Old Antique Toys: Bill Buttaggi's Kansas Toys

Friday, April 24, 2020
Sun with cloudy periods
11 C 52 F

Bill Buttaggi's Kansas Toys

This is the third instalment of Bill Buttaggi's

Kansas toy collection

"Kansas Toy and Novelty" was started in 1923 by Arthus Haynes in Clifton, Kansas. He believed that it was he who invented the slush cast toy when he accidentally dropped a recently poured mold.

Beginning with toy #8, a coupe, the stock number was cast into the side of the car. This may have been done so that salesmen could peddle them without needing to carry boxes of catalogs. All toys had metal wheels and many had a metallic lacquer finish. Unless there were several parts, bodies were all one color with black painted wheels."*

* Description Courtesy of HobbyDB

Please click here to visit this wonderful and informative website

There's a website by the name of Blurb, that allows people to write a book and add photographs. Below is the author's Blurb page where you can peruse the book, and purchase a copy from him. His name is Rodney Hopson, and there is a lot of history about the Kansas Toy and Novelty Company there.

Please click here to view Rodney's Blurb book

Many of the Kansas Toy and Novelty Company's toys had a lustrous paint added to the toy.

Several examples below illustrate this.

Below is the patent for a slush casting device. A reverse mould was made for the toy

from a higher-melting point metal. The liquid and molten "slush" metal alloy was poured through the top opening of the casting device. Once the metal cooled down enough, the casting machine would open (the bottom drawing), and the new toy would be removed. At this stage, the toy was "rough, and would have some additional metal attached to the basic car. This "extra" metal would be cut off, and the remaining surface would be smoothed down with sanding.