Judy's
Old
Wood Toys
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Judy's |
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Schoenhut Company
History Albert Schoenhut, a German immigrant, began producing piano toys in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1872. Thereafter, Schoenhut's toy production expanded to include dolls, dollhouses, blocks, and other wooden toys. In 1903, Schoenhut applied for a patent for a clown toy that would become one of the most popular American toys of all time. By 1904, the company was producing the Humpty Dumpty Circus in great numbers. The circus, at that time, included the clown, elephant, white horse, poodle, and hobo. The Humpy Dumpty Circus was a great hit. The
circus personal grew over the years to The 1928 catalog cover, shown at left, shows a To help bolster slumping sales, the company, in 1923, introduced their reduced size circus. Many, but not all personnel and animals were produced in a reduced size. In spite of the success of this new line of circus toys, the company failed to survive the depression and was out of business by 1935.
Andy Yaffee, who has a great Schoenhut collection, has written a nice history of the Schoenhut company with notes about collecting these pieces. Read his history here. A very good comprehensive book of the Schoenhut Circus is Evelyn Ackerman's "Under the Bigtop with Schoenhut's Humpty Dumpty Circus". This great toy book has many beautiful photographs of Schoenhut's circus toys. To check availability of this book go here. Over the years, the Schoenhut company made many other wooden toys including wooden doll houses and doll furniture, musical instruments such as xylophones and banjos, push and pull toys, and many others.
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include a Lady Circus Rider, Lady
Acrobat, Ringmaster, Gent Acrobat, Negro Dude (a minstrel), Chinese
Acrobat, and a Lion Tamer. Animals included an Alligator, Brown Bear, Polar
Bear, Buffalo, Bulldog, Burro, Arabian Camel, Bactrian Camel, Cat, Cow, Deer,
Donkey, Elephant, Giraffe, Gazelle, Goat, Goose, Gorilla, Hippopotamus, Brown
Horse, White horse, hyena, Kangaroo, Leopard, Lion, Monkey, Ostrich, Pig,
Poodle, Rabbit, Rhinoceros, Sea Lion, Sheep, Tiger, Wolf, Zebra, and a Zebu. The
1906 "Everybody's Magazine" ad shown above illustrates some of the
performers available at that time. Most
early animals had glass eyes which were all changed to a hand painted eye by the 1920s. Even the painted eyes
were changed to a decaled eye in many animals as another
cost savings measure.
