Baby Boomer Toys And Collectibles

Color photos of over 780 popular toys from the 1950s and '60s with identification and price guide make this a useful reference for toy collectors and dealers. Covers favorites from robots and space toys to race cars, Hanna-Barbera toys, and Beatles collectibles. Recall the past through its toys.

Boomers will be digging through their closets in search of their childhood after paging through this colourful nostalgic photo reference of the toys and playthings from the baby boomer generation. All ages will want to pick up this book and see what's inside -- from the common to the obscure -- brining back memories like the sound of tinker toys being dumped from a can. Each of the 100 chapters includes photographs and text discussing the origins and history of the popular toys, as well we other toys of the same type. For collectors, values listings are included for many more than the 100 featured toys. As a nostalgic picture book, it should become one of the primary gift books of the year.

Photographs and brief descriptions profile popular toys and collectibles from the 1950s and 1960s, with information on current prices for each item.

The book features the latest secondary-market prices for over 500 dolls and includes 400+ colour photographs. The author provides background information on all of the important companies of the baby-boomer era, from well-known films like Mattel, Ideal and Madame Alexander to smaller, lesser-known producers. The cast of characters includes legendary dolls such as Barbie, Ginny, Tammy and Miss Revlon as well as film and television-based favourites like Shirley Temple, Patty Duke, The Flying Nun and Pebbles and Bam-Bam.

The cute child - spunky, yet dependent, naughty but nice - is largely a 20th-century invention. In this book, Gary Cross examines how that look emerged in American popular culture and how the cute turned into the cool, seemingly its opposite, in stories and games.

Keep the information you need on playthings and pop culture at your fingertips! The Dictionary of Toys and Games in American Popular Culture is an A-to-Z reference guide to the playthings that amused us as children and fascinate us as adults. This enlightening—and entertaining—resource, complete with cross-references, provides easy access to concise but detailed descriptions that place toys and board games in their social and cultural contexts. From action figures to yo-yos, the book is your tour guide through the museum of sought-after collectibles and forgotten treasures that mirror the fads and fashions that helped define pop culture in the United States. The Dictionary of Toys and Games in American Popular Culture is a historical, yet current, reflection of society’s ever-changing attitudes toward childhood and its cultural touchstones. The book is filled with physical descriptions of each entry, including size, color, and material composition, and the age group most often associated with the item. It also includes biographical sketches of inventors, manufacturers, and distributors— a virtual “Who’s Who” of the American toy industry, including Milton Bradley, Walt Disney, and Jim Henson. With a brief glimpse through its pages or a lengthy look from cover to cover, you’ll discover (or re-discover) real hero action figures, toys with commercial tie-ins, fast-food promotional giveaways, penny prize package toys, and advertising icons and characters in addition to beloved toys and board games like Etch-a-Sketch®, Lincoln Logs®, Colorforms®, Yahtzee®, and Burp Gun, the first toy advertised on nationwide television. The Dictionary of Toys and Games in American Popular Culture presents easy-to-access and easy-to-read descriptions of such toys as: Barbie®, bendies, and Beanie Babies® Monopoly®, Mr. Machine®, and Mr. Potato Head™ Pez®, Plah-Doh®, and Pound Puppies® Scrabble®, Silly Putty®, and Slinky® Tiddly Winks®, Tinker Toys®, and Twister™ and looks at the people behind the scenes of the biggest names in toys, including LEGO® (Ole Kirk Christiansen) Fisher-Price® (Homer G. Fisher) Mattel® (Ruth and Elliott Handler) Hasbro™ (Alan, Merrill, and Stephen Hassenfeld) Toys R Us® (Charles Lazarus) Parker Brothers® (Edward and George Parker) F.A.O. Schwartz (Frederick Schwartz) Kenner® (Albert Steiner) Tonka® (Russell L. Wenkstern) The Dictionary of Toys and Games in American Popular Culture also includes an index and a selected bibliography to meet your casual or professional research needs. Faster (and more entertaining) than searching through a vast assortment of Web sites for information, the book is a vital resource for librarians, toy collectors and appraisers, popular culture enthusiasts, and anyone with an interest in toys—past and present.

Exploring the experiences of children encountering war and armed conflict, this book draws upon history, ethnography, sociology, literature, media studies, psychology, public policy, and other disciplines to address children as soldiers, refugees, and peace-builders within their social, cultural, and political contexts.

The all-new Toy Shop Annual 2001provides everything you need to successfully collect in the new millennium. How do the packaging, material, age, appearance and the function of a toy all work together to influence its value? How has the Internet affected the toy business on the secondary and primary markets? Collectors will find the answers to these questions and much, much more. In addition to feature articles, a guide to grading toys, market update, the auction year in review, toy/company anniversaries, state of the industry, dealer listings, toy manufacturers' directory and the 2001 show calendar, collectors will find special new sections devoted to the hot collectibles of 2000 and top Baby Boomer toys. Features: Market update; Guide to grading toys; Hot Toys of 2000; Top Baby Boomer toys.