Judy's Old Wood Toys

The Schoenhut Humpty Dumpty Circus
Identification Guide

Since the circus was made over a 30-year period of time, many production design changes emerged making for very interesting collecting possibilities. 

The major changes occurred when the company was forced to by world events. WWI, between 1914 and 1918, disrupted the supplies of bisque heads (probably from France) and glass eyes (probably from Germany). This forced the company to switch the personnel that used bisque heads (the acrobats, lady rider, ring master, lion tamer) to painted heads and the glass-eyes animals to painted eyes. Since painting the eyes was labor intensive, the eyes were gradually simplified over the years finally to the point that some of the latest eyes were made with simple eye decals - no painting at all. In this identification guide, we distinguish between painted eyes and decal eyes.

Other changes were driven by esthetics, production cost reduction (two-part heads to one part heads), or material availability including using the remaining inventory of parts from discontinued items.

Collectors of these toys have different interests. Some will want only the early glass eyed, some only the reduced size or a sample of every variety (like stamp collecting), while others want an interesting mix of styles to achieve an esthetic result. Any theme you choose will be a challenge both in terms of the money you will spend and the patience and persistence you will have to have.

We have been working on presenting the varieties of pieces we have found. There are undoubtedly many more. The pages in the navigation bar above describe most of these varieties of the performers and animals of the Humpty Dumpty circus. Click on any of them to read these fascinating articles.