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Boys of course love toys, all kinds of toys. They could be use both inside and outside, depending on the toys. Many of the impages of 19th century toys are from studio portraits, meaning that they were probably studio props. With the advent of the amateur snapshot around the turn-of-the 20th century we begin to get more realistic images of boys actually playing with their own toys. There are many different toys. These hve varied over time both by age and changing technology. Some toys like puppets were popular with boys and girls. Dolls were more for girls, but some younger boys played with them, especialy if they had older sisters. Other like toy soldiers were the exclusive territory of boys. And of course toys guns were a much prised toy, not to mention the BB gun. Boys in the 1930s-50s had the prenial confrontation sith mom over getting a BB gun--imprtalized in the film "A Christmas Story. Hoops and balls were perenial favorites. Things that made noise like whistles, trumpets, and drums were also popular. Boys loved to sail boats in the local park. Another favorites was toy trains--especially the model electric train when they became available in the 1900s. The train was a great toy because you could combine it with other items like toy soldiers. Construction toys beginning with basic wooden blocks were popular. They have included metal Erector sets, wooden Lincoln Logs, and more recently plastic Lego sets.
Children of course love animals and animal toys. There were different kinds of animal toys. They are wonderful imaginative toys. And children become very attached to them. We note stiff toys, often done as pull toys on wheels. There were also stuffed soft, cuddly toys. Here the best loved is teddies. America and Pressident Theodore Roosevelt played a key role in the evolution of the Teddy Bear. Cuddly animal toys of course are done as many other animals as well.
Balls were perenial favorites. Theu have varied over time and have been made out of many different material. Older boys of course wanted sports balls.
Construction sets beginning with basic wooden blocks were popular. Blocks were used as baby, toddler toys, often with letter or number faces. This made them helpful learning as well as play devices. We are not sure when they first appeared, but we have noticed them in 19th century toy stores. I recall my blocks had ridges that fitted together. Funny, along with my teddy this is among my earliest memories. This presumably was a 20th century innovation. Older children had more advanced construction toys. They have included metal Erector sets, wooden Lincoln Logs, and more recently plastic Lego sets. Lego sems to have suplnted all the former types of construction toys, excepts for the blocks that very young children play with. These construction toys seem mostly national toys--at least in the major industrial countries. The same toys in Europe had national mames, meaning the private companies that manufactured them. Erector sets were called Meccano sets in Britain. There were similar toys in France and Germany. Lego seems the first real interntional construction toy. Construction toys were almost exclusively boy toys. I recall as a boy in the 1950s, that construction toys sets with my toy soldiers were among my very favorite toys. The girls I knew had no interest in them. Lego has made some effort to appeal to girls, but as far as we can tell with very limited success.
We don't have much information on how 19th century children played. There are some photographs which provide us with clues. Among those photographs we note play with dolls. We do not know how common this was. But doll collectors will tell you that boys dolls are relativey rare. This probably reflects the fact that fewer boys played will dolls. Not do we know if it was looked down on at the time. The raising of young children in the 19th century was generally seen as the mother's responsibilities. One might think that boy wearing dresses and curls might also play cames like girls without raising any eyebrows. Here there are, however, differences between boys and girls. Boys at a very young age tend to prefer rougher more active games than girls. This is clearly observeable in nursery schools. We tend to think that boys with sisters were most likely to play with dolls--especially if they had oldr sisters. The situation tended to shift in the 20th century. Parents especially fathers tended to be comcerned if boys played with dolls or engaged in other girlish activities. This even included very young boys. Teddies were acceptable, but dolls were another question. After World War II a more acceptable alernative was intoduced--the GI Joe action figure.
A variety of educational sets were prepared for children. Some of the most popular were carpebntry, chemistry, and electrical sets. They provided a range of interesting projects that children could accomplish while learning a variety of skills and basic principles. These appealed primarily to boys and were rarely purchased for girls. We are not sure when they first appeared, but were very popular during the 20th century. I remember getting a chemostry set which particularly appealed to me. Interestingly, it was chemistry sets that were the most popular, I don't recall biology and or physics sets. There were crystal radio sets, but here the idea was to build a simple radio, not conduct experiments like a chemistry set. Carpentry sets were not as populsr, probably because a lot of fathers had carpentry tools and thus junior sets were less needed.
Toy guns throughout the 19th and 20th century were a much prised toy for boys. Girls had no interest in them. Children have always found small imitations of objects from the adult world with which to play. We are not sure when toy guns first appeared. Effective guns only appeared in Europe during the 16th century. Boys at the time would have loved to have had replica guns to playwith. At the time, however, childhood play was much less common than is the case today. The productivity of economies of the day meant that children had to work work as soon as they were able to do so. And at the time, play was not only seen as a valuable activity for children, but parents had the money to purchase toys. This did not begin to change until the Enlightenment and the onset of the Indutrial Revolution (18th century). As a result, we finally see modern childhood emerging and with it a widerange of mass produced toys (19th century). We are not sure about the first types of toy guns. We think carved wooden guns and cap guns were some of the first. Not all were exactly toys. The Lincoln boys, for example, had a minature canon that actually fired. A staple of American boyhood became the metal dyecast pistol--almost always a six-shooter. Most were cap guns. This began after the Civil War when gun manufactuers sought new products and cutomers to stay in business. It was, however, after the turn-of-the 20th century that the toy gun phenomenon began thanks to the movies. A movie staple became the Western. And Western heros had six-shot revolvers. Boys wanted them. Six shooters complete with gun belt and holster became a boy's primary possession. They were needed to play war and cowboys and Indians. The gangsters and G-men who also appeared in the movies added a new wrinkle and new guns (1930s). This did not change until well after World War II when all kinds of varied toy guns, often rifels began to appear and plastic began to be used (late-1950s). Toy guns appearedin in all sizes, prices and materials such as wood, metal, plastic or any combination thereof. Many of these newer toy guns were much more imgaminative than the basic six-shooter that was based on a real gun. They could be brightly colored and oddly shaped to deal with space inaders and asorted aliens. And of course there was the BB gun. Boys in the 1930s-50s had the perenial confrontation with mom over getting a BB gun--importalized in the film 'A Christmas Story' set in the 1950s. Toys guns have declineded since the Vietnam War (1970s). Theprimary factor here has been mothers who believe that guns promote violence. Many boys continued to want them. This has changed somewhat with the advent ofthe computer age. Video games provided a level of play violence far beyond that of games of cowboys and Indians with cap guns.
Toy instruments that made noise like whistles, trumpets, and drums were also popular. Here we might had Kazoos and harmomicas.
Hoops were a popular toy throughout the 19th century. I', not sure just why they went out of style.
Make-ip sets are a new girls toy. Girls until fairly recently were niot allowed to erat make up. So there were mo such toys. Now lottle girls still do not wear makeup, but apparently they bare allowed tomplay with it. We notice all kinds od colorful items. For sime reason eye shadings seem very popular. My niece who was about 5 years old was very smitten with these kits. They include glitter and gloss and have sets down to toddler ages. The items are all washable.
Some toys like puppets were popular with boys and girls.
Puzzles are perenial favorites for children. I am not sure when they first appeared or what early puzzles were like. Of course the best known puzzles are jigsaw puzzles. The first jigsaw puzzle was produced by John Spilsbury (about 1760). They were called dissections. He was a London engraver and mapmaker. He made a wooden jigsaw from a map. The pieces were not cut at random. He cut around the country borders. It was an educational tool for children to learn the countries for their geography lessons. Thus for several decades the jigsaw was an educational aid. The treadle permitted greater variation in the curs. It is at this time the term jigsaw appeared. Tey were cut with fretsaws which are not true jigsaw. Early jigsaws might come uncut with pencils markings on the back indicating where to cut. It was in the late-19th century that puzzles became enormously popular. Manufactyrers began using plywood and then carboard. This substantially recuced the price. And at the same time advances in lthograpohy meant that they could be made with wonderful color illustrations. This made them popular, inexpensive children's tools. The finanl step in the higsaw was the die-cut which could profuce the intricate variated pieces. While jigsaws are the best known puzzles there were many other types.
Inventors began expeimenting with rollar skate-like devices in the 18th century. Many advances were made in the eark\ly-18th century. The basic design elements for modern rollar skates wee pattened in England during 1876. Mass production soon followed. American copyright law was not yet fully developed and American mabufacturers also began producing rollar skates at this time. Photography at the time was primarily studio portraits. Thus we see very few images of rollar skates in the 19th century. A problem with rollar skates at the time was that a flat, smooth surface was needed for them to work well. And there were realtaively such surfaces availanle. Even in developed cities, the extent of paved surfavces (mainly side walks and roads were limited. They could not be used, for example, on cobblestones. Bicycle usage faced many of the same problems. This gradually changed as more city roads were paved. Henry Ford's Model-T had a major impact on road building in America. As more Americans owned cars, demand for paved roads and streets increased. On consequence of this that the area of paved roads not only invreased in the cities, but extended out into the suburbs as well. This exponentially expanded the surfaces available for rollar skating. We see many snapshots of chilldren enjoying rollar skates beginning in the 1910s. Both boys and girls enjoyed them, but for some reason by the 1940s they began to be seen as more of a girls' toy. We are not sure just why that was.
Some toys like toy soldiers were the exclusive territory of boys. I can recall as a boy in the 1940s-50s that my toy soldiets were my very farorite toys. It was still the era of metal, I think lead, soldiers. My most priced toy soldiers were the British Red Coats. At the time the British made the best toy soldiers. There were also Civil War soldiers, cowboys and Indians, and World War II soldiers. The World war II doldiers were the most common. They came in many didderent sizes. I recall World ware II soldiers that were a lot larger than my British Red Coats. I used to have war games with my big brother. We used rubber band to try to knock off the opposing army. At the time PC-thinking had not yet settled in. Nor had cheap plastic toy soldiers made their appearance. A British reader tells us about the experiences of a Rhode Island boy who liked toy soldiers in 2010.
Another poopular girl toy is tea sets, often done in unbreakable cups and sausers, at least by the 1950s. We think having teas awas once fashisonable, even common. We are not sure that is nearly as common as in the late-19th and early-20th century. Or that little gurls like having tea parties any more. We susopect it is nita s common as it once was. But these tea sets were ionce a popular item for little girls. It seems to us that girl toys were not nearly as interesting as boy toys, but that comes from a male point of view. These tea sets and other girl toys just do not match up to my trusty six-shooter cap pistol. But iof course girls apparently felt the same about boy toys. This gets down to the natyre or nuture issue. There is an idea that such differences are learned rather than innate. Learned behavioirs are no dount of some imprtance, but anyone who as worked with young children knows that there are very strong innate behaviors. It is difficult to see how learned behaviors could have kled little girks to enjoy tea set unless innate behaviors were at play. Little girls like to sit around and chat aboiut theiur feekings. Liitle boys prefer more action. There is no anount of learned nehavior that is gioing to make sersavailkabkle to many little boys.
There were a variety of throw toys. Probably the oldest throw toy was horseshoes. This was pppularvfir men and a little havy for younger boys. It bwa more of a popular rural game wherevhorse shoes were coomon. The most common throw toy were balls, but these are perhaps better included as part od sports equiipment. When I was a boy in the 1940s-50s, the most popular throw toy was probably balsa wood glider polanes. They camne in an inexpensive flat kit and you just put the wings on to the fuselage and yoynwere ready to go. You could also make paper planes on your own, but the balsa wood planes worked far better. I recall ring toss toys. I don't recall having this, but I recall seeing bthem. Amother throw toy was darts, but most American parents had better sence than to purchase thise for boys, ralizing they were asking for trouble. But some boys got them. A famous throw toy was a boomerang, but I don't recall ever seeing one. A new throw toy apopeared in the 1960s--the frisbee. The frisbee was invented before World War II, but there was no major commercial launch until the late-1950s. It is at that time that bham-O co-founders Richard Knerr and Arthur 'Spud' Melin named their discs the brand name that sticj=k--'"Frisbee'. This was waht college students were calling their Pluto Platter. It camne from the Connecticut-based pie manufacturer-- the Frisbie Pie Company. It becamevan enormously popular toy and while no longer a major craze continues to be popular today. The Frisbee was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame (1998).
Boys love toy vehicles, not doubt because they represent things that are, big, noissy, and powerful. The type of vehicke has varried over time with technologies. No doubt coaches, waggons, and sleds were popular in the early 19th century, but expensive at the time. Trains became popular at mid-century and manufscturing advances made them less expensice. Boats were also populsr, especially sailboats as they could be mase to actually work. Boys loved to sail boats in the local park. Another favorites was toy trains--especially the model electric train when they became available in the 1900s. The train was a great toy because you could combine it with other items like toy soldiers. The 20th century also brought airplanes and cars and trucks. And eventually spaceships and rockets. Toy air planes are popular. Here there are avariety of toys. Younger boys might play with siple airplanes mde like boats, trucks, and ther vehicles. Making model airplanes was also very ppular. I remember working n models the P-51 Mustang and Corsair were muy two favorites. And there wee plans that could actually fly, both simple balsa gliders and radio-controlled planes with small mtors.
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