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from twitter
The content of this book has come from a post by TIME.com on twitter. This post, ‘‘The 100 greatest toys of all time | http://ti.me/ee98iP’’ looks at the most recognised and celebrated toys of all time. Looking over the 100 toys shown in the post, the most visually interesting has been chosen to create this graphic, typography based book on toys. As well as this, the order of the toys is by the date of creation, looking at the progression is toys.
intro
yo yo
Though its history can be traced back to nearly 500 B.C., the yo-yo didn’t find mainstream success until the late 1920s, when a young U.S. immigrant named Pedro Flores ignited an international craze. Born in the Philippines, Flores saw the toy’s potential in the U.S. after remembering its Filipino popularity. (It had received the name yoyo there hundreds of years before.) While working as a bellboy, Flores founded the Yo-yo Manufacturing Company in 1928. After selling handmade yo-yos to children around Los Angeles, he was able to secure financing to open a factory. Within a year, the company was producing 300,000 yo-yos a day, and Flores’ “Wonder Toy” achieved craze status in the U.S., with yo-yo contests popping up all over the country.
yo yo
Now synonymous with tiny handprints adorning bulletin boards around the globe, finger paint was first used in art education in 1931. American teacher Ruth Faison Shaw was in Italy when she developed a system that not only would teach kids about art but could also act as a technique for child therapy, a cause Shaw devoted her life to. In her 1934 book Finger Painting, a Perfect Medium for SelfExpression, Shaw wrote that adults should let children be children, even if it meant letting them make a mess. The theory was embraced by educators, and in 1936, the painting technique reached massive popularity and Shaw finger paints and paper were being produced by the Binney & Smith Co., owned by the inventors of the Crayola crayon. Finger painting peaked in the 1930s during the progressive education movement and was widely used in education systems until the end of the 1960s.
finger paint
finger paint
army men
army men
In 1938, the Bergen Toy and Novelty Co. began selling an inexpensive line of minuscule, monochrome plastic soldiers. The 2-in. American figures were produced in U.S. Army green and molded in a variety of action poses — a little boy’s war fantasy come true. Sold in large plastic bags, demand for the little green men rose in the 1950s thanks to a boom in plastics manufacturing and a lead-poisoning scare that made the metal versions less appealing. Soon the company was manufacturing enemy forces too: German troops were molded in grey, Japanese forces in yellow. Though the little warriors have undergone several changes over the years, their most famous identity is as World War II– era soldiers with “pod feet” attached to keep them standing during battle.
army men
Though children had blown soap bubbles over pans of soapy water for many years, it wasn’t until a Chicago cleaning-supplies company named Chemtoy began bottling its own bubble solution in 1940 that a true enthusiasm for the activity erupted. Now with millions of bottles sold each year, bubble solutions, paired with wands of various sizes, have worked their way into our culture even outside their role as a children’s toy. In the 1960s they became a universal symbol of peace as the hippie movement blew bubbles into the air en masse. More recently they’ve become a regular feature at weddings — a nice alternative to pelting the bride and groom with rice. bubble solution
slinky
“A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it’s Slinky!” Though its popularity can’t be called into question, “everyone” may not know that the Slinky was an accident. Created by mechanical engineer Richard James in 1943, it was the unintended by-product of a new line of sensitive springs that would help keep fragile equipment steady on ships. After knocking one of his newly created springs from a shelf, James watched as it “walked” down from its spot instead of falling to the ground. With a machine designed to coil 80 ft. of wire into a 2-in. spiral and a name chosen by his wife Betty, James began producing his novelty Slinky — but at first to little notice. Slinky got its big break during the Christmas shopping season of 1945, when the Gimbels department store in Philadelphia let James demonstrate his new creation. Within minutes, he sold 400 Slinkys. Sixty-six years and 250 million Slinkys later, we’re still just as delighted with James’ serendipitous toy as we ever were.
slinky
Sometime in the 1940s, Albert Carter created the Syco-Seer, a fortune-dispensing “crystal ball” inspired by a device used by his mother Mary, a professional psychic. The original product contained two dice and was cylindrical in shape. Sadly, Carter died before his creation found success. But in 1950, Carter’s brother-in-law Abe Bookman was commissioned to turn the Syco-Seer into a black-and-white 8 ball with a floating 20-sided die. When the ball is shaken, the die floats to the surface, revealing its answer to your question about the future.
8 eight ball
In 1949, Danish carpenter Ole Christiansen created a set of interlocking red and white blocks, the first of what would go on to become Legos. It wasn’t until 1958 that the Lego company (its name derived from the Danish words for “play well”) patented the small bricks. The genius was in the simplicity of the unassuming blocks, which allowed children to create freely without limits and in nearly endless combinations. (Just six blocks could be combined in 102,981,500 different ways.) Popularity boomed, and to date, Lego has produced more than 320 billion single LEGO bricks — roughly 52 for each person on the planet.
lego
lego
lego
paint-by-numbers kit
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paint-by-numbers kit
rubix cube
Hungarian inventor Ernรถ Rubik created his first 3-D color-coded puzzle cube in the mid-1970s, but it wasn't until the following decade that Rubik became a household name. After Ideal imported the toy to the U.S. in 1980, it skyrocketed in popularity. Millions of kids and adults became obsessed with unscrambling the Rubik's Cube's colored squares. Because sides could be rotated on any axis, restoring the cube to its original color separation was incredibly difficult. International competitions are held each year for ultimate bragging rights of the quickest hands.
rubix cube
Often used for government or military emergencies after dark, the glow stick gained favor among children (and concertgoing adults) in the 1980s. First sold as novelty entertainment at dances and circuses, glow sticks were adopted by kids who were going camping or trick-or-treating. Their illuminating effect comes from the chemistry inside: after the separate casings are broken, phenyl oxalate and fluorescent dye solution mix with hydrogen peroxide, causing a glowing effect that lasts for about 24 hours.
glow stick
SPEAK AND SPELL One of the first in what would become a long line of electronic educational toys, Texas Instruments’ Speak & Spell debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1978. The gadget had a speech synthesizer, a keyboard, an LCD screen and an expansion port for cartridges to play games like Hangman. Unlike its predecessors, this toy didn’t use prerecorded speech to help kids learn to spell and pronounce words. The Speak & Spell was available in seven languages until the 1990s, when it was superseded by more advanced electronic reading toys, including the LeapPad system, which allowed kids to touch letter combinations or words with a stylus to hear them pronounced. speak and spell
Created as a peppermint candy in Vienna in 1927, PEZ, derived from the German word Pfefferminz (peppermint), is now a leader in “interactive candy.� After the candy itself caught on, Oscar Uxa invented the famed PEZ dispenser in the 1950s, but he did not receive acclaim for his creation until heads were placed on top of the dispensers in 1955. Some of the earliest dispensers (Mickey Mouse, Santa Claus) can fetch up to $10,000 at auction. To date, more than 1,500 different dispensers have been created, and more than 3 billion PEZ candies are consumed each year in the U.S. alone.
pez dispenser
pez dispenser
pez dispenser
pez dispenser
barrel of monkeys
Part cliché, part classic game, Barrel of Monkeys does its best to live up to the promise: “More fun than a barrel of monkeys.” Created by Lakeside Toys in 1966, the game was conceptually simple but could take hours to master. Inside each barrel are 12 plastic monkeys with easily hooked, S-shaped arms. Players try to hook all of the monkeys together, using only that first monkey to form one long chain.
barrel of monkeys
Illustrated, Designed & Edited by Simon Beeson
outro