: Howdy. Welcome to Plain Cowboy. My name is Bob Terry. The history of toys that celebrate the American West undoubtedly begins as soon as children entered the American West. It would be just about unimaginable to think that Native Americans living in the forests, deserts, and mountains of this land would not have fashioned toys for their children that resembled things in their surroundings and the weapons and tools the tribe used for everyday life. Just as such, toys are manufactured for children today, resembling everyday products that are used in our everyday lives. So the toy bow and arrow that is still a toy product available today has likely been around for thousands of years. Then, in later years, as the West was being more settled, toy rifles, toy pistols, and toy figures would have been carved out of wood and fashioned from other available materials that a frontier father and mother could use to make toys for their children. Or that the children would make for themselves. But at least by the mid-1800s, companies started producing toys that celebrated the American West with pull toys and small farm and ranch animal figures, and the cast-iron cat pistol, just to name a few. Then, by the late 1800s, endorsement toys for heroes of the American West, like Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack were becoming some of the most popular Western toys. So began the Western character endorsements that would reach an almost unbelievable height in sales all through the 1950s. The Western movies and TV shows created a vast amount of Western heroes for children to admire and want to emulate. Thus, the craving for Western toys of all kinds created an industry that was incredibly massive in the 1950s and still has a small part of the toy market today. The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City had a three-month exhibit of Western toys from February 10th through May 7th of 2023. The exhibit was titled "Playing Cowboy." The toys in this exhibit were taken entirely from my family's collection of vintage Western toys. McCaslin Chair and Curator of Cowboy Culture, Michael Grauer, selected Western toys from our collection that specifically focused on playing cowboy. So there were no toy bow and arrow sets, coonskin caps, fort apache, play sets, or anything else from our Western toy collection that did not specifically celebrate playing cowboy. We also produced videos on specific segments of the toys. The videos could be accessed by using a mobile phone and scanning a QR code. Those videos are included in this documentary. This exhibit was in a 7,500 square foot room and had an amazing attendance. And after it was over and all the toys packed up and returned to my family, we visited with a few of the folks at the Cowboy Museum about the toys and how this exhibit affected the museum. The mission of this exhibit was to give a glimpse of the history of the American Western toys that have helped children from all over the world use their imaginations to spend their playtime being adventurous heroes of the American Wild West. [00:04:14] Speaker 2: Playing cowboy was the highest attendance we've had possibly ever at a museum exhibition here at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. The opening night broke all the records and I think broke a lot of expectations. You know, a toy exhibit is not everybody's cup of tea in the museum world. You know, it's a very serious business, this museum world, and to do something that's fun sometimes doesn't resonate with certain people in that particular community. But with the huge crowds that came, it really did change the paradigm for the museum going forward on the type of exhibits we might consider doing in the future. And so it did, in many ways, broaden the philosophy of what it means to play cowboy and to be cowboy. We have a bully pulpit here at the National Cowboy Museum and have an obligation to tell all those stories and especially the ones showing how critical the cowboy as a symbol reaches worldwide, even today as a symbol of liberty and freedom that can't be rattled from the top of that horse that we all see him on. [00:05:22] Speaker 3: The Playing Cowboy exhibit and our focus on toys has, I think, heightened our internal awareness of what a gap that is in our collection. And so even the build up before the exhibit opened, we started looking at and just toys were coming at us from nowhere to add to the collection. And we've continued that even since. Michael is really good about keeping his eyes open, as are the rest of us, really, because we're all kids at heart and toys are just too much fun. [00:05:54] Bob Terry: During the late 1940s through the 1970s, the influence of the movie and TV westerns was everywhere. After school and on the weekends, children would strap on their toy guns and go outside to play with their friends. Many times in a group of children, the conversation might start out like this: I'm Roy Rogers. Okay, then I get to be Gene Autry. Okay, but I get to be Hoppy this time or I'm not playing. Okay, you can be Hoppy. I wanted to be Billy the Kid this time anyway. Then, in later years, other children's western heroes like Cheyenne or Matt Dillon or maybe even James West would be part of that conversation. The western's influence was very evident in advertising campaigns of everyday products, TV commercials, and newspaper and magazine ads. Western vacation destinations were very popular. The family could visit places where real-life lawmen and outlaws had their famous shootouts. Western film sets where their favorite TV and movie cowboys had filmed. For many, many years, the Westerns even went to school with children's lunch boxes, school tablets, binders, and any other accessory a child needed. Might very well could come in a Roy Rogers or some other cowboy hero endorsement item. [00:07:20] Speaker 2: Well, we put a coin-operated horse like you find outside a grocery store when I was growing up, and that was certainly attractive to every child who came in. And sometimes those children were a little above the measuring stick that we set on the wall. So there were a lot of large children and older children who wanted to ride the horse, but that was especially popular. The toy exhibit as well as well as the cap guns section, which had holster sets as well as individual cap guns, caps, and so on. It really was a trip down memory lane for people who owned some particular model, especially if they could find the one that they owned as a kid. [00:07:58] Speaker 4: The section of the toy exhibit that created the most interest, I would say definitely Champion. There was always a line for Champion. We had a little cup of quarters out, and it would always be empty at the end of the day. There would be kids riding Champion. There would be adults riding Champion. And I would tell people, you know, those adults, if Champion was out in front of a grocery store, they wouldn't be riding them like that. But because it was here in the museum, there they are on top of it, it pulls them to it. So I would say Champion is definitely one of the biggest draws. [00:08:30] Speaker 3: I think one of the most fun reactions that I saw, and interactions I guess you would say, would be when grandparents brought their grandchildren in. Because the grandparents really related to all the material in the show one-on-one. They could remember playing with those toys. I think many of the grandchildren had never seen a horse that they could get on and put a quarter in and ride. And so for them to be able to do that, and for the grandparents to see it, I think was equally fun. [00:08:59] Speaker 5: One of the things that I always found touching when I would go through the exhibition is the kids that would see a case filled with toys, people running towards it, and stand on their tippy toes trying to get as close as they could to the toys. Who doesn't love toys? Doesn't matter what age you are. And that was always exciting to see the kids. We also had a figurine table that the kids could play on, and I would see families surrounding it. The kids would find it first, and they would arrange the different figurines into different formations. And then pretty soon the parents would come along and discover the figurine table as well. And pretty soon they were making different scenes and formations with different figures all over the table. The kids found it first, and then the parents came along too. [00:09:55] Speaker 6: The thing that stuck out the most to me with the exhibit, and for those that attended the exhibit, I had a gentleman who was in his eighties, had tears in his eyes, and he was remembering his youth through the exhibit. I had some kids that were in their twenties that were playing with the toys just as if they were now six years old again. Watching that and then talking to them as they were playing with those toys, and talking about that was pretty amazing. And then we had people, including my granddaughters, and people that we knew that were two, three, four, underneath six years old, who play with toys, but haven't played with some of these toys, and they were enamored, and they wanted to play with them. And they got exposed to toys that were really important and part of our culture. So for me, it was a mix of all the ages that engaged, but probably the gentleman who was in his eighties, who told me his stories and had tears in his eyes. [00:11:04] Bob Terry: The first Western toy guns were undoubtedly carved out of wood, or perhaps sticks, that resembled a rifle or a pistol naturally by their shape. I can remember as a child playing with sticks as toy pistols. If I was somewhere where my toy guns were not. So children in the American West were most likely coming up with their own toy guns, at least by the late 1700s, early 1800s, as the migration to the West was really getting underway. But in the late 1800s, factories were producing cat pistols. Some of these were endorsement toys for Buffalo Bill, and by the early 1900s for the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West Show. From the time of its introduction, the toy cap gun was a very popular toy, with its heavy tough metal and real gunpowder in the cap that would pop and spark and smoke. Even today, I do not know of a child that is not thrilled by the workings of a toy cap gun. Cap pistols before World War II were made of cast iron. After World War II, cap pistols had been made from zinc. While cap guns and holster sets became more popular through the years, just as with all Western toys, the colossal desire and production came in the late 1940s and continued for about 20 years, before it started winding down. In the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, holster sets were elaborate. The more jewels and fancy shiny buckles, the more desirable. This is because of the Bee Cowboy movie and TV heroes having fancy holsters like Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and the Lone Ranger. But by 1955, the TV heroes started changing. Matt Dillon's holster was a plain drop-loop holster, so was Paladin's, but his did have a chestknight emblem. Cheyenne, Marshall Dan Troop, Tom Brewster, Bronco Lane, Bent Bonner, Brett and Bart Maverick, Jim Hardy, Jess Harper, Gil Faber, Rowdy Yates, Flint McCullough, the Virginian, and many others were wearing the plain-looking leather holster rigs. So that is what the children, in the later 1950s, started desiring. And as many companies as there were, and saddle makers that started using their leather scraps to make kids' holsters, the companies still could not make enough toy guns and holsters to satisfy the demand. In the late 1950s, several toy cap gun makers, after Toy Fair in February was done, and they had taken orders from stores like Sears and Roebuck and Montgomery Wards, would post that they were sold out for the year. They could not possibly make any more until after Christmas. So if you're a retail store that wants a good cap gun and holster line, you better get your orders in early next year. There were many large cap gun companies, Leslie Henry, Hubley, Nichols, Kilgore, Schmidt, Esquire, Crescent, Lone Star. Lewis Marks Toy Company also made many cap guns. There were also some smaller companies like Long Island Die Casting Company. Then in the late 1950s, Mattel launched its grand toy fanners and shootin' shell models, along with an extensive TV advertising campaign that took the toy cap gun and holster set market by storm. The Mattel Western toy cap gun commercials were captivating and did their job very effectively in selling Mattel's toys. So other toy cap gun makers started scrambling to make shooting shell models to compete. [00:14:36] Speaker 5: My favorite part was probably the cap guns, just because there were so many. I had no idea there were so many options. I only had one or two when I was a kid. So to see two walls just filled with the cap guns was pretty amazing to me. My brother and I would have cap guns and we would shoot each other and we were always really disappointed when that little ribbon of spark ran out and we had to make our own pow pow, pew, pew noises. [00:15:12] Bob Terry: The cap pistols and cap rifles needed ammo and there have been all kinds of different caps, 50 shot paper roll caps being the biggest part of the market. Some of these were perforated to roll in a spindle and make sure a cap black powder spot was always centered on the anvil right where the hammer would strike. But there have also been 100, 250 and 500 shot paper roll caps. Other types of caps have been 6 shot paper discs, 8 and 12 shot plastic rings, plastic strip caps, plastic single shot caps and paper single shot caps including the stick on paper single shot caps like the greenies used for the Mattel shoot and shell guns. [00:15:58] Speaker 3: The one that created the most interest might have been the toy gun section, especially with the older crowd, you know, my generation and older. And for me personally, I didn't realize that there made that many different kinds of guns. That was totally out of my radar. And to see all the different variations, all the different makers was really cool. [00:16:19] Bob Terry: Most of the toy companies that manufactured Western toy cap pistols also had a line of Western toy rifles. The rifles that were manufactured by the Lewis Marks toy company, in my opinion, are the finest works of art. Really looking like half-sized versions of Winchester, Sharp, Savage, and other brands of rifles that they are made to resemble. But Nichols, Mattel, and others made some beautiful toy rifles as well, as did Leslie Henry and Hubley. Many of you may have had a Hubley Rifleman rifle. Many plastic buttstocks were shattered when children would drop the rifle while trying to spin it, just like the Rifleman would do. But collectors find lots of Hubley rifles with missing buttstocks that cannot be replaced because the mold that made them appears to have been scrapped years ago. And to make another mold would be extremely expensive. [00:17:16] Speaker 6: The section of the toy exhibit that created the most interest was probably the guns and the cap guns. You know, everybody played with guns, had guns, and the guns in the collection, which was diverse and so well displayed, brought back a ton of memories for everybody. It's hard to just say that because I'm thinking about that too, because the toys and the play sets that we also had in there, I saw more people engaging and playing with those as well and talking about that. So it really is, you know, I'm thinking about this statement. It's hard to say because there were so many great things, but it was probably the play set toys and the guns together. [00:18:06] Bob Terry: The heyday of Western play sets started in the 1950s. Metal toy soldiers had been around for a long time. But after World War II, plastic injection molding really became a large part of the manufacturing industry. And the toy industry took full advantage of plastic injection molding to manufacture toys out of plastic that in the past had been made out of wood or metal. The Louis Marks toy company became king of the play sets with their very detailed figures. Louis Marks toys hired the best artists in the business, and it shows when comparing their toy play set sculptures to many of his competitors. Although some of the smaller companies like Auburn and Andy Guard were also very detailed and magnificent. And companies like Reisler from Denmark and Dolkop from Italy also have some great looking toy figures. But Marks toys were the premium sets with their excellent box artwork and impressive detail of every part and accessory. The metal western towns are captivating. Many different companies made sure to make size appropriate figures that would work well with any other sets that a child may already have. Marks toys also made some wonderful endorsement play sets complete with character figures from the television shows the whole family was watching. The craftsmanship is wonderful on all of them. But I think the artists that produced the Flint McCullough figure from Wagon Train really captured Robert Horton's likeness. A very interesting side note is that many Marks toys have become highly collectible, as with many other vintage toys. Back in the early 2000s, a very rare Marks Johnny Ringo play set sold for almost $9,000. Vintage toys can be a pretty big business. Some of the Marks character figures are very rare and were only available if you purchased the complete play set. Most of the character figures were made of a cream colored plastic. This made them stand out from the other blue or brown or gray cowboys. In a secluded spot in West Virginia is a fairly secret treasure mining operation. There are a few members of a very private club that conduct digs in this mine. And it is rumored that trespassers better keep out. The mine is where the Lewis Marks toy company would dump overstock and mismolded toys. Probably sometime in the 1990s, one of the members was digging and located a number of gray white Earp character figures all buried together. That is where this Marks white Earp character figure came from. I assume they were thrown out because they were molded in the wrong color. Back in the early 2000s, the farmer that owns the land told a toy magazine editor that he made more money selling toys that he found on his land than he did farming. [00:20:50] Speaker 4: The Western Tories that I had as a child, I had a play set. You know, it come with little molded teepees and little molded chuck wagons and all the figures. Man, I played with that all the time. It was always mixed in with my Hot Wheels, mixed in with my Legos, just everything. It fit right in with everything else that I had. So, three years ago, we moved my mom out of the house that I grew up in, and we'd lived there 35 years. And cleaning out that house, I found some of those little wagons, little teepees, that same set that I played with still have some of those parts. I kept them, but they went back into storage, but I've still got them. [00:21:32] Bob Terry: While the Western play sets have magnificent play value, toy companies are always working to develop items that have more ability to add to a child's imagination. This is where the action figures began. While a play set cowboy is more like a statue or a sculpture, an action figure, of course, has arms and legs that are jointed, so they can be displayed in many different poses, allowing a child to bend the arms and the legs and make a standing figure now able to fit on a horse. There are many different Western action figures, but the Johnny West series that launched on the toy market in the mid-1960s and continued through the mid-1970s, these were by far the most popular Western action figures. accessories such as wagons and extra horses and many different figures, and a ranch house could be added to a child's collection. [00:22:27] Speaker 2: I grew up going to my grandfather's farm in Northeastern Kansas, and Dad was a farm kid, and so we did a lot of farm work around horses and cows and so on when I was a kid. And I was just eating up. My favorite television show was Gunsmoke. My first horse's name was Gunsmoke. So I, of course, loved any Western toy I could get my hands on. And I carry in my wallet a photograph of me at about four years old, and it's Christmas time, and I got a new pair of cowboy boots and a new cap pistol with a holster set that went with it. And so that's one of the toys that I remember the most, although I had other Western toys, other cowboy toys throughout my life, the Johnny West figures, for example. And just about anything cowboy or Indian I could get my hands on, I played with and cherished. [00:23:14] Speaker 3: As a child, one of the first toys I remember getting was Jane West and all her clothing and all of her camp gear and her horse and all of the tack that came with the horse. And I can remember dressing her, you know, and changing her outfits and taking the tack on and off the horse, and it was just one of my most cherished toys as a kid. And in fact, not too long ago, I decided I needed to have one for my own again. And I went on Facebook Marketplace and I found a woman who had one for sale and I bought it. And I was really happy until I realized that as a museum person, since we didn't have one in the collection, I really should offer it up to the museum to become part of our collection, which I did, which we accepted. So now I don't have a Jane West. [00:24:00] Bob Terry: Western board games have been around at least since the late 1800s. In an 1800s department store catalogs toy train game description. One of the things mentioned is in the game that the train transports livestock from Texas. The oldest board games in this exhibit are from the 1930s, including the extremely rare 1930 board game The Big Trail, an official endorsement item for the Raw Walsh movie that was John Wayne's first starring role. This is a very early Western toy movie endorsement item. While there are Western board games dating from the 1800s to even new ones today, the enormous increase in production of Western board games, of course, happened in the late 1950s through the early 1960s, when the TV Western heroes were at their peak. So, many of the games in this exhibit are from that era. In my opinion, the box work on these board games is some of the most magnificent artwork ever done for children's toys. By attending and producing Western film and memorabilia festivals, my family was blessed to meet many of the Western film stars, and very honored to become dear friends with a few of them. Some of the board games in this exhibit are autographed by the wonderful stars we have been blessed to get to know. [00:25:23] Speaker 5: I think it depended on the age of the visitors as to what parts they enjoyed most of the exhibit. The kids certainly loved the Jesse and Woody from the Toy Story movies. They were used to seeing those movies and were familiar with Woody and Jesse, so you would see the kids running to that section. For some of the older generation folks that were visiting, they would often find the merchandised products. I would always hear them say, "Oh, I used to have one of these when I was a kid," or "I got this at Christmas one year and it was the best Christmas ever." And it was always exciting and rewarding to hear those comments and being able to see the families connect with each other through the toys that they were seeing and seeing the grandparents sharing with their kids and grandkids. [00:26:17] Speaker 7: It's hard for me to say which would be the best for other people. I think the Toy Story part probably resonated with more people just because it's so much more recent. My brother got involved because he is a graphic designer and we really had the idea for some kind of fun Toy Story inspired backdrops to accentuate the toy exhibit. And my brother designed some very cartoony Old West style landscapes, buildings, and the cool thing about those is they're actually based on the Prosperity Junction town that we have here at the museum. He actually took those buildings and kind of simplified and cartoonized them. So, a little Easter egg. [00:27:06] Speaker 6: So, the Playing Cowboy exhibit brought in a whole new audience for us. It brought in a younger audience. It also brought in an older audience. It brought in both. I think it was a great example of how everybody can feel that story and feel a part of it. So, whether you're a grandfather or a grandmother talking about what you used to play with and you came in here and you saw these phenomenal toys from the past. But you also saw some stories from the current as well. But even my son who is, you know, 28, he's like, "Dad, we had that playset, exact playset. We had that when I was a kid. We had that." So, we hit all these ranges of people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. And then we hit new kids, even like my grandkids, who came to the museum just a couple weeks ago and said, "Hey, where are all the toys?" Because it's their favorite part of this museum. So, it brought in so much energy and joy and passion for what toys bring to life. And so, you know, as much as we want to, you know, cherish and relish the movie Toy Story, it is for real. You know, for when you have a toy, you remember that toy. And that toy means a lot to you and it brings back all these memories. And I can tell you that exhibit for me, personally, it brought back tons of joy and memories. And even the smell of the cap gun, it took me back 55 years like that. [00:28:25] Bob Terry: The Toy Story series revolves around a cowboy toy named Woody. And other toys, including many Western toys like Cowgirl Jessie, Bullseye, Woody's Faithful Horse, and his sidekick companion, Stinky Pete. Of course, there are some other starring toys like the space toy, Buzz Lightyear, and various other types of toys that would be found in a typical child's toy box. But many of the younger folks may not be aware of the origins of these Western Toy Story characters. Woody is the cowboy hero. The inspiration for him begins with movie heroes like William S. Hart and Tom Mix, but developed through the years to incorporate Western heroes like Roy Rogers and even Marshall Matt Dillon. Sheriff Cowboy Woody is a combination of all these movie and TV cowboys put together. So a child that is very familiar with Toy Story, if introduced to classic Westerns, will instantly recognize the ethics and good guy characteristics that all these movie and TV cowboys have in common with Cowboy Woody. Of course, many of the Western heroes have an oftentimes comical companion commonly referred to in Western films as a sidekick. The most famous of these, the king of all sidekicks, is of course, George Gabby Hayes. Gabby was a sidekick to many of the cowboy heroes. Hopalong Cassidy, John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Roy Rogers, and many more. But there were many more cowboy hero sidekicks like Smiley Burnett, Fuzzy St. John, Andy Devine, and even Festus Hagen. Many of the sidekicks even would have their own endorsement toys and comic books. Stinky Pete with his whiskers and overalls was clearly derived from all the 1930s through 1970s Western cowboy movie and TV show sidekicks. Bullseye has his roots in all the amazing wonder horses of Western films. William S. Hart's Fritz, Tom Mix's Tony, Ken Maynard's Tarzan, the Lone Ranger's Silver, Gene Autry's Champion, Roy Rogers' Trigger, and many more. A cowboy needs a faithful horse with the intelligence to rescue his cowboy friend by carrying him to safety through dangerous ground or untying his hands if he has been taken prisoner or going for help if his friend is trapped. Bullseye is just such a horse as all of the faithful steeds that came before him. Cowgirl Jessie has her roots as far back as when Buffalo Bill added Phoebe Ann Mosey to his Wild West show in the late 1800s. And, of course, the world would come to know Phoebe as Annie Oakley, a woman who could show she was one of the best rifle shots in the world and would travel the world showing her shooting skill. But, undoubtedly, Jessie was also greatly influenced by all the spunky, hard-riding, straight-shooting women of Western films. Like Dale Evans, who was quick to show she could handle herself in tough situations. And even television's Annie Oakley, Gail Davis, who would show she could out-shoot and out-smart the bad guys every week. Yes, Jessie, the yodeling cowgirl, was certainly drawn from these great movie and TV cowgirls. The Sheriff Woody TV show that was shown in Toy Story 2 is most certainly inspired by the real children's television show Howdy Doody. As you go back in time in this exhibit, you will see endorsement toys from some of the magnificent cowboys, cowgirls, sidekicks, and horses that inspired the Western characters of the Toy Story movies. [00:32:15] Speaker 2: Well, the Playing Cowboy exhibit had a particular target demographic, and that was children. And what we learned during the run of the show was that we reached out to children in the traditional sense. But a lot of children were 70 years old and remembered these very toys and playing with these very toys. So, as Bob Terry likes to say, each of these toys is a time machine. It transported people back to their childhood. So, we reached children of all ages, something I'm not sure we've ever done here at the National Cowboy Museum on that level. [00:32:53] Speaker 7: The most interesting thing to me was probably the lithograph toys. I'm a big fan of antiques and anything old, of course, that's why I work here. Lithograph toys, the tin toys are just a lot more interesting. They're like works of art. I also really like the early remote controlled little guy with the guns. I just thought that was really interesting. There were a lot of one-off special things collected over the years that really I just thought were extra special. [00:33:28] Speaker 4: One thing that really stuck with me from the exhibit was the amount of nostalgia from the opening. Everywhere you went, people were saying, "Oh, I had that when I was a kid. I had that when I was a kid." Even one guy, he had seen the coloring books, the scans that we had of all the old coloring books. And he said, "The only thing from this exhibit that I had as a kid is one of these coloring books." And he said that it reminded him of his grandma's house. And so just seeing that, all the people feel that during the opening was something that I'll definitely remember. [00:34:06] Bob Terry: In the 1800s, dime novels filled the eastern part of the United States with stories of the Wild West. With the adventures of Buffalo Bill and other real and fictitious heroes of the American West. Then as the century turned, there were even more children's books with series of adventures from characters created by various authors. Then as radio and movies became such a large part of society, the fictitious adventures of movie heroes like Tom Mix were published in comic books, which launched a flood of western movie hero comics. Bob Steele, Johnny McBrown, Ken Maynard, Red Ryder, and of course, Roy Rogers, Hoppy, and Gene Autry. Just to name a few. The movie hero comics and western stars from the silent era on are almost innumerable. And then television took the country by storm, starting in the late 1940s, with The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Castee, which resulted in an avalanche of children's western books and comics. [00:35:10] Speaker 3: So, one of the notable differences in the toy exhibit from other exhibits that we've had in the last few years, first of all, was just the sheer size. The number of pieces that we had in the exhibit were in the hundreds, and we normally don't have that many objects that we're working with. And then working with a private lender, that was also very much more fun than working with another institution. They're just more willing to open themselves up and really help us understand what these items were about, and where they were from, and what the connections are. So, for us, it was a lot more fun working on this exhibit than maybe some of the others we had recently. [00:35:47] Speaker 7: I had the privilege of going through the exhibit with my family. And I brought my aunt and my dad and my grandmother and my brother. The whole family came. So, anyway, the interesting thing to me was walking through it with my dad and hearing his childhood memories. And, you know, there were things that he talked about in the exhibit that, for example, he would walk through and he said, you know, we're looking at plastic figures. And he said, you know what, I used to have a little toy where I could mold my own plastic figures. And I got to have the moment of saying, oh my gosh, we have that just around the corner. And that happened a couple different times. But my favorite thing was when we came up to the lunchboxes, my dad, unbeknownst to me, I'd never heard this before, but he said to me, well, he said to all of us, when I was a kid, I had a dream of having the Wild Wild West lunchbox. And we got up to the case and it turns out there was one just like it in there. And he, it was funny because he never got it. And he was talking about his mother, my grandmother, and he was joking about how she didn't buy it for him. So the exhibit actually opened up a wound that was 50 years old. It's pretty funny. He got to give her a hard time about that. That's something that, you know, I never really, never knew about my dad, you know, got to find that out. So that was pretty cool. It's kind of fun to be able to get something you wanted as a kid all these years later, you know, or at least see it. [00:37:36] Speaker 4: The toy that I found most interesting was the sawdust guns from World War II, just because the condition they were in and the materials they were made from. And I hadn't, I didn't realize that they had made them like that during the war. And just the condition that they were in, they were immaculate. And so that was really interesting to me to see that in that condition. [00:38:01] Bob Terry: In with the toy pistols and holster sets was a black set of pistols and a holster set made from extremely thin leather. The set is small and very unimpressive until you know exactly what it is. During World War II, many materials were rationed or perhaps not available at all. So toy makers had to be innovative and use what was available. The black guns, like many toys manufactured in the mid-1940s, are made of pressed sawdust mixed with glue, then painted black. There are no moving parts. The holsters appear to be made of the thinnest split cowhide I think I have ever seen. Being such a fragile toy, it's incredible that this set of toy guns still exists. These must have been stored away and probably never played with. If a child had played with this set and left it out in the rain just once, the whole set would have been ruined. Although there are many toys that were made during the war out of sawdust and glue. And since this set was factory made, there must have been many of these manufactured. This is the only set I have ever seen. The V on the pistol's grips was a common sign on products during World War II. As many of you know, it means V for victory over the wickedness that America was fighting against. [00:39:25] Speaker 3: What toy I found the most interesting is hard to say because my level of interest in so many areas, I think, wouldn't allow me to pick one thing in particular. Again, I marveled at the number of toy guns and the different makers. I marveled at the number and different kinds of toy guitars. That was fun. I personally connected to Jane West because that was something that I had as a child too. [00:39:58] Speaker 8: While the largest part of the western toy industry by far has been for boys, there have also been some cowgirls out there. Dale Evans Rogers and TV's Annie Oakley, Gail Davis, were outstanding role models for little girls. As a result, cowgirl holster sets, play clothes, outfits, board games, play set figures, dolls, adventure books, comic books, action figures, jewelry, and other endorsement items have been manufactured. Since the toy cowgirl items were a much smaller part of the market, there have been measurably fewer cowgirl toys produced. Because of this, many of the cowgirl toys have become some of the most sought after, rarest, and most difficult to find. And if you are a collector, you have learned they have also become some of the highest priced. [00:41:01] Speaker 7: I would say the Playing Cowboy exhibit was really the main component of our fun exhibits that we tried to have all at that one time. We had another exhibit about comic books and another one in the hallway about video games and that kind of thing. But the real crown jewel was the toy exhibit. It was really, it just made us so much more fun there for a while. Yeah. [00:41:36] Speaker 6: The Playing Cowboy exhibit, I've been here eight months. Michael Grauer, who is tremendous, who is our curator of cowboy culture and everything cowboy, will tell you, and he told me, because he's been here longer than me, that this is one of the best exhibits he's ever done. I can tell you from an energy perspective, it was the most energy of anything that we have done since I have been here in the eight months. And it was also one of the most fun things that I've done since the eight months. Not only from a professional being the President and CEO of the museum, but also from a personal nature because it was toys and just like everybody else that didn't remember with it, it brought back things to life with me. Michael also would every now and then allow me some sneak peeks before we opened, so that was even more cool. [00:42:21] Speaker 3: We had a lot of work to do. Again, just the number of items that we took on loan, which were in the hundreds, and then finding space for us to unpack all of those and be able to look at them and evaluate and figure out which pieces exactly were going to go into the exhibit, took a lot of space, took a lot of extra tables. We literally had to line the aisles of our collection storage area with eight-foot tables, and they were packed solid with all of these fun things, which we all wanted to play with, but we knew we shouldn't be playing with. So it was very challenging from that point of view. So up front there was that, then the entire time that the exhibit was up, and we didn't use all of the objects, we started to repack so that we would be that far ahead on the back end. But even with all of that extra work in between, we still had hundreds of things to pack afterwards, and it took, we recruited several other curatorial staff members to help us with that. We finally got it done, but yeah, that was probably the most challenging exhibit from just a logistical, spatial, work area point of view that we've ever done. [00:43:35] Speaker 5: The exhibition certainly saw an increase in visitors to the museum. We had a lot of people coming just for that exhibition. It was a wonderful exhibition, great outreach for guests to discover their youth again, and I wish we had it here longer. [00:43:53] Speaker 6: For me too, I think, I want to thank the Terries. I want to thank the family. I want to thank all of them for their passion, their energy, for sharing their toys and sharing their collection with us, but also being part of us and part of our stories that we tell here. You know, we are all about, you know, authentic stories and authentic people, and they're it. And so, you know, we're blessed to have them as friends. We're blessed to have them in our, in our, in our museum. We're blessed to have their stories here, and we look forward to doing more with them as we continue to go in the future. And, and we just really thank them. [00:44:28] Speaker 2: When we had the opening night for Playing Cowboy, it was a huge crowd. And it is the flood of people that just kept coming and coming through the door and, and seeing those people break into huge smiles and huge grins was so gratifying. I've, I've been doing museum curation for almost 40 years now, and have done about roughly about 170 exhibitions in my career. I've never seen the reaction that we saw that night to, to the crowd coming in and seeing the shows. I will say that many, many of those exhibitions, I had to work with lenders and I've never worked with a more generous family than the Johnny and Bob Terry family. Um, who really did literally open the doors and let us clean out their house or at least partially in the way. Um, over 800 toys that we brought here to the museum and sorted through those and came up with the cream of the cream and the best of the best. Uh, and their level of cooperation, the Terry family's level of cooperation and assistance, even down to polishing plexiglass. Um, helping us set up the final exhibits. I've never seen anything like that before. And so to see that level of commitment to telling that playing cowboy story, um, really, really touches me in a very, very deep place in my heart. And so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'll be forever grateful to the, to the Terry family for the willingness to share and especially to, uh, pitching in the cowboy way, uh, to, to help us do this magnificent exhibition. [00:45:58] Bob Terry: Cowboys are not a race of people. Cowboying is an occupation, a job. Cowboys include people from all races and to be a cowboy is to be in a brotherhood of men, just as other occupations create brotherhoods. Children want to emulate and imitate people who they see to be larger than life. Children from all cultures have spent their playtime playing cowboy. When I was very young, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Rogers were heroes for a vast amount of children from all over the world and still are heroes to many, young and old. The young for the adventures on the movies and TVs and the old for what Roy and Dale were in their real everyday lives. I once asked a friend of mine when you were a child, why did you want to grow up and become a cowboy? He told me because a cowboy just seemed to be everything a man should be. For close to a hundred years, the entertainment industry portrayed the main character cowboys and cowgirls of their films as being honest, brave, strong, kind, tough, fair, giving and patriotic. Someone with a good work ethic, someone who would keep their word, appreciative and considerate of others, God-fearing, and the protectors of the weak. The classic TV westerns from the 1950s and 1960s are programs that the whole family would enjoy and can still enjoy together. And that is why children for so long wanted to grow up and be cowboys and cowgirls. Because what they saw on the movie and TV screen made them see a lifestyle that seemed fair and right and just. The entertainment industry seems to have largely strayed from that formula, instead glorifying anti-heroes like Butch Cassidy, whose biggest claim to fame is being a thief. Someone who would rob honest, hard-working people. So that is one of the reasons that children playing cowboy is not mainstream anymore. But if you get to know real ranchers who live every day taking care of the livestock that provides food for your table, you will see those good honest values of fair play and justice and hard work and knowing right from wrong. And you will see their children playing cowboy in their playtime and growing up with the integrity of that life ingrained in them. No matter what occupation they choose as adults. If children are introduced to the films of Roy and Dale and the other cowboy heroes of yesteryear, they will be watching good character building entertainment. And we'll be excited to add playing cowboy to their playtime. Thank you for joining us. We hope it has been inspiring, educational, and perhaps to many of you, a thrilling, enjoyable trip to a simpler time when you spent much of your childhood playtime playing cowboy. Thank you. [00:49:15] Speaker ?: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.