Toys From The Attic
Cruver: Twin Sons of Different Mothers
by Douglas R. Kelly Early plastic toys run the gamut in terms of quality. Some were well designed and well executed, while others obviously were made more with cost savings ...
Ragtop Summer: Taking a Look At Convertible Toy Cars
by Douglas R. Kelly Here in New England, winter loosens its grip reluctantly, often over-staying its welcome deep into the month of April. So when I learned in February that ...
Makes Good Cents: Vintage Gumball Machines
by Douglas R. Kelly All of the debate surrounding the U.S. government’s potential elimination of the penny—a coin with a long and illustrious history—ignores what I think might be the ...
It’s A Cardboard Thing
by Douglas R. Kelly Ironing vintage toy boxes and writing about the process in the February issue of the Journal got me thinking about some of the other boxes on ...
Crumpled Cardboard Toy Boxes: Doing the Ironing
By Douglas R. Kelly On the annoyance scale, there are probably worse things than a creased/wrinkled/crumpled box. I just can’t think of any at the moment. Finding a great vintage ...
Rubber Toys
by Douglas R. Kelly Best to get this out in the open, right off the bat: I’m not a rubber toy person. Over the years, I’ve owned a total of ...
Toy Sleds: Just One More Run
by Douglas R. Kelly When my editor, Judy Gonyeau, pinged me a while back and told me that toy sleds might make for a fun topic for this Holiday issue of ...
Paper Trail
by Douglas R. Kelly Given the time and energy we spend pursuing antiquities and artifacts, it’s kind of surprising to me that we have a tendency to give short shrift ...
Collecting Collectoys
by Douglas R. Kelly Louis Marx is never far from my mind. I didn’t know the man, but his company made so many cool and wonderful toys in the 1930s, ...
Summertime Scores
by Douglas R. Kelly Seems to me it doesn’t get much better than going on a summer vacation. This year, with family and job commitments, mine has been limited to ...
Out of This World Toys
by Douglas R. Kelly Science fiction movies made during the 1950s are among life’s greatest pleasures for at least two reasons. One, we didn’t know as much—as individuals or as ...
Micro Signage
by Douglas R. Kelly My great friend of many years, Renny Schoonmaker, likes to call these kinds of things “go-with items.” These are the displays, the ads, and the accessories that ...
Doing The Rounds
by Douglas R. Kelly If there’s an alternate me in a parallel universe, he may just be a milkman doing his rounds in a Divco milk truck. Not that I’m a ...
Hubley Manufacturing Company
by Douglas R. Kelly Hubleys have been pushing their way onto my radar screen lately. Over the years, I’ve more or less pursued the Pennsylvania-based toy maker’s “Real Toys” series ...
The T in Tinplate
by Douglas R. Kelly Most people familiar with automotive history know that Henry Ford’s Model T put America on wheels. In fact, the T changed the course of history, being ...
A Bird in the Hand
by Douglas R. Kelly American toys that are made in Asia are nothing new. Over the last 35 years, many American producers have switched production to China. Before that, Japan and ...
Coin Banks: Cold Hard Cash
by Douglas R. Kelly Strange, but I don’t remember ever owning a piggy bank. What I did have growing up was a plastic bassett hound bank, which I’ve since learned ...
British Americans
By Douglas R. Kelly There’s an old saying among collectors that is more than just an old saying: “It’s not so much the toys/paintings/table clocks that matter … it’s the ...
Prize Power
by Douglas R. Kelly Who doesn’t like winning prizes? Real prizes, that is, the good stuff … a jumbo stuffed animal at the carnival, or a cool treasure you pull ...
Wishful Thinking
by Douglas R. Kelly You’d think I’d know better by now. I’ve been hunting and grooving on vintage toys for more than 40 years, and I’ve learned my share of ...