Truck's Top, Ted Polomis

“The bulbous front and simple pressed metal of the truck in Truck’s Top (oil, 12x14) make the toy a delightful still life model,” says Polomis. The headlights of the beaten-up truck seem to stare in puzzlement at the pristine marble that stops both the viewer’s eye and the truck’s would-be progress.

https://www.polomis.com/_pdf/TAM_1_12.pdf

amazing tin toy airplane

https://cdn.drouot.com/d/catalogue?path=1/178371/411-260602-cat-mascottes-Web-V3.pdf

WWI toys being made entirely from tin cans.

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/495/

Pan Am had a great marketing dept in the 50s... everything was cool, but this? Wow.

http://www.everythingpanam.com/Children_s_Items.html

Mickey Mouse and Horace Horsecollar, one of the most desirable celluloid toys of all time

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1181503437276204&set=gm.1387741436386476&idorvanity=169550661538899

they really did a good job at making this visually appealing to get kids attention

https://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/12790-1960s-amf-scat-car-made-by-junior

John William "Jack" Ryan, was Mattel VP and chief designer until 1977, created Barbie, had about a 1,000 patents, and drove a 1935 Reo fire engine around Bel Air!

He built a bizarre faux castle with drawbridge and moat in Bel Air, where he had a dozen college students trading room and board for estate grounds upkeep/party waiters, etc - and so he installed 144 telephones throughout The Castle and grounds. 

The entire phone system was switched through a highly sophisticated communications system that he bought as surplus from a U.S. Navy destroyer and reengineered.

For a short while, he held 300 parties a year

He had a 18 car collection, and owned a vintage 1935 REO fire engine that he would load with party guests and drive around town, and to the Playboy Club where their respective social secretaries arranged a meet and greet, resulting in Hefner and Ryan teaming up for charity events around Hollywood/Beverly Hills/LA

Ryan went to Yale College, where he was active in the Pistol Club, and the Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. He served in the Pacific for a short time during World War II and in 1946 returned to Yale, where he was known as an “engineering genius.”

With a degree from Yale and having studied at Harvard, Jack worked for Raytheon during the early 50s / Cold War, helping to design the ground-to-air Hawk missile and the air-to-air Sparrow III missile, both of which were ordered by the Pentagon.

In 1955, Ryan joined Mattel, by getting a deal where he got 1.5% of the gross on all the toys he designed for them.

Even though he was never an employee of Mattel, he was their head of R&D. Not only did he do the mechanical design of the toys, he studied how children interacted with them. That’s because he was a real engineer, not just a tinkerer, and that means being systematic. He set up play areas with prototypes and had psychologists evaluate them. This became another reason for Mattel’s success.

Jack invented the Hot Wheels car suspension, the bearings, and the plastic wheels. Unlike Matchbox, Ryan put plastic wheels on the cars with a little give for traction and needle bearings for smooth motion

He also came out with the orange track system that let kids build raceways, and invented the battery-powered accelerator (the Supercharger) that would shove the cars along. Mattel sold six billion Hot Wheels cars in their first 50 years, from 1968 to 2018.

He devised a coffee cup that would keep beverages at a constant temperature (probably using a phase change of sodium acetate), and a camera that could develop its own film.

Ryan later engineered the voice mechanism for Chatty Cathy, the first mass-produced talking doll, revolutionizing interactive play for children. He invented the rocking horse with moving legs. He also helped create Hot Wheels, applying automotive and aerospace engineering to design miniature cars with unprecedented speed, style, and performance.

His ideas on blending technical precision with imaginative play were later preserved by Stanford University, where his "Design Philosophy" is archived.

Evidence of his "space-aged savvy" can be seen in the designs of many of the toys he created for the Mattel line. For instance, the V-RROOM! X-15 https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2019/09/did-you-ever-hear-of-this-mattel-x-15.html which was named after the North American X-15 rocket-powered aircraft that were made for the USAF, the NASA, and the USN. 

His name also appears on the patent documents of the V-RROOM! bicycles of the 1960s as well as the V-RROOM! toy engines that simulated real motorcycle engine sounds.

He married Zsa Zsa Gabor for a year, 75-76, but near the divorce, disassembled her Rolls-Royce in attempt to make her a custom limousine and, according to court records, refused to put it back together again.

https://nypost.com/2023/03/04/barbie-creator-jack-ryan-once-held-his-own-daughters-hostage/
https://www.facebook.com/DreamHouseJackRyan/posts/i-asked-chatgpt-for-help-what-do-you-think/1074045853936982/

https://babelniche.com/2024/06/05/obscure-creators-of-the-world-3-jack-ryan/

https://medium.com/@solidi/jack-ryan-and-ruth-handler-of-mattel-the-power-ballad-of-american-coffee-2c19994e6732

https://timenote.info/en/Jack-Ryan-12.11.1926#google_vignette

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ryan-john-william-jack

https://catalogimages.wiley.com/images/db/pdf/9780470371268.excerpt.pdf

This post took 3 hours just to track down every lead online to find the make and model of the fire engine, all the rest of the information was found only as a side effect of looking for the fire engine

Anyone remember Playmobil, exceptionally nice kids toys, for ages 4-8 probably, and crazy expensive to collect a good amount of these. Here's two varieties of the stage coach

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=playmobil+western&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_sop=15&_pgn=12&rt=nc

terrific CGI created by Marcio Bukowski to accompany TV Globo!’s coverage of the Brazilian Grand Prix

https://www.thechicane.com/2014/01/31/marcio-bukowskis-cg-f1-transformations/

maybe one of the coolest Cracker Jack Box toy surprises ever

https://bids.aumannauctions.com/auctions/43853/lot/6864576-caterpillar-crawler-cracker-jack-prize

Marx made some cool stull, but I don't think I've seen farm equipment until now

https://cars.bonhams.com/auction/31569/lot/115/a-tractor-with-snowplow-and-harrow-tinplate-toy-by-louis-marx-and-co/

this is adorable, a kids pedal car that imitates an ultralite, 1955 Doepke Rolybird (thank you Doug!)

https://cars.bonhams.com/auction/31569/lot/62/a-1955-doepke-rolybird-helicopter-pedal-childrens-toy/

Brett Stenson, a Portland-based illustrator and graphic designer

 https://www.mrjakeparker.com/blog/2024/1/11/brett-stensons-colorful-shape-of-nature

1969 toys from Remco, that entertained boys with Tru Smoke

those tin litho airplanes were pretty dang cool. I never had one, they were a generation or more before my time, and 3 decades before Ebay made everything easy to find to purchase

https://www.mes-avions-jouets.ch/en/planes/southern-cross-63101/#gallery-1

https://picclick.com/Line-Mar-Plane-Japan-Tin-Litho-Friction-Trans-226842239189.html

https://dailytimewaster.blogspot.com/2025/08/whered-rudder-go-little-bobby-has.html

I love that they decided at Star Wars/Disney, to add nose art to this toy - and they let the kid playing with it decide on which piece of art

the variety of cars in Mariokart, is pretty cool

do you remember being a young kiddo, and getting a kick out of toys? I haven't grown up yet, probably won't til they plant me in the dirt when I push up daisies

 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1158059362/vintage-majorette-red-racing-team

they used to make toys that looked so cool (but probably bored kids to death after a couple minutes) and are often found in perfect condition

https://www.etsy.com/listing/661264326/vintage-50s-biller-tin-wind-up

https://jatekmuzeum.blog.hu/2021/10/31/heti_top5_ami_erdekelhet_benneteket_2021_44_het

A rare large scale vintage model racing car assembled from Meccano

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1819713576/vintage-racing-car-meccano-model-over-16

or buy the kit for about 70 bucks https://www.etsy.com/listing/1042449061/build-your-own-racing-car-1950s-org  because the one that IS already built is selling for about 240 bucks