More Chrysler Airflows

Wednesday, November 22, 2016
Overcast with Snow
1 Celcius 34 Fahrenheit

Please click here to visit this fine American Seller

I've written before about the Chrysler Airflow, but I decided to search again for more photos. 

The Airflow was  built from 1934-1937, but sadly did not dwell well, and was a commercial failure. 

The car was aerodynamically built to create less wind resistance, and  also used a unibody (monocoque) construction for added strength and to be more aerodynamic. Chrysler built a wind tunnel to study the flow of air over the car, and how less resistant to air the car was, hence the name "Airflow".

 

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

Mr. J.E.Brubaker's Creations

Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Sunny with clouds
19 Celsius / 66 Fahrenheit

Mr. J.E. Brubaker's Creations

Today, October 4, I hit the 400,000 page views milestone, and decided to write about toy patents. This is where the genius of talented people comes from in order to make successful toys. The creator of the patent was Mr.  Brubaker, and the Original Assignee" was the Hubley Manufacturing Company. 

I selected these visual patents because they represent the ingenuity of inventors and toy designers like Mr. Brubaker. Also, these patents made excellent wall decorations when framed. You can find many of these patents either at the US Patent Office or on Google.

 When you type in "Google toy Patent Inventions", you will find many toy inventions on a Google sub-website. Interestingly, there are several people and companies who actually sell these patent sheets on the Internet and on ebay!  So now you know where to download them at no cost!

   You probably never ever heard of J.E.Brubaker. Mr. Jacob Brubaker was the chief toy designer and created for the Hubley toy company in the 1920's-1930's. If you've been following my blog, you'd know that was a great time period for cast iron toys, and Hubley was one of the larger companies to make these wonderful toys at the time.

Please click here to visit the U.S. Patent Office website

Please click here to visit Google Patents' search page

   The U.S.Patent office website is very complicated when it comes to finding patents of any kind. If you like the patents screen-captures below, then an easier way to find them is to type in search words such as "toy patents" in your search engine, and then change the viewing from "all" to "images". I use Google as my search engine, and it's the best for finding the patent screen-captures that you'll see below.

   Toy cap guns were very popular in the 1920's-1930's,and Hubley and Mr. Brubaker certainly made and patented several. For those who don't know, a "cap" is a small double-sided piece of paper that has a small amount of  powder in it.  The cap is placed in front of a "bullet", and when the gun hammer strikes the bullet, the cap ignites and makes a large "bang" noise.  I used to have a "cap gun" six-shooter as a child, and every Saturday morning, I would go through a several dozen caps and fire off the gun. Nobody ever complained, but I'm quite sure that I certainly woke up some people on the street!

The Hubley grasshopper was a very successful and unique type of "pull toy". As a child pulled the grasshopper, the legs moved back and forth,and up and down. At the same time, a small metal strip (part 18 in the diagram) and a small gear with teeth (part 17) would rotate. This created a "clicking sound" that resembled a cricket-like "chirp". Since this toy was patented, it was the only cast iron grasshopper toy at the time.

The airplane below is pressed steel and was patented in 1939. What is unique to this toy is that the landing gear (tires and rims) are able to be position in the horizontal or vertical positions. In the horizontal position, the landing gear would be parallel with the wing and flat. In the vertical position, the landing gear was in the vertical position, and the toy could be rolled on the ground. 

The toy below was patented in 1934 and was modelled after the Chrysler Airflow. THe "real" car was made by Chrysler and is very beautiful, and advanced for its' time. However, it was never a success in terms of sales, and was discontinued afar only 3 years of production.

On the other hands. tens of thousands of these cast iron Hubley toys were manufactured.  What made this toy unique is the fact that the undercarriage (underneath the top body of the car and includes the tires and rims) could be separated from the car body. By removing the spare tire (6b), from the rim (6), the car could be dismantled (taken apart).

I purchased one of these toys on ebay, and it certainly was a fantastic toy to have in anyone's collection. I enjoyed it, by taking it apart!

The cast iron convertible below also could be taken apart. A strong flexible wire  (part 4) could be hooked to part 3, which resembled a small hook. IN this position, the undercarriage and the upper car body were together. When the wire was positioned "off the hook", the 2 parts could be separated. 

Some of the Hubley cast iron toys  has a light or pair of lights at the front.THese were battery-operated, and could be turned  on or off. Below are a car racer and a motorcycle. Part "L" is the front headlight and part "D" is the battery.THese toys were also very popular, and are highly prized as collectibles 83 years later. They also happen to still work as well!

I would like to thank all of you, my readers, who have discovered my website and who have allowed me and my blog to reach this milestone. Relatively speaking, by far, I am not hugely successful as a website, but 400,000 page views is nothing to be ashamed of either. I hope to keep writing, and I always invite any of my readers, auctioneers, or collectors to write to me if they would like me to create a post for you. ANd for all the people and companies who have contributed ,

I thank you very much.

Thanks for dropping by today,

and as always,

Have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be.

Stacey Bindman

toysearcher@gmail.com

A Swedish Toy Collector Contacts Me

Saturday, July 2, 2016
Cloudy with rain
17 degrees Celcius (62 degrees Fahrenheit)

A Swedish Toy Collector Contacts Me

Part II

I periodically receive e-mail from my readers accompanied with photos. When I received a recent e-mail from Mr. Mano Forsman, I naturally had to ask permission to use his photos of his excellent restoration of an Airflow toy. 

"Good Evening Stacey,

Thank you for your kind words.

Glad you liked the pictures.

Absolutely you can use my photos and my name.

Here shortly about me.

Born 1946 in Vasa in Finland, moved 1967 to Örnsköldsvik Sweden. Retired Techcnical Illustrator/Artist. In 50s and 60s car restorations since mid 1960s. 

In Jukebox (AMI-58) restorations since late 1980s. In old tin toy cars since early 2000s. Nice original ones but real difficult restorations fires me up.

Here one of my toughest one. Alps Packard, got in a real poor condition. These toys was really made of quality steel!  Rear bumper, hood ornament, rear tail lights and deck lid ornament was all new made. Maybe not like new, but better than before. And was saved. 

Enclosed here also:

Our daily driver to day, Opel Olympia delivery 1957.

Also some about my recent restoration of our long time Eldorado 1963.

If you GOOGLE search on Mano Forsman Art Album, you will find some of my drawings and paintings.

Hope you enjoy.

Kind regards Mano"

Mr. Mano Forsman

As you can see, Mano has done a fine job with the restoration. The first step involves bringing down the rust from the old toy. Secondly, once the bare metal is exposed, an auto paint primer is applied. Auto body filler is applied to fill in the heavier indentations from extensive rust pitting. Later on, the car parts with the auto body filler are buffed to a fine finish.

This toy is a Japanese-made Kuramochi/Kosuge Chrysler Airflow, 

probably from the late 1930's-early 1940's

You  can easily compare below the "before" and "after" photos to see the extensive work

 that Mano has done to this toy.

And finally the finished and restorers toy!

That's it for part I of a 3-part series from Mr. Mano Forsman. 

The final result looks great and a lot of work went into this restoration

Thanks for dropping by,

and as always,

have a great part of the day or not,

wherever you may be.

Stacey

Toysearcher@gmail.com

The Chrysler Airflow

Sunday, January 17, 2016
Partly sunny, -10 Celcius  (14 F)

The Chrysler Airflow

The Ford Edsel is always described as a "dud" and failure. It was a nice car, but never succeeded in the marketplace,and was eventually removed from production. Few people of ever hear of the Chrysler Airflow, but this was also a beautiful car, doomed to fail and be written up in the history books. It was a marvellous car for its' time, but alas, the time was wrong for the car. 1934 was still the Great Depression time, and the public for whatever reasons, aside from money, never were inspired by the car. It was produced for a few years, and sadly laid waste to the scrapheap, and made to be a simple footnote in automobile history.

Below are 3 fine examples of the Airflow made by the Kingsbury toy company (New Hampshire, USA). The Kingsbury company existed from the 1920's-1950's and eventually went out of business. It reincarnated into an ultramodern, state-of-the-art company that is still in business in 

Keene, New Hampshire, USA).

Some of the models  had battery-operated headlights, and as well wind-up movement (clockwork movement), and nickel-plated bumpers and grilles. As well, the cars are quite large for their time, considering that most toy companies produced smaller cars. As well, being the 1930's, cast iron toys of the Chrysler airflow were still being produced.. However, the glorious era of cast iron was soon to be replaced by pressed steel, and  eventually lithographed tin. 

Although the Kingsbury toy company (USA) made many of the cars, the Cor-Cor company also made a few as well. Both companies existed in the 1930's and later, and produced superb pressed steel cars with nice features such as wind-up mechanical movement and electric lights.

Below:

Another fine pressed steel toy made by the Cor-Cor company.

If you do an Internet search for the "Chrysler Airflow", you will bring up many fine photographs of this car. It's too bad that the timing was off in the production of this car otherwise perhaps, and wishfully so,  it might have been more successful.

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

The Chrysler Airflow Cast Iron Toys

Thursday, January 17, 2013

The Chrysler Airflow Cast Iron Toys

    I've written about this fabulous toy before, but only presented my own limited range of photos for this  car. The Chrysler Airflow was a beautiful car manufactured from 1934-1937. Sadly, the car wasn't the success that Chrysler would have liked, and the car was discontinued. When I first wrote about the toy, I wrote mostly about a few Hubley cars that I had purchased and resold. The Hubley Airflow is a beautiful take-apart toy. You remove the rear spare tire first. This then allows you to remove the clear-metal chassis (undercarriage) from the top coloured part.

    Thanks to the many people and auction houses that allow me to use their photos with their permissions, I am able to certainly expand the breadth of images than when I was buying on E-Bay.

http://www.bertoiaauctions.com

(please click on the above address to be redirected to the Bertoia Auction site)

    From my point-of-view the CHrysler Airflow was certainly an eye-catcher. The front grill, the triple-pieced bumper, the side vents, the headlight paired with the lower set of (I assume) fog lights), the sleek design, and the spare tire in the rear are beautiful features. However, the public saw the car differently fromChrysler, and production stopped.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%2734_airflow_rear_2.JPG

(please click on the above address to be redirected to the Wikipedia Chrysler Airflow article)

    I don't think Chrysler made all of the models that the toy manufacturers made, although I'll have to verify that. However, the toys from all of the different companies certainly are in my top 10 favourites list.  For myself, there's something about a heavy toy or piece of wood thats fascinating. It's that "feel" and sense of tactility that grabs you. I had that same feeling when I purchased a piece of ebony from an exotic wood importer. If you've never lifted a piece of ebony, you'd be very surprised at just how dense and heavy it weighs, and that's the same feeling that I get from those cast iron toys. Of course, their simple but elegant designs also attracts me to them.

   This is another one of my posts that I enjoyed writing. And when the spring comes,and the flea markets start up again, go out and see if you can find some of these wonderful Chrysler Airflows. You will definitely not be disappointed!

Thanks for visiting,

and as always,

have a great morning, afternoon, or evening,

wherever you may be.

Stacey