The tin toy was born in Germany. By the mid-19th century, craftsmen in Nuremberg and the Erzgebirge mountains were pressing lithographed tin plate into animals, carriages, boats, and soldiers. The materials were cheap -- tin plate was a byproduct of the canning industry -- and the results were charming. German toy makers exported millions of pieces to America, Britain, and France through the second half of the 1800s.
American manufacturers entered the toy tin business in earnest after the Civil War, when the expansion of the railroad network made both the distribution of goods and the demand for children's entertainment reach every corner of the country. By 1890, companies in Ohio, Connecticut, and New York were producing tin toys at industrial scale. The Buckeye State became the center of American tinplate toy production, with factories in Columbus, Cleveland, and smaller towns producing everything from penny toys to elaborate mechanical banks.
The mechanical wind-up was the innovation that defined the American tin toy industry from 1890 through the 1950s. A clockwork spring mechanism of stamped steel could power a toy for thirty seconds to two minutes -- enough for a child to run across a room or roll down a hill. The mechanisms were simple: a coiled flat spring connected through a gear train to the axles or wings. Winding the key stored energy; releasing it converted stored energy to motion. The physics was elementary and the delight was total.
The golden age of American tin toys lasted from about 1920 through 1955. During these decades, lithography technology had advanced far enough to print detailed, colorful images on tin plate before pressing, which meant a toy could depict Buck Rogers' spaceship or a Yellow Cab taxi with convincing accuracy. The manufacturers -- Marx, Chein, Wyandotte, Lindstrom -- were producing novelties that tied directly to American popular culture: Buck Rogers ray guns, Popeye spinach cars, Mickey Mouse handcars.
Plastic changed everything after 1945. High-density polyethylene and later polypropylene could be injection-molded faster, cheaper, and in more complex shapes than tin could be pressed. By 1960, plastic had displaced tin as the default material for American toy manufacturing. The tin toy manufacturers either converted to plastic, were acquired by larger companies, or closed. Marx Toys, the largest American toy company of the postwar era, sold to Quaker Oats in 1972 and ceased American production entirely by 1980.
What remained after the American tin toy industry collapsed was the knowledge that tin plate toys were genuinely superior to their plastic successors in one critical respect: they lasted. A tin toy that survives intact from 1935 works today because the mechanism is steel and the body is steel. A plastic toy from 1975 is brittle, faded, and frequently broken. The materials honest to themselves outlasted the materials pretending to be convenient.
Today, Schylling is the main American importer of authentic-style tin toys, sourcing from manufacturers who produce in the original style using the original materials. The clockwork mechanisms are the same. The lithography processes are similar. The results hold the same weight and make the same sounds as the originals.