TIN TOYS

TIN TOYS Collection.

Welcome all Tin Toys lovers.
Tin has been a favorite metal of toy makers since at least the middle of the 19th century. Tin is lightweight, easy to work with, and inexpensive, yet it’s sturdy enough to withstand the punishment meted out by children playing with wind-up animals, friction sports cars, and science-fiction-inspired toy ray guns.

German toy makers such as Hilpert had been known for their tin toys since the end of the 18th century. By the mid-1800s, companies such as Märklin and Bing of Nuremberg were also in the tin-toy game. Advances in photolithography techniques, including the ability to print directly onto the tinplate before it was folded and shaped into its final form, should have been a boon to these already prosperous companies, but by the end of the century, many German toy makers still decorated their products the old-fashioned way, thanks to the large numbers of skilled workers who were adept at hand enameling and spray painting with stencils.

In addition to Märklin and Bing, other pre-World War I German toy makers of note included Karl Bub and Georges Carette, as well as Ludwig Lutz, whose transport toys were often sold under the Märklin and Bing names. Between the wars, Schuco produced a menagerie of wind-up animals, which are among the most collected tin toys today, while Fleischmann launched armadas of tinplate floating ships, some of which were powered by steam engines produced by Doll & Cie, which Fleischmann acquired in the late 1930s.

The tin-toy industries of England and France largely evolved in the 1920s, although the U.K. firm of Lines Brothers was making toys in the 1850s (long before its Tri-ang brand of cars were released in the 1920s) and William Britain of toy soldier fame made clockwork tin toys in the 1880s. But perhaps the most influential British tin-toy maker was model-train impresario Frank Hornby, who made clockwork tin trains as well as tin toys, the latter sold under the name Meccano.

Across the English Channel, one of the deans of French toy makers was Fernand Martin, whose painted tin mechanical toy figures were often costumed in real cloth to give them dimension. Transport toys were a particular favorite of the French. Automaker Citroen produced accurate tin promo cars for its dealers, prompting JEP (also known as Jouets de Paris) to compete with the industrial giant. Charles Rossignol, founded in 1868, was also big on tin buses, race cars, and delivery trucks.

In the United States, one of the earliest makers was George W. Brown of Connecticut, who partnered in 1856 with Chauncery Goodrich so that he could use the clockmaker’s locally made mechanisms in his wind-up toys. Edward R. Ives also got its start in Connecticut, sourcing his clockworks from the New Haven Clock Company. Brooklyn-born Louis Marx arrived on the toy scene later, but became the biggest of them all—by 1950, the company that bore his name was the largest toy manufacturer in the world. Among Marx’s most successful products are the wind-up Disney characters, while his Merry Makers mouse band featured a quartet of tuxedoed rodents, none of them resembling Mickey.

While toy makers in the West had every right to be proud of their products, their work would be overshadowed somewhat in the 20th century by makers in Japan.
Manufacturers had been impressed by the German tin trains and ships imported at the end of the 19th century. Soon they were riffing on the German construction techniques, using imported tin to create Japanese vehicles such as rickshaws and indigenous animals like goldfish and tortoises. By 1894, after official hostilities between China and Japan ceased, Japan’s toy industry took off, fueled by technological advances in tin lithography and the punch machines that manipulated the metal to the exacting specifications of its designers.

Before World War II, Japanese companies such as Masudaya, Tomiyama, Saito, Kuramochi, and A.K. Toy were making tin streetcars, locomotives, and even the tracks they ran on. Tin toys in which balls were kicked or sent to the tops of towers so they could roll down again were all the rage. Water-landing aircraft were also popular in the 1920s and ’30s, as were trios of airplanes and biplanes that spun in circles from the tops of clockwork-powered merry-go-rounds.

But things got really interesting after the war, when Japanese toy makers produced armies of tin toy robots, fleets of tin spaceships, and stockpiles of futuristic tin weaponry, which produced everything from eerie ray-gun sounds to sparks. Toy cars were also a hallmark of the Japanese tin-toy industry, some of the most beautiful of which were built by Yonezawa, Marusan, Bandai, K.S. Toy, Ichiko, and Mitsuhashi.

Collecting tips

1. Although every collector has their list of dream toys that they would like to own, the best way of building a fine collection is to take opportunities as and when they arise. The most unusual toys can appear at the least expected moment and these opportunities should be taken. There are still constant surprises especially with 19th century toys and if an item has quality, appeals and is in the right condition it should be bought even if it is not on your ‘shopping list’.
   
2. Always buy the best quality and condition that you can afford. Long after the price has been forgotten a great toy in fine condition will give pleasure and usually proves to be a wise investment.
   
3. Learn from your mistakes. Every collector and dealer makes mistakes either as to value or originality. As long as a lesson is learned just put it down to experience and move on. Always look forward to your next acquisition rather than fretting over a past mistake!
   
4. Be very careful in attempting to clean or restore a toy yourself. The old medical adage of ‘Physician do no harm’ can be adapted to ‘Restorer do no harm’. Cleaning with the wrong materials or ‘touching up’ a toy to ‘improve’ its appearance can seriously damage or devalue an item. It is always best to leave it in its virgin, as found state than try to overclean and lose patina.
   
   
   
   
   Simple cleaning with enzymatic fluid (commonly known as spit) soaked cotton buds will do no harm and works well. This can be followed by a light polish. Techniques needed for cleaning and paint conservation will vary from toy to toy depending on the type of dirt, the paint or lithographic finish and many other factors. I personally leave this to the professionals.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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