This month’s cover of Toy Trucker & Contractor depicts “Christmas 1937,” as New York collector Mike Randall shares some of the rare and unique toys in his collection. Here, he spotlights some of his favorites, starting with the classic toys featured on the cover from 1937, when the United States was in the midst of an economic downturn during the Great Depression.


On the cover
The toys featured are two classic 1937 Buddy L International Harvester trucks. One is an Army truck version painted olive drab green, pulling a trailer with a canvas cover. The other is a Navy truck version painted battleship gray. Both trucks were acquired from the original owner, Dave Eastman of Ithaca, N.Y., who wanted both toys to stay together. They were purchased Dec. 23, 2016.
The three-wheel scooter where the little girl is seated has an interesting story and is a rare piece. The scooter is a 1937 Barr, manufactured by the Barr Typewriter Corporation, Weedsport, N.Y., my hometown. The Barr company produced three-wheeled and two-wheeled scooters from 1936-1938. The scooter is in excellent condition and all original. 
The Old Brutus Historical Society’s museum is located across the street from the location of the Barr factory. My wife and I have discussed with museum officials about donating the Barr scooter to the museum for its final resting place. The scooter was purchased from a collector in Missouri about 10 years ago. 


Railway Express Truck
Master Metal toys were manufactured in Buffalo, N.Y., for only one year, in 1938. Master Metal was an old steel appliance manufacturer. It mainly focused on making heavy metal cabinets, garbage cans, toolboxes and other items. The toy trucks it made were a dump, stake rack, coal dump, streamlined van body and the most scarce, a fuel tanker truck. The Holland Steel Co. of Holland, N.Y., took over the toy truck line in 1939 and possibly into 1940. The Holland toys used much lighter metal and I do not believe many survived.
The Master Metal toy trucks are extremely scarce, especially the 1938 Railway Express truck and this one is totally complete. I purchased this truck from a collector in Avon, N.Y., on Aug. 24 and the only things missing were the headlight bulbs. I was frantically trying to find small threaded bulbs the day before the photo shoot. I finally found them at an electrical store and my afternoon was a success after placing the D-cell battery in its position and the lights came on.
A couple of colleague collectors and I were studying the cab design, and we all agreed the cab was patterned after an early Fageol cabover.

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Like father. Like son. Neil Rogers seems to have inherited the collecting bug from his father, Doug. Since Doug had sold Minneapolis-Moline farm equipment for 20 years, his first interest was in collecting toy tractors. With a couple of brothers in trucking, he started collecting trucks also. Neil followed suit.
“We both were collecting a little bit of everything, and then we found ourselves bidding against each other,” Neil recalled.
That’s when Neil decided to collect small-scale trucks and leave the tractors and bigger scale toys for his father. 
Spacewise it was a good decision. Thirty years later, about 80 percent of Neil’s 150-toy collection fits in a 10-foot antique showcase with a glass front. The “stars” of his collection are 70 Tootsietoy semis, mostly from 1947 to the late ’50s. Though they aren’t the oldest Tootsietoy models, they attract attention when Neil takes them to shows around his Huron, S.D., home. 
“The older men say they remember playing with them when they were kids. The younger ones are impressed with the quality of that old of a toy,” Neil said.


Diehard for Die-cast
Back in the ’80s the 1/50 and 1/43 scale die-cast toys were easy to find at flea markets, auctions and toy shows. 
“I like the die-cast because they’re the same vintage as I am,” Neil said with a laugh. “And they were plentiful and inexpensive—usually $2-$5. They are in ‘played with’ condition.”
Besides Tootsietoys, he has old Ralstoy and Matchbox toys—including a few he had when he was a kid. He also buys newer die-cast toys made by SIKU, Tonkin, Shinsei and First Gear.
When Ertl came out with 1/43 scale tractors in the mid-’80s, Neil couldn’t resist buying some of them to put on his Tootsietoy flatbeds. It turned into a collecting dilemma. If he had an extra tractor, he needed another truck, and when he had an empty truck, he needed another tractor.
Besides tractors, Neil purchased Tootsietoy 3-inch cars for some of his trucks. He filled a stake body trailer with cattle, hogs and sheep also made by Tootsietoy.

Trucks for Every Job
“Tootsietoys were well-built and they had four major cab designs that actually resembled vehicles that were on the road,” he said. They were styled after a couple of International and Mack series trucks and a Chevrolet cabover truck, for example.
Neil’s colorful collection includes gas trucks, milk trucks, car haulers, wrecking trucks, cement trucks, moving trucks, dry vans, grain trucks, stock trucks and ladder trucks. 

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Mack Granite timber truck with loading crane that pivots 360 degrees and three log trunks.  ​

Bruder Spielwaren GmbH + Co. KG of Germany has a simple corporate philosophy when it comes to making toy trucks—place “the playing child at the centre of every single product” we make.  
In keeping with this simple philosophy, Bruder develops its products as model-sized toys. Beate Caso, president of Bruder Toys America, Inc., explained, “We use ‘model-sized’ toys to encourage children to imitate real life in the form of role playing.”  
Real life imitation is easy for children when playing with a Bruder truck since the company strives to follow its company slogan—“Just Like the Real Thing”—with everything it manufactures. Building toys “just like the real thing” has helped Bruder become one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of plastic toy vehicles and a growing participant in America’s diverse toy market.
Collectors like Bruder toys for their “Made in Germany” reputation. The company’s web site states, “More than 98 percent of our production is made in our facilities in Fürth, Germany. We supervise and control the complete process of manufacturing of our toys until they are dispatched. All our products are tested and examined by an independent quality test institute and they correspond to the directives of EN71 and ASTM (European and American toy standards).” Collectors know all too well how rare it is to find plastic toys not made in China.
The road from startup to international toy sales was a 60-plus years overnight success story for Bruder. Paul Bruder founded Bruder in 1926 in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany, hoping to find a self-employed occupation where he could work with his hands and be a part of something larger. He found success, using a small hand press, in fabricating brass reeds for toy trumpets. WWII interrupted toy production, but by 1948, Bruder was back in business and his son, Heinz Bruder, joined the company in 1950. Searching for new business ideas, young Bruder investigated the growing injection mold industry. In 1958 Bruder purchased its first hand-operated injection mold machine, changing forever the future and fortunes of Bruder. 
By 1965 Heinz Bruder ran Bruder, directing it towards the modern age of plastic toys. Bruder’s first major success was his plastic “Sound Gun” which consisted of just three pieces and a rubber band. The gun’s simplicity and inexpensive cost made it a favorite toy with children and parents alike.  
The year 1975 may be the year that Bruder truly became an international toy company. That is the year Bruder first exhibited at the Nuremburg Toy Fair. Growing recognition forced Bruder to once again expand by constructing a new warehouse and dispatch office. A new factory and office building were needed in 1979 as Bruder expanded its line of toys to include larger product lines of vehicles and other small toy items that would quickly provide the foundations of continuing expansion for the company.

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This nicely detailed 1/43 scale, Bedford Park No. 5 dual-axle GMC truck was a special Christmas release by Hallmark. ​

Mike is especially fond of this 1/24 scale, die-cast 1956 Ford pickup made by Yat-Ming. This rare collectible truck was a tribute model for the Los Angeles City Fire Department. ​