Vigo County Historical Society

Toys of childhood highlight history

The lives of those who read this column may be quite different, but they have one thing in common. They were once children and being children they all, with few exceptions, played with toys.

Most men can recall a time when a model locomotive, a box of soldiers, a piece of farm machinery, or a cast-iron toy auto opened up the way to a world of magic and imagination.

The toys of childhood have an extraordinary power to throw an illuminating light on the society in which they were produced. It is perhaps this power that first attracts us to them. A scaled-down history of transport can be compiled by studying the toy conveyances that have survived.

The small car pictured here is one of many thousands which were produced during the first 40 years of this century. The automobiles began to appear soon after their real prototypes began chugging along the horse-carriage roads.

Cast iron toy autos were produced by many different companies, including Wilkins, Kenton, Arcade, Barkley, Kilgore, A.C. Williams and Champion. Many of them put no identifying mark on the toys and today they can be correctly identified through catalogs, patents and old advertisements.

Die-casting was an outgrowth of the invention of the Linotype machine introduced at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893.

A trade journal publisher named Samuel Dowst began to adapt the type-casting machine to making small promotional miniatures. By the turn of the century, the die-casting business was his principal business and he was producing a myriad of small party favors and candy premiums. Among these were small automobiles and trains.

By 1911 he produced a small limousine and in 1914 a 77mm. Ford touring car. All of these items were listed in the 1932 catalogs. The trade name for these small toys was Tootsie-toy, named for Dowst’s daughter. Other companies began to produce cars in larger sizes and in many different models.

This little car is very simple. It is finished with a dull-black paint and the only movable parts are the wheels. A child could push it or attach a string and pull it. Little boys usually pushed it as that gave better control. This was done by placing the hand on the cop and back of the car. The driver usually took a stomach-lying position on the floor.

The little car measures 6 1/2 inches in length, 3 1/2 inches in height, and 2 1/2 inches in width. The enjoyment of it depended entirely upon the imagination of the child who held it.

Circulated in the 1930s, this delightful memory-provoking car was presented to the museum by Vernon Hash of Terre Haute. It can be seen with many other toys of yesterday.