Got Change for a Penny?

Before I even looked inside this Christmas toy catalog, I knew it was a “must have.” Dating from the late 1920’s, it’s younger than most of the toys I collect; but this isn’t your typical flyer. It measures 17½” long by 11″ high, and both the front and back show 4-color scenes of children with toys. At eight pages long, there’s room for lots of potential presents. And it’s well preserved. But what really caught my eye was that it had more than just black and white sketches of toys; indeed, a lot more. The only shortcoming was that some tot had pasted a postage stamp (upside down no less) on the front cover. I wasn’t shocked he did it; after all, when a toddler finds a stamp, he’ll stick it on whatever’s handy, be it a table leg, a doorstop, or the family dog. Still, it looked out of place; and priced at 1½ cents, how did folks purchase one?

The front cover of the catalog announced, “TOY TOWN Open Now, KLEBER’S HARDWARE, Melrose, Minn.” It’s no wonder that a hardware store carried toys for the Holidays. In small towns, retailers often carry multiple lines of goods, and Melrose was small. In 1930 only 1801 people lived there, and no major cities were nearby. Why would such a small firm commission so elaborate a flyer? I doubt it did. The more likely scenario is that it was created by a whole-
saler that offered similar assortments of toys to any store that would carry them. If so, the only thing that needed to be added was the retailer’s name.

There was nothing on the piece to indicate what firm created it, but an eBay search for catalogs with the words “Toy Town” turned up not one but two possibilities. Both were five-and-tens, the first being Ben Franklin Stores and the other Scott Stores. Both had used the name “Toy Town” on their Christmas toy flyers, but one of the former had something more. In the smallest type imaginable, it said, “Franchised by Butler Brothers”! I knew Butler Brothers was a wholesale house, but I didn’t realize it had been around since 1877. I also didn’t know that in 1927 it established Ben Franklin stores, a chain that would grow to 2,500 locations. Clearly, Butler Brothers was big enough to create unique and attractive mailers not only for the stores it owned but for any client who carried its Holiday toy assortment.

The “Toy Town” theme appears on the front, back, and throughout the piece. On the front, dozens of children, each holding a toy, stand outside the stone wall of a medieval town, while other youngsters pass through the city gate to join them. Opening the cover reveals the toys inside, along with five colorful pictures of Santa’s elves at work. Each scene is beautifully illustrated in an Art Deco style and paired with an appropriate rhyme. The final image features a sleigh and eight reindeer soaring into the night sky.

The story ends on the back cover where children hurry downstairs on Christmas morning to a decorated evergreen and the gifts Santa brought them.

The ad doesn’t say who made most of the toys, but a few well-known brands are mentioned. The popular “Sandy Andy” is one ofthem. Three “Structo” trucks are also identified. One clockworktrain is labeled “American Flyer,” and another is marked “Empire Express” which was Flyer’s discount line. Halsam “Rainbow Blocks” are seen and praised in a four-color ad. A five-inch color ad, this one for “Hustler Toys” of Sterling, Illinois appears on the back cover. Between 1925 and 1934, the firm made an extensive line of wooden pull toys, four of which are shown in the illustration. Friction vehicles made in Dayton, Ohio are seen in the catalog as well, but as
they could be the work of three or four companies that made similar goods, I’ll leave identifying them to you.

Which toys were most likely to fill the stockings of the good children of Melrose? The number of each type shown in the catalog provides a clue. For girls there were nine types of dolls measuring anywhere from 51⁄2″ to 22″ tall. Transportation toys including cars, trucks, boats, and airplanes were popular choices for boys. A variety of wooden pull toys were available for younger children. And everyone could enjoy the many books, games, and puzzles that were offered.

In some ways, the catalog is surprising for what it doesn’t show. Sports equipment is absent. A disc-wheeled tricycle was offered at $2.75 making it the second priciest plaything in the book (a fiber doll buggy ran four cents more), but no bicycles appear. And the selection of cast iron toys seems remarkably limited. Other than two small stoves and a Fordson tractor, only cars and trucks are shown, and none of them are over 61⁄2″ long. There also aren’t many of the common dime store toys like marbles, spinning tops, and jackstones; perhaps because Kleber’s offered those items all year round.

It might seem odd that three wind-up train sets are shown in the catalog, but not one single electric. The reason wasn’t that children in rural Minnesota wouldn’t have liked them. It was because at the time only about 10% of the farms in the state had access to electric power. A string of large 9-volt dry cells might power a small train, but for how long? A transformer a child could plug into a wall would make an electric train a more practical gift. And with the passage of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936, more and more children could do just that.

Few if any German toys are in the catalog. At the outbreak of WWI in 1914, German toys accounted for more sales dollars in America than our own toymakers took in. But the War changed things. Germany ceased shipping toys here as soon as hostilities began, giving American firms a chance to regain control of the market. The change from making painted tin toys to lithographed ones with slot-and-tab construction allowed us to offer toys as good or better than the imported ones and at competitive prices. And when the war ended, Congress voted to put meaningful tariffs on foreign toys. By the 1920s, America had retaken control of the business.

As for the postage stamp mentioned earlier, I now realize it’s part of the catalog’s history. The giveaway is the cost. In the 1920’s, postcards could be mailed for a penny, and sealed letters for two cents, so why the need for a stamp priced in between? The answer is bulk rate mail, a concept introduced in 1928. Bulk mail saved the Post Office money. Regular mail had to be sorted piece by piece which took time. If cards or letters had addresses which were incomplete, inaccurate, or hard to read, it slowed things further. With bulk mail, the problem was solved. And canceling stamps, whether in rolls or in sheets, could be done with the stroke of a pen. The new service not only explains why a 11⁄2 cent stamp was on the catalog, but why no mailing address was needed. The funny thing is, when I got the piece, I thought about steaming that stamp off of it. I’m awfully glad I didn’t.

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