Old Antique Toys: Kiddies Metal Toys Brand (USA)

Tuesday, January 14, 2014
(Warm and Drizzle)

Kiddies Metal Toys Brand

(USA)

I saw the nice fire truck below and decided to look at the description. AS it turned out, the name of the company "Kiddies Metal Toys" was new to me. So I did a further search on Liveactioneers, and one of my friendly auctioneers - Bertoia Auctions had sold a nice group of them over the years.

History*

I often visit several excellent resources on the Net, when I need to find historic information about toys. One of these exceptional sites is antique toys.com.

The Kiddies Metal Toys Inc. company is associated with the name "Oh Boy" that usually appears on most of their toys. From mu investigation, there is a lack of information as to the exact time when the company was established and as to who created the company. WWW.antiquetoys.com - a great toy history reference site, writes that the company might have been in existence as early as 1914, although evidence of newspaper advertising has the company existing in 1920. Initial manufacture consisted of games and novelties (whatever that is), as well as toys for the beach (pails, shovels). Other toys came in sets such as tea sets, and doll house furniture.

Automotive toys began to appear in 1926 under the trademarked names of "Oh Boy!" and "Big Motor Toys". These toys were mostly trucks and were quite large in size, as many other companies of the time. Sizes ranged from 19" - 23" ( 482mm - 584mm).

"Characteristics of one of the Kiddies Lithographers, Mr. Louis Emmets toy truck design were the toys large sizes, non-functioning steering wheels, metal wheels (Balloon) and high crown fenders. Nearly all of the Kiddies automotive toys were affixed with a Kiddies Metal Toys, Inc. decal which carried the manufacturers production number. Some toys were Lithographed entirely, while others received a shingle coat of enamel. Kiddies Metal Toy,Inc. continued to advertise in the major toy trade publications until the middle of 1931. After that, the company seemed to have simply disappeared."

* www.antiquetoys.com/info.php3?1stCity=&value=Toy~Companies~K~-~Z

Currently, this address doesn't seem to be functioning