The Small Screen: Inside the World of Mid-Century Toy and Novelty TVs

by Douglas R. Kelly

Early televisions—those made in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s—have a devoted following among collectors, and rightly so. Like the automobile before it and the Internet after it, television changed the human experience in a fundamental way. News, information, and entertainment graduated from printed (books and newspapers) and aural (radio) formats to a visual medium. As hard as it might be to visualize in 2026 with our streaming services and instant access to content, those moving pictures on that little box in your living room represented a truly new way to see the world.

It didn’t take long for toy and novelty makers to climb on the bandwagon. With millions of kids watching Dragnet and Leave It to Beaver, miniature TVs started appearing in stores soon after the real things. If you grew up a TV kid, having a miniature version was a great kick, especially if it was one of the TV pencil sharpeners that you could bring to school without fear of it being confiscated because, you know, you needed it to sharpen your Ticonderoga No. 2.

Starting in the late 1940s, when televisions and television programming began to become widely available, toy TVs generally were made as one of three types: banks, changers, or flickers. The alphabetical approach usually works well, so let’s start with banks.

Emerson entered the TV wars with a 10-inch screen model in 1947 that was considered a lower-end product despite its $375 price tag—an amount equal to a month or more of the average working American’s income. Not long after, Emerson produced a miniature of its
television in plastic, complete with (non-working) tuning knobs and a black-and-white photo of a clown pasted on the screen. There was a coin slot on the top of the TV, and the box sported the name “TV Picture Bank.” At a little less than 4 inches in width, the owner of the bank would have had to put a lot of nickels and dimes through the slot to save for Emerson’s full-size model.

Unlike most toy TVs, the Emerson bank is a very good model of an actual TV, in this case Emerson’s 600 series model from the late 1940s. It’s made of a hard plastic that has “swirly” patterns in it and, along with the “Life-Tested” version shown here, it also has been found with the words “Ultra Wave” on the box and on the bottom of the TV. In original condition with a complete box, these banks generally sell for $40 to $60.

Model car and airplane kit maker Revell produced a plastic TV bank around the same time, based on a Philco TV set. It was about the same width as the Emerson, around four inches, but it offered more play value than the Emerson because it used a “D” battery that powered a lighted reel. A knob on the front changed the images on the reel, and the coin slot was on the top of the unit. The Revell retailed for $2.98 and today is a fairly rare piece, selling for $100 or more if in original condition.

Toy maker Louis Marx, under its Linemar brand name, produced a tinplate wind-up TV bank that, when wound, showed drawings of Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Daisy Duck, and other Disney characters. The coin slot, like the other banks mentioned, allowed young users to save their pennies for the other Marx toys they’d see in stores—and, well, on TV. The Disney factor makes this one very sought after and even worn examples can bring $200 or more.

There is another tinplate TV bank, made by an anonymous manufacturer, that often turns up in antique shops and at shows. It’s almost four inches in height and two inches in width, and along with a wonderful lithographed image of a period TV on the front, it is often found with the name and address of a business on the back and/or sides, as it was used as a promotional item during the 1940s and 1950s. The coin slot is on top and clean original examples can be had for $30 to $40.

And before we leave the TV bank category, we’ve saved one of the best for last. During the mid‑1950s, the RCA company produced a promotional plastic coin bank based on an RCA TV
repairman that was just loaded with charm. Standing about five inches high, “TV Joe,” a rotund repairman sporting RCA decals (one of which says “Silverama,” RCA’s name for some of its TVs at the time), is very similar to the gas station attendant figures put out by companies like Esso and Phillips 66 around that same time. TV Joe apparently was given out by RCA dealers at the time, and also was available by sending in 35 cents to an address in Mt. Vernon, NY. His coin slot is on the back of his head, and he has rather a smug expression on his face. Clean original examples are hard to find today; if it’s in (or with) the original RCA bag, expect to see a price of $125 or more on the little fellow.

Change Is Good
The next type of miniature TV, the changers, could be found in gift shops all over the planet. These were small (usually an inch and a half to two inches wide) plastic TVs that featured a button or plunger on the bottom that rotated a disc inside the TV, showing various scenes of wherever it was you were vacationing. Good fun except for the fact that these little marvels were generally made on the cheap, resulting in many survivors being non‑working paperweights. Well, not even that, as these little things weighed next to nothing.

If you can find them still in working order, and they show scenes of popular destinations like the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls, you’ve found a desirable piece. They generally don’t go for much more than $20 or so (including versions made in Europe), and they have a real kitsch factor that’s hard to beat.

An exception to the cheap quality thing in this category was a very small (1.25 inches in width) TV that was made as a mail‑in premium in 1949‑1950 by Ralston Purina as part of a series of products based on the movie actor Tom Mix. The little TV had the name RCA Victor across the top front, and by pushing a rotating “film” disc at the back of the unit, you could peer into the front (not the back) of the TV and watch a “show” consisting of five scenes. The example shown here features “Tom Mix Solves the Television Murder,” and other discs included The Marx Brothers, U.S. Jet Planes, Lou Costello, and various cartoon characters.

Ralston Purina’s Tom Mix premium TV was just an inch and a quarter wide, but it packed a lot of fun into that small package. The film disc can be seen sticking out above
the top of the TV in the back.

It’s a wonderful period piece, despite the fact that surviving examples almost always are missing the rotating discs and/or the back of the TV. A complete example with a disc and the back piece won’t set you back much, probably in the $15 to $20 range.

The Flickers
This last category is made up of miniature TVs that have a “moving” picture on the screen, an effect that often is called “lenticular.” It was achieved by printing two or more views of a scene (drawings and cartoons) on a sheet of plastic in such a way that moving the object causes the scene to “move” or “flicker.” Along with miniature TVs, the flicker effect also was used on novelty rings dispensed by gumball machines.

Kohner, the New Jersey‑ based company that also made a popular line of plastic push‑puppet toys, was the leading manufacturer of flicker TVs. They came with all kinds of scenes including cartoon characters, sports, and birds and animals. Some were just the TV with the flicker scene, while others had a pencil sharpener mounted on the back. If you were a kid during the late 1950s and 1960s, the flicker images on these things likely bring back memories of dime stores and gumball machines, and today prices range from just a few dollars to $30 or more for desirable examples.

Lastly, although they don’t qualify as vintage, the Basic Fun company produced a line
of what it called “Tiny TV Classics” a few years ago. They’re 2.5‑inch‑wide plastic TVs that feature shows such as Batman, Family Guy, and Star Trek. Each TV plays actual scenes from the show, and each comes with its own miniature remote. They’re great fun for $15 to $25 each.
We’ve just scratched the surface of toy and novelty TVs here. But hopefully this has primed the pump, so to speak, for those interested in hunting for these magic little boxes.

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Douglas R. Kelly is the editor of Marine Technology magazine. His byline has appeared in Antiques Roadshow Insider; Back Issue; Diecast Collector; RetroFan; and Buildings magazines.

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April 2026