Some Scans from the 1933 Dowst Catalogue

Wednesday, October 18, 2016
Sunny and Clear Skies
13 Celsius  56 Fahrenheit

Some Scans from the 1933

Dowst Manufacturing Co Catalogue

Our Dog Buddy

The small-sized Tootsietoys are one of my favourite toys. The toys were die-cast and many of them were cars and trucks. You could buy the toys individually or in sets. The sets of toys were boxed in a cardboard box, and would contain anywhere from 8-12 toys or trucks. The Dowst Manufacturing Company from  Chicago, Illinois, USA manufactured these nice toys.

Above:

 The sets of toys above were a truck  set and a car set.

The car set was relatively expensive for 1933. It sold for 50 cents!

Above:

 THe toys above came in boxes. The top half of the page shows the toys that came in the box. 

The box in the lower left corner was called the Bild-A-Car" set. The cars in the box could be built and dismantled to play with for another day. You can still buy these boxed 

sets on  ebay, but they are rare and very expensive. 

They can be priced from $ 1000.00 - 2000.00 US Dollars and even higher.

Above:

 THe vehicles above were trucks and trailers. The yellow truck with the silver trailers were milk trucks. The orange trailers were dumpsters, and the car transport was a "Forcar Transport. 

All of the trucks were modelled after the Mack trucks of the time.

Of all the cars, the LaSalle is the more rare than the other cars, 

and it usually gets high prices on ebay. The LaSalle car is not  shown  anywhere here, 

and perhaps came later after 1933. The Graham cars were also popular at the time, and many are shown below.

Above:

The cars were divided into the roadsters, sedans, coupes, and town cars for the very rich.

The "real" town cars would have a chauffeur driving the car, and catering to the people inside the car. The carts with the beige roofs were modelled after convertibles. Sedans and coupes came as convertibles or hard-roofed models. All of these toys had rubber tires.

When I was buying and selling toys on  ebay, I had all of the above toys.

Above:

Assorted trucks ranging from a "Wrecking Truck", which today is called a "Tow Truck". 

These toys measured 4" (100 mm) - 5 3/4" (145 mm),and also had rubber tires.

Above:

The top half of the page are cartoon characters from the newspapers of the time. The character at the 12:00 o'clock position is Moon  Mullins,. Going clockwise from Moon Mullins, we have Smitty, Uncle Willie, Uncle Walt, Kayo, and Andy Gump. 

The toys ranged from  2 1/4" - 3 1/4" ( 55 mm -82 mm)

Because of their small size, the toys were shipped by the gross (144 parts). There were 12 toys to a box, and 12 boxes in a larger container (probably a cardboard box or a wood container)

If you visit  ebay, you will usually see lots and lots of Tootsietoys for sale.

Sadly, unlike Dinky toys, the Dowst Manufacturing Company  changed with the times and made toys both in the USA and in Hong Kong. Eventually die cast toys changed with the times are were modelled after cars of the decade.The company was eventually purchased by the J.Lloyd INternational, Inc. company, and is still located in Chicago.

The company makes 40,000,000 toy cars a year.*

* From an article on the Tootsietoy Company in Wikipedia

Thanks for dropping by,

and as always,

Have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be.

Stacey Bindman

toysearcher@gmail.com