Kids Stuff

Here we have a display for an ad for “Toys, Toys, Toys….” You ask, “What, What. What” toys are they talking about? Here are just a few toys you might find in a circa late eighteen hundred mercantile or store. Wax dolls, Punch and Judy dolls, toy soldiers, wooden blocks, and self-propelled tin-plated trains. Also, steam trains, which some parents believed were too dangerous for kids, were a hot item. Kids of the time also played with metal toys, like pistols and guns, and friction toys, which moved as the result of the release of momentum stored up in a flywheel. There were also elaborate toys with bells. One of the most sought after toys of the time were cast iron savings banks with mechanical wheels or other moveable parts. An example of one of these banks shows a hunter shooting a bear. The child took his coin and placed it into the gun barrel, releasing the spring catch and shooting the coin into a slot in the tree trunk. Then, just when you think that’s all the excitement a tike could take, a bear emerges from the top of the tree trunk.