The History of Toys

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Our childhood toys are touchstones to our earliest and most personal memories. They are common ground amongst our peers and they evoke deep feelings of nostalgia for the simpler times in our lives. My name is Laura Taylor and I am the Curator of Interpretation at the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures. I'm the one on the right. Join me as we explore the history of toys. Germany was the cradle of the toy industry for centuries. The dense forests provided plenty of material for carving and whole families including children engaged in the production of wood toys that traders spread across Europe. Advances in technology during the Industrial Revolution moved the toy industry from the cottage to the factory and the mass migration occurred from the countryside to the city. A new white urban middle-class emerged with expendable income. These parents were not dependent on the labor of their children who enjoyed more playtime than previous generations. The idea that childhood is a distinct developmental period began to take shape and parents invested in toys that would educate their offspring in cultural customs, religious beliefs, and the skills they would need as adults. The toy industry thrived like never before. As unpretentious as they may seem, toys are complicated objects embedded with social, cultural, technological, and historical information about the past. Tracing the history of toys allows us to examine our own development as human beings. Let's take a look at some toys in the collection of the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures. Soft and steadfast, our earliest toys console us when we are lonely and protect us from the mysterious and unfamiliar. They ease us through the terrifying transition of falling asleep and guard us while we are dreaming. They also endure our fierce affection and stormy wrath, never minding our rough treatment because they are meant to be loved to pieces. The most iconic comfort toy of all time is the teddy bear. In 1902, an artist named Clifford Berryman drew a cartoon of Teddy Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear cub in Mississippi. Berryman continued to include a cub in his cartoons about Roosevelt, which he called Teddy's bear. Russian immigrants, Rose and Morris Mikdom, were inspired to make a soft bear to sell in their store, and they even wrote President Roosevelt to gain his permission to call it the teddy bear. Their company, Ideal Toys, became one of the most successful toy companies of the 20th century. Around the same time, the German company Steiff began to make their own soft teddy bears. This Steiff bear was owned by Mabel Dixon, who was born in Andrew County, Missouri, in 1900. Her mother died when she was a baby, and she was raised by her maternal grandparents. A rare surviving photograph in 1906 shows Mabel with her beloved bear. As an adult, Mabel recalled that when she was mad at her dad, she would give her poor bear a punch in the nose. Despite this abuse, Mabel's bear remained her faithful companion throughout her life. The photo on the right shows Mabel with her bear and cat in her later years. Dolls keep our secrets and bear the marks of our haphazard care, as we assume the role of parent, companion, and confidant. In dolls, we see ourselves, but from a safe distance. They are our delegates as we unravel and explore complicated adult relationships and experiment with cause and effect. Baby dolls offer children the opportunity to learn nurturing and caretaking. Children traditionally practice these skills with younger siblings, but a drop in the birth rate after World War I prompted parents to look for realistic, commercially made dolls that would teach their daughters nurturing skills. The Bilo baby was one of the earliest to fill this need. Sculpted after the likeness of a three-day-old infant by artist Grace Story Putnam, the Bilo baby became one of the most popular dolls of the 20th century. This six-inch Bilo belonged to Mary Alice Klein, who got it when she was seven years old in 1924. It has a breakable bisque head, which required Mary Alice to handle it just as carefully as a newborn. Anne Smiley's Tiny Tears doll produced tears from two small holes when its abdomen was pressed. A bottle full of water filled its stomach. Anne had this to say about the doll. I just remember cuddling her in my arms and maybe wrapping her in a blanket, pretending like she was a real baby, and changing diapers with those little tiny gold safety pins. That was fun because it was just water. I never did babysit or have children, so this was my parenting experience. Scott McBride was just five years old when he received a Sandy McCall doll for Christmas in 1959. Scott named the doll Sam, and the two were faithful companions throughout Scott's childhood. Standing nearly 38 inches tall, Sam was the right size to share Scott's clothing, and he even had his own baseball team uniform. When Scott was a teenager, he wanted to get his ear pierced, and his parents said no. Scott tried to pierce Sam's ear, a mark that can still be seen on the doll. Seeing oneself in one's doll is important, and it influenced African-American doll maker and entrepreneur Beatrice Wright to create her own doll company in the 1960s. The B. Wright Toy Company produced both girl and boy dolls with a mold that was modeled after one of Mrs. Wright's children. Eager to grow up, we turn even the most tiresome of adult duties into the subject of our playtime rituals. Fashionable lady dolls reign over all things domestic, while brave toy soldiers march on secret missions. By imitating the trappings of adulthood, toys allow us to try on the roles and responsibilities we must eventually assume. Eleanor Crocker of Buffalo, New York, received this elegant French fashion doll from her maternal uncle, Dexter Rumsey, around 1860. Nellie lost her mother at an early age and lived with her grandmother, Rumsey, on Delaware Avenue, which is also known as Millionaire Row. French fashion dolls and their many accessories communicated idealized expectations to upper-class girls about manners, dress, and behavior. Eleanor's doll possessed an extensive wardrobe that included a corset, stockings, gloves, and hats. A hundred years later, Mattel would produce Barbie, the most iconic fashion doll of all time. Like Nellie's French fashion doll, Barbie allowed girls to explore what it meant to be an adult woman with all the trappings. Like hundreds of thousands of girls over the last six decades, Donna Kay Lackman loved to play with Barbie. As an only child growing up in the 1960s, Donna would spread her toys out all over the living room, imagining that Barbie went on dates, babysitting jobs, or exotic trips. Donna's mother, a home economics teacher, made Donna's Barbie a spectacular wardrobe. Although separated by a century, both Nellie and Donna found in their dolls the opportunity to imagine their future roles. Both girls would grow up to attend college. Nellie married and had a large family. Donna became a career military officer and traveled the world. Inspired by Mattel's success with Barbie, Hasenfeld Brothers, which later became Hasbro Industries, developed G.I. Joe in 1964. Believing that parents would not buy dolls for boys, the company coined the term action figure to describe their 11 1⁄2-inch articulated figure. Fathers of the 1960s served in World War II or Korea, and playing with G.I. Joe was seen as a means of preparing boys for a future that included military service. This G.I. Joe belonged to Rick Gunter of Clarkston, Michigan, whose father served in World War II. Rick recalled playing Army often and that it was just part of the culture. As negative public perceptions about the Vietnam War caused war-themed toys to fall out of favor, G.I. Joe was rebranded as a generic adventurer in the 1970s. Our toys may be silent, but they are not mute. They are full of messages about the society we live in. Some are used as tools of propaganda, intentionally promoting specific ideas. Others unconsciously reinforce standard beliefs and practices of the day. With the passage of time, they may retain their original meaning or become symbols of ignorance and prejudice. Toys that reflected biblical themes were popular with Victorian parents as a means of instilling religious values in their children. Called Sunday toys, they were favored over secular toys on the Sabbath. This Noah's Ark has a collection of two-by-two animals that includes everything from elephants and zebras to grasshoppers and snails. This 1889 game titled Wild Indians is an example of how prejudice was reinforced through toys. The instructions encourage a single player to capture the wild Indians or marbles by driving them into the center stockade without touching them. The art on the box depicts a conflict between Native Americans and white settlers. A white woman holding a baby stands in front of a burning cabin. The game is branded with Parks Wyanoke Indian Liniment, a New Hampshire company that promised an all-natural remedy to a variety of illnesses from rheumatism to chillblains. The toy reinforces negative stereotypes that Native Americans are wild and savage while simultaneously using the name of the Wyanoke tribe to lend credibility to the product. Learning can be fun with the right toy in tow. Games exercise our physical abilities, test our memories, foster competition, and challenge us to play nice with others. Science kits and contraptions condition us to solve complicated conundrums. Designed to tutor, coach, and counsel us, skill-based toys disguise their instructive purpose within the joy of play. Learning through play is the main purpose of toys, and some toys teach more practical skills. Here we have three toys that teach spelling from the 1880s, the 1950s, and the 1980s. The technology and materials that they are made from are vastly different, but the concepts they teach remain the same. In the early 20th century, scientific and technological advances opened up new career fields, and toy companies began to market toys that would prepare children, primarily boys, to work in these new industries. These toys included chemistry, engineering, and architectural building sets. The World of Science Chemistry Lab Kit from the 1960s includes everything a budding chemist would need to begin their exploration of chemical compounds. Notice the imagery on the box includes both a boy and a girl, along with their imagined adult counterparts. the tagline promises, adventures in tomorrow's world. Marble playing, which reached its zenith in the middle of the 20th century, was a skill-based game that taught sportsmanship and competition. Although most marble games were organized and structured by kids, adults took the opportunity to influence children for the better by arranging community tournaments. From 1947 to 1962, hundreds of thousands of boys across the country participated in local, state, and national tournaments sponsored by the veterans of foreign wars. Any boy in good standing at school could play, and tournaments served children across racial and economic boundaries. For World War II veterans, the tournaments provided opportunities to reconnect with their families and communities. For the boys who took part, the tournaments offered valuable experiences in competition, sportsmanship, and camaraderie that would last a lifetime. The first VFW national tournament was won by Ray Warren, a 13-year-old boy from Old Hickory, Tennessee. Ray overcame many obstacles in order to participate and faced off against 34 boys to become the national champion. His prizes included two trophies, a Parker pen and pencil set, a first baseman's mitt, and a Schwinn Whizzer motorbike. As history happens on the global stage, it is immortalized in the toy box. Current events are relived in our backyards and on our living room floors, creating an awareness of the world around us and shaping our place in it. Borrowed stories of fame, fortune, politics, and war bring the headlines to the playtime. On April 6, 1924, the Army Air Service, which later became the U.S. Air Force, began the first around-the-world flight. Four Douglas World Cruisers departed Washington State, heading westward for Asia by way of Alaska. The trials and tribulations of the four planes, named the Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and New Orleans captured the public's imagination. The Wolverine Supply and Manufacturing Company produced the Aeroplane Race Round the World Flyers 10 game. Armed with the game pieces, two to four players could spin the dial and face challenges encountered by the real pilots on their journey. Just toss me up and away and I'll come down, read the instructions on the box of the Raggy Doodle U.S. Parachute Trooper, a stuffed doll with a silk parachute. This trooper belonged to Steve Otto who grew up in Columbia, Missouri during World War II. Steve did everything he could for the war effort. He scanned the skies for enemy aircrafts as a junior air raid warden, collected tires off his father's car for the rubber drives, and corresponded with a cousin who served as a pilot overseas. Toys like the Raggy Doodle Parachute Trooper reinforced patriotic values in American kids who were making sense of the war at home. When the Brooklyn Dodgers started Jackie Robinson at first base on April 15, 1947, he broke through the color barrier that relegated African-American players to the Negro Leagues. Robinson's fame and accomplishment inspired many toys, including this composition child doll dressed in the Dodgers uniform with Robinson's number 42 on the back. In the age of technology, toys are portals to the fanciful realms featured on radio, film, and television. They transform us into heroes, explorers, and celebrities. We can travel among the stars in a spaceship or capture criminals with the crack of a cap gun. Free of the roles prescribed to us by supervising parents, we imagine a life full of drama, mystery, and excitement. The Rocket Space Pistol XC-31 was based on the futuristic cartoon strip and radio show Buck Rogers. The story, set in the 25th century, featured guns that fired explosive rockets. Dumont Reed lived on a farm in Pawnee County, Kansas and received this toy pistol for his birthday around 1934. Eighty years later, Dumont could still recall with excitement the Pop the Pistol was still emitted when the handle was cocked. As the 20th century progressed, space exploration captured children's imaginations. Many toys were created that predicted future modes of transportation. The Astro 8 features a single pilot under a clear plastic dome surrounded by lithographed instruments. Operated with friction, generated by three wheels, a spinning disc produced sparks under the red and green colored panels on the body of the saucer. through generations, our toys have served to comfort us, cultivated our relationships, prepared us to be grown-ups, shaped our values, educated us, helped us to make sense of the larger world, and sparked our imaginations. Think back on your childhood toys. How did they contribute to the person you are today? was there a toy that saw you through a difficult time? A toy that inspired your future career? A toy that helped you make sense of the world? We hope your visit to the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures will help you reconnect connect with your personal childhood touchstones. [00:18:28] Speaker ?: Connect with your personal childhood touchstones.