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Outside the North Pole, Ohio was once the center of toy-making magic

By: Kendall Crawford | The Ohio Newsroom
Posted on: Tuesday, December 17, 2024

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XENIA, Ohio (The Ohio Newsroom) — Rob Eldridge collects scraps of his childhood. At his vintage toy shop in Xenia, the shelves are stocked with all the obsessions of his adolescence: G.I Joes, hot wheels and superheroes.

“That robot right there, that Shogun warrior robot from Japan,” Eldridge said, pointing at a menacing-looking cyborg. “That was my favorite toy.”

Eldridge has collected classic toys for more than two decades. And he’s in the best place for it. Some of the most popular toys put under his tree in Christmases past were once made right here in Ohio.

“Ohio is the Mecca for toys,” he said. “Because so many toy companies started here in Ohio.”

‘Kenner country’

Cincinnati was once the hub for trinkets. Kenner Products was responsible for some of the best-selling toys in the ’60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. They designed Star Wars action figures, manufactured Play-Doh and created the Easy Bake Oven.

Kenner also helped to transform iconic characters into dolls, like Strawberry Shortcake. The rosy-cheeked ragdoll was first put on the page by Ohio-born artist Muriel Fahrion.

“I have a superpower. My pencil draws cute,” Fahrion said.

Fahrion worked for American Greetings in Cleveland. Strawberry Shortcake began as an idea for a greeting card. Then big name toy developer Bernie Loomis got a hold of Fahrion’s designs.

“And he said, ‘That’s it. That’s going to be big. It’s going to be toys. It’s going to be decor. It’s going to be clothes. It’s going to be an animation,’” Fahrion recalled.

Loomis was right: Fahrion’s cute character became a $4 billion dollar franchise. And the Ohio designer didn’t stop there. The success of Strawberry Shortcake led to the creation of an entire character brand division at American Greetings, called Those Characters from Cleveland, which spawned the Care Bears, Holly Hobbie and the Get Along Gang.

A simple start

The state’s toy manufacturing actually began long before Fahrion and Kenner’s commercial success, according to Ohio historian Ben Baughman. In the late 19th century, Samuel Dyke started the Akron Marble and Toy Manufacturing Company. The northeast Ohioan was one of the first people to mass-produce a product specifically for children.

“And that became extremely popular,” Baughman said. “They began producing over a million marbles a day at one point.”

The state’s foray into fun was largely successful because of Ohio’s inventive spirit, said Baughman. Large manufacturers would look for ways to make toys out of what they were already producing.

“You produce rubber products and then you realize, ‘Hey, we could use this to make the rubber duckies.’”

Shaking things up

That’s exactly the kind of shift the Ohio Art Company made in the ‘60s.

Bill Killgallon, former company chairman, said the Archbold-based business was producing metal picture frames before they developed small toy tea sets and sand pails for children. But, business really boomed after they bought the rights to a small doodling device.

“We named it Etch-A-Sketch, and it became an instant success,” Killgallon said. “It was one of the first [toys advertised] on TV.”

The best-selling toy was produced in rural northwest Ohio until 2000, when the manufacturing of the shake-to-erase technology moved abroad. Now, most of the toys underneath Americans’ Christmas trees are made in other countries, and not many toy creators are left in Ohio.

But, Ohio’s toy history continues to be celebrated by people like Eldridge, the toy collector, who preserves all things playful. Each March, he hosts the Great Ohio Toy Show to highlight the state’s part in manufacturing Christmas memories across the world.

“It’s just that simple time or a memory of a grandparent or when I got it, the best Christmas ever,” Eldridge said. “You gotta have those things back.”