Toys
Popular boy’s toys of this period reflected the new and exciting cars, trucks
and planes, while girls went for the traditional toys of dolls house and dolls.
American toy manufacturers excelled in the production of mechanical toys.
The greater part of the foreign toy competition was in the cheaper grades of
play-things, with the Japanese toy-makers and Germany shipping large
quantities of cheap toys for the American market.
Much like today there was a huge variety of toys including Clockwork Toys,
Planes, Trucks, Tractors, Buses, Power Boats, Trains, Steam Engines,
Musical toys, Character toys, Circus toys, pedal cars, sports, war toys, and
construction toys like Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys. These included tin toys,
pressed metal and cast-iron toys, wooden toys and paper toys. There
seemed to be a bigger variety of toys available for boys than girls.
Classic vehicle toys for boys were made by companies like Buddy L, Tootsie,
Wyandotte, and Marx - while dolls for the girls were supplied by Effanbee
and Schoenhut.
Due to the expense of store-bought toys many hobbyists created homemade toys from wood and metal. Age old favorites like spinning tops and
kites were complemented by more sophisticated steam engines and pumps
or model airplanes.
The 1920’s saw a movement away from war toys which had been popular up
until that time. A major change in the toy industry came about with the
introduction of modern mass production methods. For the first time the
industry was able to produce toys cheaply and sell to a mass market.
Toy production was relatively limited in volume until 1927 when polystyrene
was invented. Because Polystyrene is a tough, durable kind of plastic that is
ideally suited to toy design, it ushered in a new world of toy development.
Although the modern style of Teddy Bear was developed about 1907 it was
only in the 1920's that its popularity took off when companies like the
Knickerbocker Toy Company mass produced them. The Knickerbocker Toy
Company started in 1920 and still makes teddy bears today. In the 1920s,
musical bears and mechanical bears increased in popularity world-wide. The
two leading manufacturers of these novelty bears, Schuco and Bing, made
bears that walked, danced, played ball, and even turned somersaults.
Likewise the Yo-Yo. It had been in existence for centuries but really took off
in popularity when promoted by entrepreneur Donald Duncan after he saw it
demonstrated in Los Angeles.
Meccano Ltd was a British toy company established in 1908 by Frank Hornby
in Liverpool, England to manufacture and distribute the very popular
Meccano kits and other model toys created by the company. During the
1920s and 1930s it became the largest toy manufacturing company in
Britain, producing three of the most popular lines of toys of the twentieth
century: Meccano kits, Hornby Model Railways and Dinky Toys. In 1925
Hornby produced the first electric train sets in the world.