“Toys of Yesteryear” exhibit recalls era when imagination ruled.
Some of you may remember a more carefree time when playing with toys actually required your own vivid imagination! Cap guns. Jacks. Cowboys and Indians figurines. Original Barbies with bubble hair. Real wood building blocks. These favorite vintage toys and many others are fondly displayed in “Deck the Halls,” a limited and free exhibit at the Hall of State from December 2 through January 31.
The captivating exhibit has been a labor of love for Alan Olson, Director of Collections and Public Programs for the Dallas Historical Society, who found many toys in the Society’s permanent collections. Other toys were lent by good friends. “I don’t generally collect toys, but assembling all these toys has brought back memories of my own childhood,” Mr. Olson has discovered. “My personal favorite is the “official” Tom Corbett, Space Cadet gun from the late 40s. My dad owned one of these as a kid and showed it to me when I was a boy. It’s a cool wind-up gun that still works. “Tom Corbett” was a radio program, later a television program.
Every toy tells a toy story.
Roughly one hundred pre-1960 toys will delight kids of all ages, even those of the 2000s who seem to live for playing video games. “We have toys that date back to the turn of the century (1900s), as well as every era since,” says Alan. Starting next year, Mr. Olson would like to invite the public to bring in pre-1975 toys.
The mesmerizing array includes:
- 1959 Thunderbird model
- Barbie dolls (early 1960s)
- Metal trolley cars (1920s)
- Prince Charming paper dolls (1940s)
- Baseball gloves (1920s)
- The Knapp “Electronic Questioner” (1950s)
- A cupboard “for the Little Homemaker” (1960s)
- Child’s “Kiddyphone” record player (1960s)
- Ukelele (1930s)
- Wooden Fireman blocks (1920s)
- Dolls (1900s, 1910s)
- Round leather ball (for kickball) (1890s)
One curiosity is the United States puzzle from the early 1900s. “If you look at the state of Oklahoma,” notes Mr. Olson, “it doesn’t say ‘Oklahoma,’ but ‘Indian Territories.’ Oklahoma was the last state to have Indian territories; it became a state in 1907.
You played with that? Cool!
“It is always fun for today’s children to look at the toys and games they’ve never seen,” states Mr. Olson. “They’ll say things like “Wow, you played with those cool toys when you were little! And we adults say “Sure. You play with video games…well we played with Man from U.N.C.L.E. spy toys, Howdy Doody puppets and other toys that forced us to make our own fun. It’s interesting that many of today’s toys promote escapism (i.e. space battles), while toys of yesteryear were based mainly on reality. But the creativity that evolved from using imaginations in the 1960s and 1970s is now at work behind today’s latest technologies and trends.”
This is the time of year when we think most about children, so the “Toys of Yesteryear”
exhibit at the Hall of State couldn’t be more appropriate. If you visit in December, it’s the perfect whimsical way for families to spend a late afternoon.
For more information about this exhibit, visit the Dallas Historical Society at www.dallashistory.org.
