Railway Handcars

Saturday, February 7, 2015
Cloudy and cold

Railway Hand Cars

   I saw today's interesting grouping of railway handcars earlier in the week. when I was looking at toys on Liveauctioneers. I narrowed the search for several of the people who have helped me out, and I came up with Morphy Auctions.  Dan Morphy has been one of the earliest people and auctioneer who helped me out when I stopped buying and selling toys on ebay. The company has expanded over the recent years, and purchased an auction company in Las Vegas. As well, they now sell old and rare cars.

Please click here to visit this fine American auction company

Most of these toys are probably from the 1930's-1940's. At the time, cartoons were an important feature in most newspapers, leading to their being designed into toys. I always wanted to try a handcar. I've never seen one up close, but I think they're quite heavy looking at photos. Now these would be great if you wanted a good outdoor exercise to keep fit. The original "real" handcar could be operated by one or two people, but I'm sure most of the time two people propelled it.

Since the original handcar was designed in a limited production, there were probably few companies that actually manufactured them.  Consequently, there were few differences among them. Eventually, someone figured that if you added an engine you could save people from having to work hard to get from point A to point B.

 With limited differences in the real handcar, the toys  are correspondingly quite similar to each other. Most have 2 characters, except for the "bunny" rabbit, and most are hand wound with a key.

What is very usual with any key wind-up toy is the fact that the key often gets lost. The good news though is that there are plenty of toy parts companies to be able to find a replacement key. 

Walt Disney was extremely;y popular in the 1930's and 1940's and created a lot of interesting characters. As a result, many of his characters were made into toys and dolls. 

Most everyone knows Micky Mouse, and Donald Duck. Below you can see Minnie Mouse, another Disney character.  It's interesting that in several of today's toys, there are slight difference sin the colour scheme. Below you have two versions - the green handcar and the orange one. T I always wonder why a toy manufacture would have the same toy, but change the colour scheme. It would have cost a bit more, and why have extra inventory and costs?

  Here we have the two most famous Walt Disney Characters -  Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.

What just came to mind is which cartoon or fictional character was made into the most numerous amount of toys ever? Sometimes, I think that I think too much, especially being 66 years "young" and coming up with these questions!

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

Newspaper Comic Character Toys

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Newspaper Comic Character Toys

    Cartoon characters were very popular in the early years of newspapers. Although I was born in 1948, I did see large whole pages of newspaper comic characters. At that time newspapers were also much larger.  However, even before 1948, cartoons and the comics were very popular and readers read them every day.

    The history of the Nifty Brand is quite interesting. The best place to read up on this "brand" of toy is to go to Scoop, an e-newspaper. As it turns out, a man by the name of Mr. Oscar Witt who had been employed as a comic strip cartoonist (artist).Later, he designed board games for children's play.   Eventually,  Oscar Witt, came up with the idea of designing toys with newspaper comic characters. He was the owner of the Nifty Brand which people at th time thought was the actual manufactuer of the toys. However, as it turned out, the toys were made in Germany by H. Fisher, and distributed in the USA by another company,by the name of Geo. Borgfeldt.

   Many of the cartoon (comic) characters of the times were clumsy or always fighting. As a result, Oscar Witt decided to design many of the Nifty Brand toys with that idea in mind. If you look at the

photos, you'll see below most of them a small write-up describing how the comic characters moved.

Please click this sentence to be redirected to the Bertoia Auctions website

"The Powerful Katrina" was a character from the newspaper syndicated entry titled "Toonerville Folks". Katrina was a very strong woman,and so to illustrate this point, the young boy is held up by 1 hand. Being a wind-up toy, KAtrina moves and the boy rises and falls through her movement.

With this wind-up toy, the "characters" bounce up and down, almost falling out of the truck, 

as it moves along.

"Mr. Jiggs" was a copyrighted cartoon characgter by Mr. George McManus through International Features Service (also a copyright owner). As the car moves, Mr. Jiggs head moves and bobs ina jerky motion.

The Nifty Brand also manufactured other toys besides the highly-successful line of cartoon toys. 

Here's BArney Google, another famous cartoon character from the 1920's-1930's. 

This is simply a push toy that will roll after it is pushed.

Another of the trucks made by the Nifty brand. THis one is a wind-up, but with an interesting mechanical movement. AS the truck moves forward, the bed will tilt towards the back. Eventually, the tailgate will open.

Here's another wind-up toy with another interesting movement, similar to the truck above. The truck moves forward, stops, the flatbed tilts, and the cans, I assume drop out. NOtice the cleverly though out wheel at the back. That prevents the truck from tilting too much and falling over.

Mr. Jiggs, whom I mentioned before, had a partner in the newspaper comics by the name of Maggie. THey'd always get into an argument in the papers, and would eventually hgave a "falling out" (fight). He'd use the cane, and her "weapon" of choice was the umbrella.

"Felix the Cat" was one of the most popular cartoon comic characters of the "Platinum Era of Comic Characters". I remember seeing him, and of course "Mickey Mouse" on TV in B & W, and of course silent (no sound). in the ealry 1950's.  The toy is another windup, and Felix moves forwards and backwards as the tricycle moves forward.

Another pair of newspaper comic characters called "Buttercup" and "Spare Ribs" (the dog).  This toy is a pull toy as you can see from the string. As the toy moves, Buttercup's head and the broom move up and down. 

What's interesting about all of these toy is that they have managed to survive 90 years or slightly less. The process of lithography on tin certainly made the paint adhere to the metal well. What's also interesting, is that most of the comics in newspaers were at the time in black and white. Adding the colour to the toys must have made these characters all the more intertestin to the children who received them.

Thgankd for dropping by,

and have a restful weekend, or weekday,wherever you may be.

Stacey