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gerisullivanSkater Doll is mine! Yes, it's a Twinzy Toy.
You may be wondering just what heck a Twinzy Toy is. Well, unless you've been to my basement Toy Room or remember my past mentions of my great-aunts and the Twinzy Toy Company they ran in a corner of their father's tag factory in Battle Creek, Michigan, in which case your memory has already told you why I'm so delighted with this addition to my collection.
Blanche and Bernice Squier -- Auntie Blanche and Auntie Bun -- started the Twinzy Toy Company in 1918. Yes, they were identical twins. They started making dolls and selling them to friends just before they went to college. They completed their freshman year, then decided that there was enough demand for their dolls that they would start selling them commercially instead of returning to school. That was the end of their college education, and the beginning of business that ran for roughly 35 years. They had a trade show booth at the New York Toy Fair for years, and Twinzy Toys were sold in department and toy stores nationwide. Marshall Field's was one of their many customers.
In the last 45 years, I've found mention of Twinzy Toys in two books on antique toys. One just had the name in a list of toy makers, the other showed one of their ads from a trade publication. Until today, I hadn't seen a Twinzy Toy for sale in any shop or auction since the bank auction at 149/151 Fremont Street in the early 1960s. I lucked into the opportunity to buy Pandora, a Twinzy Toy cat, last summer when a person looking for information on Twinzy Toys found a past LJ post of mine via Google, so, yes, there are at least a few out there. Given the quantities sold, I'm surprised I haven't run across more.
Then again, I haven't been searching that hard. I've been keeping my eyes open in antiques shops and more. I visit toy museums as I stumbled across them, and found myself hoping that I'd see one among the thousands of antique toys at The Moose Tracks Museum at Lark Toys in Kellogg, Minnesota when Jeff and I went there for a Sunday afternoon adventure back in 1999. Nope, no Twinzy Toys, but I was glad to find and buy the replica Cape Canaveral Missle Base. Shooting those rockets off is fun!
Internet searches over the years have pointed to one of my LJ posts and nothing else...until this week.
Even with that rarity, I wasn't going to bid on Skater Doll. I was delighted to see the picture, and was going to watch the auction to see what it went for, but paying down existing debt will be at the top of my discretionary income priority list for years to come, and even that comes after paying current bills before they have a chance to move onto the mountain of long-term debt that comes with another mountain of interest charges. Yes, I'll treat myself with something fun from time to time, but my overall position is one of selling stuff, not buying more.
What happened? As with so many other good things made possible, I have a Ben in my life, and that is a very good thing, indeed. We worked out a bidding strategy; if it proved to be the winning one, Skater Doll would be my birthday present.
And so it is. Skater Doll is mine!
The adventure even has its own lagniappe. I called![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
minnehaha K. for eBay bidding advice. The situation was complicated by this being a live auction, and I'm an eBay novice to boot. It turns out that her friend, the Queen of PEZland, lives near Chadds Ford, PA, where the auction was being held. K. and Amy have been antiquing there!
The auction house doesn't do their own shipping. If the timing works out, Amy will pick up Skater Doll from them and ship it my way. If not, I'll use the commercial shipper used by many other auction house customers. I hope Skater Doll visits Amy's PEZ collection on its way to me, but it's a win just to be back in touch with her.
The auction notice sent me searching. Much to my surprise, I found Laura Adams recent post about visiting Quaker Park in the Northside Irregular. The park includes the land where the tag and toy factory stood, and her report includes a photo of a Twinzy Toy Historical Marker I didn't know was there! Like most historical markers, it contains an error or two. "They lie like hell" was how my father put it when I read the text to him over the phone. But this post is already long, so I'll leave the details of that for another time.
 |
|
| Skater Doll, photo from William H. Bunch auction catalog This Twinzy Toy was part of the inventory from the Yellow Brick Road Doll and Toy Museum sold at auction during the summer of 2008 after museum owners Dorothy and Steve Tancraitor retired. It is the second Twinzy Toy I've found thanks to the internet and the first Twinzy pull toy in my small collection. |
You may be wondering just what heck a Twinzy Toy is. Well, unless you've been to my basement Toy Room or remember my past mentions of my great-aunts and the Twinzy Toy Company they ran in a corner of their father's tag factory in Battle Creek, Michigan, in which case your memory has already told you why I'm so delighted with this addition to my collection.
Blanche and Bernice Squier -- Auntie Blanche and Auntie Bun -- started the Twinzy Toy Company in 1918. Yes, they were identical twins. They started making dolls and selling them to friends just before they went to college. They completed their freshman year, then decided that there was enough demand for their dolls that they would start selling them commercially instead of returning to school. That was the end of their college education, and the beginning of business that ran for roughly 35 years. They had a trade show booth at the New York Toy Fair for years, and Twinzy Toys were sold in department and toy stores nationwide. Marshall Field's was one of their many customers.
In the last 45 years, I've found mention of Twinzy Toys in two books on antique toys. One just had the name in a list of toy makers, the other showed one of their ads from a trade publication. Until today, I hadn't seen a Twinzy Toy for sale in any shop or auction since the bank auction at 149/151 Fremont Street in the early 1960s. I lucked into the opportunity to buy Pandora, a Twinzy Toy cat, last summer when a person looking for information on Twinzy Toys found a past LJ post of mine via Google, so, yes, there are at least a few out there. Given the quantities sold, I'm surprised I haven't run across more.
Then again, I haven't been searching that hard. I've been keeping my eyes open in antiques shops and more. I visit toy museums as I stumbled across them, and found myself hoping that I'd see one among the thousands of antique toys at The Moose Tracks Museum at Lark Toys in Kellogg, Minnesota when Jeff and I went there for a Sunday afternoon adventure back in 1999. Nope, no Twinzy Toys, but I was glad to find and buy the replica Cape Canaveral Missle Base. Shooting those rockets off is fun!
Internet searches over the years have pointed to one of my LJ posts and nothing else...until this week.
Even with that rarity, I wasn't going to bid on Skater Doll. I was delighted to see the picture, and was going to watch the auction to see what it went for, but paying down existing debt will be at the top of my discretionary income priority list for years to come, and even that comes after paying current bills before they have a chance to move onto the mountain of long-term debt that comes with another mountain of interest charges. Yes, I'll treat myself with something fun from time to time, but my overall position is one of selling stuff, not buying more.
What happened? As with so many other good things made possible, I have a Ben in my life, and that is a very good thing, indeed. We worked out a bidding strategy; if it proved to be the winning one, Skater Doll would be my birthday present.
And so it is. Skater Doll is mine!
The adventure even has its own lagniappe. I called
minnehaha K. for eBay bidding advice. The situation was complicated by this being a live auction, and I'm an eBay novice to boot. It turns out that her friend, the Queen of PEZland, lives near Chadds Ford, PA, where the auction was being held. K. and Amy have been antiquing there!The auction house doesn't do their own shipping. If the timing works out, Amy will pick up Skater Doll from them and ship it my way. If not, I'll use the commercial shipper used by many other auction house customers. I hope Skater Doll visits Amy's PEZ collection on its way to me, but it's a win just to be back in touch with her.
The auction notice sent me searching. Much to my surprise, I found Laura Adams recent post about visiting Quaker Park in the Northside Irregular. The park includes the land where the tag and toy factory stood, and her report includes a photo of a Twinzy Toy Historical Marker I didn't know was there! Like most historical markers, it contains an error or two. "They lie like hell" was how my father put it when I read the text to him over the phone. But this post is already long, so I'll leave the details of that for another time.
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Date: 2008-06-30 07:11 pm (UTC)K.