Who put the K in K-B toys?

Donald Kaufman! Well, he and his family, anyway. Originally named after the 'Kaufman Brothers,' KB Toys recently closed.

Donald Kaufman, however, was a prolific collector of antique toys - mainly cars and trucks. Just this past year, he decided it was time to get rid of his toys and sell them at auction. The first of these auctions netted a cool 4.2 million, 1.2 million above the auction house estimate and 2.2 over Mr. Kaufman's own estimate. The Marklin clown car train pictured below alone sold for over $100,000. The second of these auctions is coming up in September. Check out this New York Times article about his collection.

Blast from the past!

One of the nice things about the first couple months of our store is the people who walk in and reminisce about Mitchell's. It's kinda bittersweet, as we're very happy to have opened our own store, but we - like most of our customers - miss Mitchell's very much. 

On Saturday, a former Mitchell's customer named Morris Freschman stopped in. Morris had with him a toy he had purchased at Mitchell's back in 1963. It was in wonderful condition, still in it's original box. It was a 'Child Guidance Musical Railroad' toy - a battery-powered toy train that ran on its own track. The track had 'ties' that were made of little metal pieces - the kind you see in a xylophone. Each piece was color coded with a musical note. When you arranged the 'ties' on the track, they would play a song when the train ran over the 'ties.' There was an instructional booklet that showed the different ways of arranging the track to play different songs. It actually looked pretty neat! I wonder when they stopped making it...

We took a picture of Morris with the toy for the blog. Thanks for bringing it in, Morris!

Lego Secret Vault

Check out this website - gizmodo.com, it has a big section of it dedicated to their recent trip to the Lego factory - I am supposing it's in Denmark, since I didn't see a location listed in the article. At this factory, they store one of each and every set that Lego has ever produced - 4,720 of them - from the fifties to today. Check out the article here, which features a nifty video of some of the sets and lots of pictures.

Old Rock Em Sock Em Robots commercial

Found this on YouTube. It kinda goes along with this post about the Marx Toy Museum closing last week.

Marx Toy Museum ends era in Erie, PA.

Back in the day, Marx was one of the biggest toy manufacturers in the world - creators of such legendary toys as Rockem Sockem Robots and the Big Wheel. Marx closed it's doors back in 1975, but many of the toys produced in Erie, PA, lived on at the Marx Toy Museum.

Sadly, the museum had to close it's doors and are auctioning off much of it's collection this weekend in Erie. For details, check this article.