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Toys From The Attic

Makes Good Cents: Vintage Gumball Machines

This Norris Master machine, in excellent original working condition and made during the 1920s, sold for $600 in a 2012 auction.
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

Robby the Robot windup from the movie Forbidden Planet and its killer box.
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

After ironing, the Hubley box flaps are now straight and true.
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

Sun Rubber Co. Dodge sedan. Where are the wheels?
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

Cast iron beast: The Karl Heusser “ Hela-Bob” bobsled. Photo: Dennis Simanaitis.
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

Ford’s Edsel Pacer postcard from 1958.
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

The Ford Delivery Wagon was the only model in the series that came with die-cast wheel hubs rather than tinplate.
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

Tootsietoy’s pre-war bus looks like it stepped right out of a classic 1930s Frank Capra movie.
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

Bantam released the book version of Forbidden Planet when the movie debuted in 1956.
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

Could it be any more British? Wardie’s wonderful miniature newsstand sported great period 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

Wyandotte’s Sunshine Dairy van.
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

The Packard taxi is straight out of a 1940s film noir.
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 ...