Productive

Plastic

Playthings

A LOOK BACK AT 1960S MAKER TOYS. BY BOB KNETZGER

The 1960s were a golden age for toys in America because of a timely combination of postwar factors. The baby boomers were in their prime toy-buying years (“for ages 6–12”) while the boom in the economy created more purchasing power for their parents. For the first time, toys were sold using network television ads, launching nationwide fads. The graduate of the 60s was told there was a “great future in plastics,” while at the same time the Space Race spurred an interest in science education and technological toys.

Among time-tested playthings, like dolls and trucks, came a new category of toys: “make and play.” There had been creative kid crafts before, like paint-by-number kits or Erector sets, but these modern maker toys inspired a generation of kids to mass-produce their own creations using miniature, at-home versions of industrial manufacturing methods and advanced “space-age” materials.

With clever research and development and bold

50 Make: Volume 20

marketing approaches, Mattel Toys led the way in make and play. Their innovative products included the Vac-U-Form, Thingmaker, and many other cool maker toys.

Designed in 1963 by whiz inventor Jack Ryan, a Yale-educated guided missile engineer (and Zsa Zsa Gabor’s sixth husband — how’s that for an only-in-the-Swingin’ Sixties resume?), Mattel’s