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* WW II *
One day at a summer antique show I bought a box of houses from an older woman there. We were talking about them and about how Christmas used to be, and she told me this story....
At the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, she was just out of high school
- working in one of the better known 5 & 10's. Monday morning Dec. 8 she
came to work as usual, an hour before the opening of the store. The manager
came down and addressed them as a group and said: "I want you to take
everything in this store marked Made in Japan. I want you to put up tables out in
front and pile it there. I want you to put up a sign saying "Free to Anyone Who
Wants To Carry This Away.""
And so they did that. Almost everything in the dimestores was Made in Japan,
then. It spilled off all the tables they could find and onto the sidewalk. It was the
height of the Christmas Season 1941, of course, and most of it was Christmas -
including the cardboard houses, tin toys, lights, garlands, unopened cartons of
things - the full contents of the stockrooms. When they were done, the store
was all but bare.
Mid-morning there began a sleeting, freezing bitter rain. People walked by all
day, but there were few takers. Toddlers were attracted, but parents pulled
them back and moved briskly on their way. The stuff just gradually fell apart in
the rain. The manager left it there for that whole week, then hired a truck to
haul it all away .....
Ward'sThe Christmas Wishbook 1941:
Ward's The Christmas Wishbook 1942:
Perhaps I should have included these in the "1930s" section. My current "best-guess" on the debut of Dolly Toy Houses is about 1938. Chronologically, that would be correct for "Pre-War,", but it isn't right for the feeling of the period. These American-made mass-produced things are of the War -they don't fit either aesthetically - or politically - into the innocent Christmas oppulence of the '30s. They anticipate the wartime feeling by at least two years (we knew it was coming), and were all you could get for "The Duration" and years after... up until the mid-'50s when Japanese houses again made a brief resurgence. Shown are some "Colmor" printies - not to be confused with the Japanese "printies" of the late '20's, and some of the products of the Dolly Toy Company of Chilicothe, or Tipp City, Ohio... and their printies. The creased cardboard trees, which are typical American Wartime and the general manufacturing style would seem to support a Dolly Toy - Colmor" connection, but I can't lay down my life on it. Try as I may, I can't find much history on Colmor, and only hearsay evidence on Dolly Toy. I don't believe they were connected, but it seems that way because their houses are often advertised together in catalog ads like these during and after WW II.
I don't have a 1940 "wishbook" from either company, but I do have a 1939 Ward's, and absolutely no houses are offered. None whatsoever. I don't know exactly when the Dolly Toy Company of Chilicothe - alias Tippecanoe City - alias Tipp City - ,Ohio started making Christmas houses, but it's sometime in the late '30's. Their pre-1940 stuff was rather interesting and quite pretty - originally quite colorful, in soft pastels. If you can find them clean and well preserved, they are well worth collecting. I think this reflects their innocent beginnings before the looming War had taken the consciousness of buyers and manufacturers. This period of "Dolly" is quite worthwhile.
From 1941 on, the less fancy Dolly Toy and Colmor are also quite plentiful - being virtually all that was available during WW II - but hard to find in nice condition. The inks have faded and grown dull on their printies, and their method of manufacture with deep die-cuts at the corners and unpainted edges have given them poor wearing qualities. They come apart after relatively little handling; the edges separate and fray.Still, if that's what happened to be underneath your tree as a preschooler (it's what we had) you will want to have some just the same. The designs were limited in number and detail, but they had great paper doors and windows!
Selection of Pre-1940 Dolly Toy.
When found in like new condition, the preWar DOLLIES can be quite lovely and worthwhile, with soft pastel rainbow hues. The texture is coarse flint grint - literally coarse flint sandpaper. Another likely possibility is crushed oyster shell, which was (and still is) extensively used to create texture in paints and plasters.
Likewise, in fine condition - Dolly's preWar Printies can be quite nice, too. Note the windows: ink -either gold or silver - on translucent red tissue, unlike the WarTime and PostWar two-color lithos on white paper that are so familiar to us War-Babies.Note, also, that this is EXACTLY the same house as the one in the picture above, except for the finish.
A fairly representative selection of Dolly Toy and Colmor WARTIME PRINTIES.
Ca. 1940 until dyeing chemicals came into short supply during The War. I hear Glenn Miller music when I find these. So characteristic and in harmony with the styles of that brief time.
Dolly Toy, made this basic set of eight in this same box from just before WW II until they stopped production in the early '50's. This same set of designs can be found in several finishes, from colored plain tinfoil to glass bead on foil to multicolor sparkle on plain white cardstock to the absolutely stark, white unadorned cardstock from the depths of The War, when not even the tinfoil could be spared from Defense Production. Sets of PRINTIES can also be found in this same box. Shown are the last of the series: - very late 40's / early '50s - as can be ascertained from the fact that the bases are styrofoam, rather than the usual flimsy cardboard open box-style with the corner-rivet staples. Ya gotta forgive them, they were doing the very best they could. I mean, at $.98/box - how many did they have to produce to buy a hamburger for their kids? face it: Christmas hurts. It always has.
Typical WarTime piece, of plain white cardstock.
Most everything you could get during WW II was vehemently stamped "Made in U.S.A." and Dolly Toy almost invariably stamped their name and address on their pieces and sets, making them one of perhaps three identifiable manufacturers in the history of Christmas village houses.
Colmor:
A company called "COLMOR" made these little printies, I am only 99.999% sure. "Colmor" is a trade name based on the idea of "More color," and there are strong reasons to believe they were an offshoot of the Dolly Toy Company. The windows are unlike Dolly Toy, but somewhat like the American "Dollies" is the highly detailed, if seriously more "kitchy" lithography. You see them in moderately larger sizes, too. I'm sure they're War-Time. And postwar for a while. They have that early '40's style, but I really just couldn't prove it... Search engines have produced many references to a ghost town "Colmor" in New Mexico, but nothing on either "Colmor" the house maker, or the Dolly Toy Company, while millions of their products are still to be found at flea markets and in the junk shops. There are features to found on both brands that lead me to believe they were made by the same company, such as the base construction and the characteristic creased cardboard pine trees in the yard. Incidentally, only "Dolly Toy" and "Colmor" actually used flaked mica to achieve the "sparkle" effect, which has led many to describe all carboard houses as "mica," but it wasn't true for any but the American Christmas decorations. The Japanese used shredded cellophane, natural silicates and ground glass to obtain their "glitter. " The flaked mica "artificial snow" we shook on our displays and trees has slowly faded from use, probably because it was such a mess to clean up after.
Tom Hull has contibuted the photos and commentary below. These are sets he's had in the family since childhood, and although they obtained them just after The War, these are so typical of what you could get all through The War as well. Cut-out kits such as the "Merry King Cole and his Fiddlers 3" shown below are so characteristic of the kind of toys kids got for "the duration" and for quite a while thereafter.
"The below illustrated houses are marked Colmor on the backs. These were sold by Sears under their Happi Time brand. No date or even how many were in the set but the box could have held 9 of these houses. We had a Colmor set and I believe we got them in 1947. Colmor made a number of cheap toys and decorations. I have seen ramp walkers, and numerous b-b puzzles and some Easter stuff including a paper bunny pulling a cart in cardboard and a tin decorated egg candy containers.
This illustrates the only styles that I have seen that are definitely Colmor.
Notice the logo forms sort of a pennant. This appears on the back of all the Colmor houses. - Tom Hull
It seems that Colmor did make some small tin toys, too. One wonders how they could have competed with Japan, and during The War they wouldn't have. They seem to have filled a toy-niche' left vacant by the Japanese. Afterwards I'm sure it was a different story. This probably explains their disappearance.
Thelma Bernard of Las Vegas sent me this:
"COLMOR:"
Last night, I spent more time on your fine website, Ted. Then I checked out some things on the Internet. It appears, from what I found in varioius places, that Colmor, (of Colmor Toys) stands for Coleman & Morris. I also ran into Coleman & Morris Inc. They were listed on one site as being from Port Chester, New York. This toy company made tin Easter eggs, a Bango Band Toy Drum Set, a Spike Jones Trap Drum Set (1951) spinning tin toy tops, a plastic xylophone in the 1950's, and some other tin toys. Apparently Port Chester, NY through the years, was known for its iron industry and I suppose there's enough of a tie between iron and tin to understand location. In any event, perhaps more clues may be found in "American Tin Litho Toys" by Lisa Kerr (Collectors Press). I don't have this book to see if Coleman & Morris is included as tin toy manufacturers. Perhaps also in the Ohio Art and Chein collector books Coleman & Morris may be mentioned. The books and articles I have about tin toy manufacturers are too specialized, mostly on Ohio Art and Chein. You or one of your vast number of friends may have tin collectibles books to research. Hopefully, this is a lead for you to track down your mystery cardboard Colmor houses. I don't know if the Coleman of Coleman & Morris is any connection to Coleman lanterns, or the two sister Colemans in the doll world. In any event, to see a Colmor tin top, please go to the following website: www.geocities.com/topguy.geo/logo.html When you get on the site, scroll down past Ohio Art etc. and at the bottom of the short page, you'll find the Colmor name and company and you'll see the top close up by clicking on the thumbnail photo. Perhaps this "top guy" can tell you more about the Coleman & Morris company also. Hopefully, this is of some help to you." - T.B.
The CLOSE OF WAR:
"CUT and PASTE"
There is a period of two to three years just at the close of The War that almost needs a category of it's own. The domestic life remained chaotic for some time. I know my Dad could not get a new car 'till 1948. The War did not end like a movie: it took the rest of the '40s for things to start to come around. Housing was a huge problem. Perhaps the preoccupation with so many cut-and-paste assembly sets reflected this. Tom Hull and I both recall a lot of cut-out-and-assemble toys in our 1940s childhoods.
The following photos illustrate a pre-cut put together kit of a set of houses. Many cut-out assembly toys arose during WW II. Though there is no copyright or date on this I suspect it was probably right after WWII. There are two different types of kits of these houses. This set is usually referred to as the "King Cole" set as it features King Cole and his fiddlers three as paper figures as well as other nursery rhyme characters.
There is one other set and I have it in both built and un-built form. I could get photos of them to you if you think you could use them on your site. The other set has the designer name on it but no other info. No publisher or anything. Curious. These are obviously American made and if I had seen them when I was a child I would have gone for them in a big way. I was given a Built-Rite Circus when I was 5 and though I had a hard time getting it together and wasn't able to get some of the more complicated pieces together I always had a fascination with anything of this sort. Still do I guess."
Tom Hull
Even Lionel put out a now-famous-with-collectors Paper Train set for "The Duration". Engine, cars, track and everything which, by all reports, was impossible to build. Cut-out cardboard assembly things were very big in WW II, and this continued all through the '40s and well into the '50s. I have had considerable debate with myself whether to assign these things to WW II or "POSTWAR."Prior to The War there were always paper dolls and cut-out toys, but Wartime material shortages really set them into big-time motion, so I've put them here. Just bear in mind they belong equally to both eras. I know I spent a lot of my 1940's childhood cutting out and pasting things like this together. Great stuff when you were quarantined at home from school with the mumps or chickenpox or measels!
CEREAL BOX PREMIUMS
Geez, we ate a lot of cereal to get these things back in the '40s! Remember pasting quarters to a box top with "Scotch" tape and watching the mailbox forever? There were two kinds of parents, then: parents of the "upright and solid" kids who made you eat every box before you got another. Then there was the "spoiled rotten" type who bought a dozen boxes at a time and fed the contents to the birds just to lord it over all the rest of us ...
Cereal-box premium houses were a phenomenon of the War and PostWar '40s, too. At least two cereals issued whole series of little cardboard buildings printed on the box to cut out and assemble, enough to assemble your own HO scale town! I don't remember the Betty Crocker series shown above, but both were the same sort of thing. My strong personal recollection is of those put out by Nabisco Shredded Wheat. In my kindergarten days(1946/'47), the shredded wheat came in stocky, squarish boxes with (I think) a dozen large biscuits inside arranged in layers of 4. The layers were separated by flat sheets of cardboard upon which the parts for the little buildings were printed. They weren't punched - you had to cut them out with scissors or razor blades and glue them. It took considerable skill to do them well. Even so, they were quite popular with kids and grown-ups alike. These were the days when kids built things! Flying model airplanes. Crystal sets and one-tube radios. Erector sets and tree houses. My best-buddy's older brother up the street had an entire ping-pong table covered with his little city, and you did see them under Christmas trees every now and then. I have been looking for these at swap meets, antique shows, and eBay - but have never turned one up.
and
"TOYTOWN CARNIVAL" ca. 1946/47:
A new viewer just wrote in with a wealth of information on the Shredded Wheat village. She gives only her initials: "T.B. of Las Vegas, NV." - This is her e-mail in it's entirety:
"Hello.
While on an Internet search, I ended up on your most interesting website and was reading some things you had to say. I too recall as a child the Nabisco Shredded Wheat "dividers" that separated the pillows of cereal. Apparently various things were printed on those card dividers, but the little village series totally charmed me. Some years ago, before eBay, I managed to find a near-complete set of the cards at a doll show in Las Vegas, NV where I live. So: this is to tell you that the "official" name of these cards is: "Toytown" -- spelled that way. Apparently 1947 is when this series was underway. Each card is numbered and named. On each card is a color guide for coloring the gray cardboard, with instructions on assembly. The last card of this series, which is no.36, is titled "Suggested Layout" and has this wording:
"Here is a bird's eye view of a complete Toytown. Three cut-out cards in each package of Nabisco Shredded Wheat. Duplicate cards will allow greater variation in setting up your own Toytown. Start now and join the fun. Good luck -- and good eating!"
The layout and all cards are "line" drawings, with enough detail to carry the concept portrayed. To give you an idea of size, card no.1 which is titled "Rose Cottage", is 2 13/16's wide, 1 1/8" deep, and about 2 1/4" high from bottom to top of chimney (peaked roof). There are houses with people printed on them here and there with some of their pets, a barn, church, general store, post office, railroad station, etc. From the various activities of the people, it is apparently summer time. One card is a station wagon -- with wood panel sides, but the color guide says to color the wagon "deep yellow". There are also some trees to cut out and set up, and several other vehicles including a bus. There is also a monument on a base which measures 3 1/8" top to bottom. Anyway, I thought you may be interested in this information. I am a person who has had a life-long delight in miniatures, and just love train layouts. When I was a little girl, my uncle had an elaborate layout for Christmas and it included some of the glitter-dusted "paper" houses shown on your site. It's really nice that you are sharing the photos (and music!) on a website. Unfortunately, I'm on webtv. which is not a computer and I have no access to anyone with a scanner.
Best wishes to you and yours. Sincerely, T.B."
She has provided this link to a fellow who does have a few pictures and more information:
| NABISCO "TOYTOWN" |
Thanks, T.B. This is great. Sure wish we had more pictures!
The "Pineville" Set
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End of WW II Chapter