Toy Shopping? Buy “Made in the U.S.A.”

So you want to buy American as you check off that Christmas toy list? You can, though it may seem as if everything on the shelves was manufactured somewhere else. There are many American toy companies alive and thriving in the USA, including the Holgate Toy Company of St. Paul, Minnesota, which has been making children’s toys since the days of George Washington (actually, since 1789).

It never ceases to amaze me how the simplest toys last the longest, not just in terms of the immediate attention span but in the kind of activities enjoyed by generation up generation of children. As a child, wooden toys and “old-fashioned” button and block toys were favorites, some bought, some handmade. You can find them in independent toy stores, country stores, and specialty children stores; “Made in America” toys are hardest to find when you are shopping in the mass market box-style chain stores.

The Holgate company is one of the premiere American-based toy manufacturers; their craftsmen created the My First Block Wagon, a simple pull toy filled with building blocks — it’s a toy that several incarnations later comes in other sizes with ever more blocks. They created the Hickory Dickory Dock Clock, a variety of wooden stepping stools that is the wooden precursor to the plastic See and Say toy. Holgate makes myriad durable, colorful (and non-toxic) wooden toys. They also carry items such as cloth finger and walking puppets, and many infant and toddler toys as well as playthings for older children.

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