Toys From The Attic

by Douglas R. Kelly During my senior year of high school, I worked in the mailroom of a non-profit sports foundation. The CEO of the foundation was Mr. Rohlfing. I ...

by Douglas R. Kelly Toy cars have come in every size and scale you can imagine over the past 100 years or so, and we’ve probably explored most of those ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...