Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Happy New Year
The Penny Toy
Happy New Year's to everyone, and have a Healthy and Happy New Year.
Well, this is the year that our brilliant government initiates the elimination of the penny. They got this fine idea from Great Britian. I'm not happy about this because every transaction will be rounded off to the nearest 5 cents, and we all know that that usually means higher than lower. The lame excuse given was that it cost too much to produce the penny, at the same time they are squandering 35 billion dollars to buy some soon-to-be obsolete American F35 fighter planes. The Americans are now working on the next generation of fighter planes. If they wanted to save money let the US protect us, but I digress!
Once upon a time, the penny or cent used to have value, hence the term for these fine little toys. You could even buy nails for carpentry by the penny, hence the term "pennyweight". In the 1950's, I remember being able to buy gumballs for a penny, as well as a penny's worth of peanuts, jellybeans, and so forth. But today, the penny is gone, and so I'll be keeping a few of them to pass on to younger relatives for the future - a memento of times gone by.
The Penny Toy was first made in Germany, and with its popularity, spread across Europe to France, and of course, Great Britain. Eventually, the Penny Toy began to be made in the U.S.A. It's also called the Penny Litho Toy or Penny Tin Litho Toy.
The toy was made of thin steel that was plated with a fine coating of tin. From there,the early versions of this toy were hand-painted, but later were lithographed (off-set printed) on metal. Thus you'll sometimes see the same type of toy called either the penny toy, or the tin litho toy.
They also are usually mechanical or wind-up, allowing for different variations of movement to themselves. There seems to be plenty around, even though they are close to 90 years of age! Also, they are within reach of most people's budgets!
(please click on the above address to be redirected to where most of the toys belkow were listed)
All of the above toys have moving parts, but I left their descriptions out. I figured that you, the reader would be able to figure out exactly how the toys move. What's amazing, as I mentioned is that so many of these small toys still survive. What is also amazing, is that there were so many different toys based on the same theme of price and mechanical movement.
Times certainly have changed.
So welcome again to this blog, and I hope I'll have the drove and motivation to continue writing stories about old toys.
I am always open to invitation from anyone who'd like to be a guest on this blog, or who might want to suggest a topic for writing.
Thanks for dropping by, and
have a great day off with the start of 2013.
The very best to all.
Stacey
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