State has long been a giant in toymaking
Most toys under the tree this year were made somewhere far away, but once upon a time, Connecticut workers produced a child’s wonderland of clockwork, mechanical, and electricpowered playthings.
Factories from Bridgeport to Cromwell turned out toy trains, cap pistols, mechanical banks, and the famous construction sets known as Erector, among many other toys, part of a technical and societal shift that made toys a huge business.
Up until the early 19th century, as Edward T. Howe wrote in an article for ConnecticutHistory.org, most toys were homemade. Girls played a lawn game of hoops and sticks called graces, while boys played a push-along stick and hoop game. Children also received so-called “Sunday toys,” which had Biblical themes. German-made Noah’s arks were popular and often came with full complements of intricately carved and painted animal pairs.
In 1838, Francis, Field and Francis of Philadelphia became the first-known company to make a manufactured toy in the U.S., a tin horse-drawn fire engine, Howe wrote. In Connecticut, toy making started in 1856 when George W. Brown of Forestville made tin pull-back and clockwork toys, including a train.
Connecticut emerged as a preeminent toy producer in the mid-19th century due to native ingenuity and a skilled labor force. A core of clock makers, machinists, iron molders, and tin makers used advances in mass production to serve a rising middle class that had spare time and money. Also fueling the market was a fresh philosophy about children’s development.
“Increasing prosperity combined with the enlightened belief that a child’s innocence and happiness were fundamental to the development of moral character,” the Connecticut Historical Society’s Elizabeth Blakelock wrote for a society exhibition on old toys. “For the first time, children were encouraged to express themselves through play.”
The J. & E. Stevens Co. of Cromwell, established in 1843 as a hardware maker, was among the better-known firms in the state’s early toy manufactory. By 1870, Stevens was producing almost 1,000 toys, including tiny cookstoves with accompanying pots and kettles, toy cannons, whistling tops, and scaled-down tool chests.
Cast-iron mechanical banks became the company’s specialty. “Penny banks” were made in many animated scenarios in which a coin dropped or was slung into a cavity with the press of a lever. Stevens produced about 300 models, starting in 1869, including a dentist yanking a man’s tooth, William Tell firing a coin into the apple atop his boy’s head, and Professor Pug Frog’s Great Bicycle Feat, in which the distinguished amphibian revolves on his bike while dropping a coin.
In those days, toymakers could be blatantly racist. Mechanical banks, cap guns, and other toys depicted degrading stereotypes of Black people and other racial and ethnic minorities. Ives, Blakeslee & Co. of Bridgeport, for example, produced a cap pistol showing a U.S. immigration official pulling a Chinese railroad worker’s pigtail and booting him out of the country. Stamped on the gun were the words, “Chinese must go.”
Even so, people collect Stevens banks and have paid tens of thousands of dollars for the rarer ones. A check of eBay showed many Stevens banks being offered for more than $1,000 and one, the Bull Dog Bank, listed at $4,970.81.
Model train sets eclipsed mechanical banks in popularity, however, and Connecticut was home to two giants in the field, Ives and American Flyer. The Ives Manufacturing Co. of Bridgeport launched in 1868. Both Harry Ives and A.C. Gilbert of New Haven, who acquired the Chicago-based American Flyer model train company in the late 1930s, capitalized on the idea that playing with toys could strengthen children’s minds (boys’ minds were the focus at the time).
“Ives Toys broaden the boy as he plays,” an Ives ad from 1919 said. “He uses his ingenuity and thinks for himself as he learns the fundamentals of transportation. The self- reliance he acquires while playing with Ives Toys helps him later in life, whatever his vocation.”
Alfred Carlton Gilbert also embraced the role of toymaker as educator. Gilbert got his M.D. from Yale in 1909, but never practiced medicine. Instead, he began making toys with a focus on precision and innovation. The company’s American Flyer trains were based on blueprints of actual locomotives and cars. Gilbert also made the famous Erector sets, which came with pictures on the box, but no instructions.
The A.C. Gilbert Co. also made chemistry sets and a kit that allowed a child to melt lead, which one museum director called “probably the most dangerous toy ever made.” Sharp edges and other hazards were not a concern in those days. Rich kids even received scaled-down steam locomotives and fire engines, which one antique toy expert labeled “fairly dangerous.”
Other prominent early toymakers in the state were Gong Bell of East Hampton, one of several companies in that bell-making center that produced jingling pull-toys, the precursors of stuff made from plastic today by Playskool and Fisher Price.
All those early toymakers are long gone, but the state did retain a toy-centric reputation with Lego Systems Inc., formerly based in Enfield but recently relocated to Boston; The Wiffle Ball Inc. of Shelton; and Pez Candy Inc. of Orange. Of course, the Frisbee launched in Connecticut, along with Silly Putty.
Officially, the Frisbee was launched in California by Wham-0, but that company bought the rights to the Pluto Platter and named the toy after Bridgeport’s Frisbie Pie Co. tins.
Most recently, the Melissa & Doug wooden toy company of Wilton made its mark. The company was recently sold for $950 million to Spin Master. Founded in 1988 by Melissa and Doug Bernstein, the company’s toys are designed to evoke creative play, with popularity growing in tandem with grassroots efforts to reduce the use of plastics.
Connecticut has a strong presence in the National Toy Hall of Fame, housed in the National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. In 2017, the Wiffle Ball was inducted, along with the board game, Clue, and the paper airplane.
Toys don’t have to be namebrand creations to be honored. Past hall-of-famers include the stick (2008), the cardboard box (2005), and the blanket fort (2011).