Newly-Presented Wolverine Toys

Saturday, November 29, 2014
Sunny and cloud, warming up later in the day

Newly-Presented Wolverine Toys

  As I was checking up on the latest auctions on Liveauctioneers, I was pleasantly surprised to see a new auction set for December 10, 2014 from Dan Morphy Auctions. Dan was one of the early auctioneers and company to help me out when I stopped buying and selling on ebay.  There's lots of nice news with regard to Dan Morphy Auctions. First, the company purchased Victorian Casino Antiques earlier in the year. That company coincidentally had helped me with my journey in writing about antique toys. He has also expand into different areas of the antique business,  has a new and very nice website, and the photos are larger!

Below is the older logo of  Morphy Auctions.

And this is the newer logo of Morphy Auctions

Wolverine tin & wind-up toys

The Wolverine Supply & Manufacturing Company (1903-1950) was founded in Pittsburgh by Benjamin Bain and his wife in Pennsylvania in 1903 and incorporated in 1906. The early Wolverine toys were set in motion by the weight of marbles or sand. These toys were highly popular and were usually designed to unload marbles or sand from an elevated hopper and once set in operation, they would continue to operate until the supply of sand or marbles was exhausted, thereby providing endless hours of fun for kids. "Sandy Andy" were these type of toys called.

In 1918, Wolverine's line expanded to include girls' toys. Introduced at the New York Toy Fair in March of that year, were such toys as sand pails, tea sets, wash tubs, ironing boards, glass washboards and even miniature grocery stores. In 1928, Wolverine introduced their "Sunny Andy" and Sunny Suzy" toys. Company advertising explained that the new names for the toys would cover all toys not operated by sand. By 1929, airplanes, boats, buses, and other toys had joined the Wolverine family of toys. Wolverine continued to expand their toy line throughout the 1930s, right up to the beginning of WWII, almost as if they were immune from the effects of the Depression. Even the sand toys, relatively unchanged from the early 1900's, were still being sold into the 1950's.*

Written description courtesy of FabtinToys

Please click here to visit this fabulous reference site on ebay for toys*

If you go to the Fabtintoys link above, you'll see this toy in action. There is also a link to Youtube. 

Wolverine produced a different type of toy from the regular toys such as toys and truck or dolls.

There were lots of movement to the toys so that after it was wound, the young child would watch and focus on all of the movements going on.

I was surprised to see the brooch below. Bakelite was the precursor to plastic. At the time (1930's) bakelite was used in many items including radios. The hardened material was ablto to work well with brilliant dyes to produce some of the most colourful rations and toys toys like to see.

It would be interesting to know why the company manufactured such a item or clothing accessory. 

I intentionally enlarged the instruction and box photos for you to read how this toy operated.

Now here's a toy that I'd enjoy watching a child play with!

 This would be  a fine toy for any child today, especially for parents who wanted the cild to learn at a young age.  There is music, there is movement, and there is the manual dexterity (hand/eye coordination) of loading the musical discs onto the toy.

If I have understand how the toy below toy operates from the photos, here's how I think it works:

1. Dry sand is loaded into the small house where the figure (an elf) is. The sand is best used dry.

2. The elf cranks a handle and sand starts to pour into the red bucket or chute 

on the opposite side of the  building (opposite the elf).

3. The sand pours  into the chute and then goes into the buckets inside the wheel. 

The weight of the buck causes the bucket to move (by gravity) and turn.

4. That tin can canister is for both pouring and catching the sand after in drops off the buckets.

I'm sure the Wolverine Company provided instructions to operate this toy outdoors and under parental supervision. You wouldn't want the hallway or toy room to become sandy while you r child played indoors. And you  definitely wouldn't want any "sand fights" inside the house!

Thanks for dropping by to visit,and as always,

have a really* great day

wherever you may be,

Stacey

toy searcher@gmail.com

* I will - It's my birthday today