There’s Nothing So Liked by a Small Boy Than a Toy Truck

 

QUESTION: As a kid, I loved playing with three little cast-iron trucks. It’s only recently that I learned that they may have been made by the Kenton Toy Company when I saw one of the trucks I had at a small antique show at the local volunteer fire company. The dealer said she believed that the truck had been made by Kenton. Can you tell me anything about Kenton’s cast-iron toys?

ANSWER: At the turn of the 20th century, the Kenton Hardware Company promoted itself as "the largest factory in the USA exclusively making cast iron toys." The factory produced a variety of toys that were miniature versions of fire engines, circus wagons, carriages, banks, trains, and stoves. From the 1890's to the 1950's, the town of Kenton, Ohio, was a center of American cast-iron production.

F. M. Perkins founded the Kenton Lock Manufacturing Company in Kenton, Ohio, in 1890. The firm first produced high-quality, elaborate bronze and brass locks, and coat hooks. 

Perkins didn’t begin manufacturing toys until 1894 when a series of patent disputes caused Perkins to change the name of his company from the Kenton Lock Manufacturing Company to the Kenton Hardware Manufacturing Company. Kenton’s line consisted of banks, horse-drawn vehicles, and stoves. The production of the Columbia Bank, a souvenir of the World's Columbian Exposition, which provided a successful launch into the U.S. toy market.

What followed was a wide range of toy vehicles—hansom cabs, sulkies, surreys, chariots, fire-patrol carts, sedans, racing cars, buses, blimps, air-planes, milk wagons, bakery wagons, bandwagons, dump trucks, lumber trucks and circus trucks. Also, mechanical and regular banks in the forms of teddy bears and polar bears, the Statue of Liberty, the Flatiron building, radios and other playthings such as cap pistols, ranges and miniature sadirons.

Kenton constructed its toys from several parts, each of workers cast in a mold into which they poured the hot, liquid iron. After a short cooling period, they opened the  mold and removed the part. They then assembled the separate parts with rivets or bolts. Because of their rough surfaces, cast-iron toys couldn’t be lithographed like tin ones. Workers then hand painted or dipped the toys in two or three bright colors.  

Kenton became part of the National Novelty Corporation combine in 1903. It marketed its toys under the Wing Manufacturing brand. Fending off a series of takeover attempts, the toy division survived as a separate unit within Kenton Hardware Company. It continued to manufacture cast iron toys from 1920 to 1935.

Like most other businesses, the Kenton Hardware Company suffered during the Great Depression, so much so that it was in danger of going bankrupt. Then, just as Shirley Temple saved the Ideal Toy Company and Mickey Mouse did the same for Lionel trains and Ingersol watches, another popular icon came to the rescue of Kenton. Gene Autry saved the day with the Gene Autry toy pistol.

Vice president William Bixler persuaded the company to manufacture a copy of Gene Autry’s pearl handled six-shooter. Autry sent one of his guns to Ohio to assist in the creation of a child’s size model. Joe Solomon made the master mold in 1938. By 1939, over two million Gene Autry Repeating Cap Pistols had been sold.

Introduced in December 1937, it became a huge success in both the U.S. and then the world. One million were sold from February to August of 1938 alone, keeping the factory going night and day.

The peak of cast-iron toy production extended from shortly before the turn of the 20th century until the 1940's, when lighter-weight models that were less expensive to produce and transport superseded them. Kenton ceased production of horse-drawn toys in the early 1920's, except for a beer wagon made in the 1930's, but in 1939 the firm introduced a completely new line of horse-drawn toys, which continued through the early 1950's.

Most of these toys, except for the early banks and stoves, weren’t marked. Company catalogs, the first of which appeared in 1892, can help with identification. Prices for authentic early pieces in good condition can sell for four figures for some horse-drawn Victorian carriages and fire vehicles.

Kenton ceased operations in 1952. 

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