The Exceptional 1920's Buddy 'L' Construction Toys

Monday, August 5, 2014
           Cloudy, hot and humid

The Exceptional 1920's Buddy 'L'

Construction Toys

  I recently wrote about the the WWII (1939-45) wooden Buddy 'L' toys. However, their earlier 1920 and later toys were also magnificent, especially if you liked toys with lots of movement. I'd written about 1 or 2 of these toys, but with the upcoming Bertoia AUctions September 19-20, 2014 auction, I had the opportunity to use 4 of the Buddy 'L' construction toys. When I was buying and selling toys, the closest that I came to construction toys were the Doepke sand movers - the truck version and the stand alone version. If I was 4-8 and had been given one of these, I'd have been in the sandbox for the day! But looking at the Buddy 'L' construction toys of the 1920's , my patents would have wondered where I disappeared to !

Please click here to visit the is exceptional American auctioneer

The toys would appear to have been modelled after 'real construction toys of the era. I'm assuming that the boiler was use to power this mobile concrete mixer.  There's a water tank with a brass (?) tap above a bucket that would pour the mixture into the tumbler. A crank would then turn the mixture and the cement would be able to be poured out. There's even a small door to the boiler to add fuel.

The main theme that is prevalent to all of these Buddy 'L" toys is movement. With this Buddy 'L" trench (below), there is enough movement to keep you hypnotized to all of the action. the bucker "diggers" or scoops, would dig up sand or small pebbles, lift them up to the top where there is a protected red hood. Thee kept the sand or pebbles from being thrown all over. The hood would guide the stone on to the coverer belt, which ten moved the material to an awaiting truck!

Please have a look at the treads of both the concrete mixer and the trencher. There is a small spring and guide that would move the tracks up and down as the toy moved along an irregular surface - just the the "real" machine! This is a great feature, that as you can see, the company took great lengths to create a very real "toy".

I'd never seen this Buddy 'L' toy until when I'd been screen-capturing the images for today's post. It's similar to the Doepke earth mover. Small trowels or buckets scoop up the materials which would be a mixture of different-sized sand and stone mixtures.  The buckets move by a hand-cranked chain to the top of the machine, and turn over into a deep v-shaped container. I "think" then that the smaller material falls down to the ground  through the holes in the mesh, while the good material is moved to the large bucket that is in the vertical position. It would be tilted down to receive the material.

I've written about the Buddy 'L' steam shovel, but once again again, like the  sand screen, I had never seen the "improved" double piston version. I'm "assuming" again that the brass-coloured metal is bras. Notice the similar features on the steam shovel as some of the previous toys.  The boiler with the small opening to throw in coal to fuel the boiler to power the steam shovel. Then there are the tread guides with the respective spring-action as the toy would move. But the "piece-de resistance" is, of course, the bucket (scoop). The scoop, like most similarly-made toys would scoop up a pile of material, be raised, then be able to have it's trap door at the bottom open either to dump the load somewhere else or to load it on to a truck. 

I can imagine having 4 children playing in a sandbox, with each of them having a different Buddy 'L' toy. Those times that these kids played must have been  exciting and unbelievable.

Now did I just read somewhere that scientists are close to perfecting time travel? I'm just wondering if I travel back in time, will I also become younger?  I don't think a 65 year old would fit well in a sandbox in 1925 with a group of children, and their toys!


Thanks for dropping by to visit,
and as always, 
have a great part of the day or night,
wherever you may be.
Stacey
toysearcher@gmail.com

The Earth-Moving Toys

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

The Earth-Moving Toys

http://www.cardenauction.com

(Please press on the address above to be redirected to their site)

    The other day, I was very fortunate to come across a past auction on icollector that has a fine collection of earth-moving toys. Naturally that brought back long-forgotten memories of road-building in Vermont, or for that matter whenever I had driven south in the USA.  Vermont's Interstate 87 was built in the late 1950's, when we used to go to St.Albans, Vermont for the summer.

The big "treat" for us kids was to go to Burlington - their "big" city. 

    Before I-87, the road from St. Albans to Burlington was a 2-laner. Development of the marvelous Interstate highway system expanded meteorically after WWII. The world was at peace, and now world economies could be developed to return the world to normalcy and sanity. There was a huge growth of the population in the US at the time,and a move to the suburbs. With the expansion of the population to the "burbs", and development of the economy, the road system had to be developed - fast!

   We would travel to Burlington periodically, and the "best" time was the last week of summer. At that time, the "twins", Brenda and Michael, 3 years younger, and Jay, just a baby the at 1 year old (1958), would travel to Burlington to get our fall school clothes. On the way, we would see caravans of those large haulers and graders, and of course the huge trucks and pavers all working to build the road.  As a 13-14 year old, I was still fascinated by huge machines, especially those construction  machines.

By the early 1960's times had changed. We no longer went to the "country" for our vacations, and we all grew up.  The roads were now complete,having been transformed into super highways. 

     Most of the toys at the start are Doepke, while the latter ones are "newer" from the 60's such as the Tonkas. The orange steel-wheeled paver is a Hubley. These toys were built to last, and work hard in the backyard or sandbox at the local park.

     The  Doepke company started in 1946 in Oakley, Ohio.It was started by Charles W.Doepke and his brother Fredrick. As the company grew, it moved to Rossmoyne, Ohio. The Doepkes wanted realistic toys, and were able to get a license to produce real-looking toys based on "real" toys like the Euclid Earth Mover owned at the time by GM.

     My personal toys that I have bought and sold were the Doepke sand movers. I wrote about them a long time ago ( 18 months). The 2 toys below have chains and/or a belt that move with turns of a handle. They are  fantastic toys to play with although at the time that I bought them, I felt I was too old to go play in the sandbox!

     If you do a search for Barber-Greene, you can find the "real" sand-moving machines on the Net. The toys look realistically like their real-life cousins!

Wow, it's November 1 already!

Thanks for dropping by,

and have a great morning, afternoon, or evening

wherever you are, and take care from that storm in the US!

Stacey