Hoverboards, video games, iPhones. If you were a kid in 1915, you wouldn’t find any of these under your tree.
And, despite what you may think, kids, a century ago, wouldn’t have seen a sad pile of sticks, hoops or maybe some rocks, either.
“It was not that bad,” said Susan Jones, a volunteer at The Animas Museum in Durango.
“It was really not that bad. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing, by then, certainly the train was here ... so stuff could get here easily,” she said.
So girls and boys had plenty of toys at Christmas, but there was a clear gender divide.
What did girls want?
For girls in the early years of the 20th century, “dolls would have been huge, huge, huge,” Jones said.
In fact, an ad for the Famous Salvage Sale in the Dec. 20, 1905, Durango Democrat offered parents all types of doll options under the heading: “Oh! Papa! Oh! Mama! ... Look at the happy flush on your little sweetheart’s face – and how she covers her little dollie’s face with kisses ... how rapturously she hugs it to her little bosom and lavishes a wealth of ‘Little Mother’ love on it.”
And to be sure, the Famous Salvage Sale offered every type of doll imaginable: “Big dolls and little dolls – in fact every degree of intelligence and ability and culture that the inhabitants of doll land have.”
Going hand in hand with stoking a little girl’s maternal instincts, girls of the time were also given toys that taught them to do household chores – toys such as a child-size washboards, irons and teapots.
And, if you were Santa shopping for just the right training toy for your little girl, according to the Durango Weekly Democrat on Dec. 6, 1912, Toyland in the basement of Stein’s (“The Busy Corner Gift Store”) was the place to be.
Toy washboards were 15 cents, galvanized tubs could be had for 35 cents and a wash machine and wringer were going for 85 cents.
The toys were “fun, but they taught them how to be like mom; getting into that role,” Jones said.
And for the boys
The big thing was Tinker Toys, created by Charles Pajeau and Robert Petit in 1914, after the duo had been watching children play with pencils, sticks and empty spools of thread, according to the Classic Toy Museum. Originally called “Thousand Wonder Builder,” the sets, in 1915, sold for 60 cents, and they sold by the millions.
“They were incredibly popular,” Jones said.
In fact, by 1918, more than 2.5 million sets had sold worldwide. And in Durango, they, were in stock at The Graden Mercantile Co., according to a full-page ad of Christmas “Gift Selections” in The Durango Democrat.
Along with Tinker Toys, boys in 1915 Durango might find Erector Sets under the tree Christmas morning.
Created by Dr. Alfred Carlton Gilbert and introduced in 1912, the sets were inspired by railroad workers who were building an electrical system out of steel girders, according to the Classic Toy Museum.
And third in the popular gifts for boys competition were Lincoln Logs, introduced in 1916 and named after President Abraham Lincoln. Created by architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s son John, the original sets were made of redwood.
Other toys for boys that would have been in demand around 1915 were: anything having to do with baseball, cast-iron train sets and fire trucks, marbles, wagons, teddy bears and mechanical cast-iron banks.
“It would teach them how to start saving money,” Jones said.
And for the musically inclined: instruments such as drums and trumpets were sure to be a hit.
While not quite the hoverboards, video games and iPhones kids today may be expecting under the tree when they wake up entirely too early Friday morning, the kids of 1915 also had a lot to look forward to when they awoke – probably way too early, too – on Christmas morning.
katie@durangoherald.com
