Penny banks Erector sets
From Bridgeport to Cromwell, factories once churned out toys for kids in Connecticut and beyond
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 electric-powered 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. Germanmade 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 horsedrawn 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 betterknown 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, toyand makers could be blatantly racist. Mechanical banks, cap guns, and other toys depicted degrading stereotypes of Black people and other racial ethnic minorities. Ives, Blakeslee & Co. of Bridgeport, for example, produced a cap pistol showing a U.S. immigration offi