Usually, when I blog about dollhouses, it's because I am working on my own. But for my birthday last month, one of my friends gifted me a vintage tin dollhouse!
I already knew how popular these were in the mid 20th century, and I've encountered a few at auctions and in antique shops, but it was really cool to receive one to keep!
The first things I did, of course, was to research it. I know that the Marx company was one of the main manufacturers of these toys, but with anything popular, there are always imitation products. It didn't take long before I tracked down an image from the dollhouse's original box, and I confirmed that this is a genuine Marx dollhouse:
Marx dollhouses were popular from the late 1940's (after WWII, tin did not have to be saved for airplane production) until the early 1960's. In fact, the rarest Marx tin dollhouse of all was released in 1962. This dollhouse was only produced that year, and in a very limited quantity.
It's value is not only in its rarity, it's what the toy represents; the Cold War. In the midst of the conflict, many Americans were convinced that "the big one" could drop from the sky at a moment's notice. Construction of fallout shelters in urban areas, as well as in suburban backyards, reached its peak in the early 60's as the Cuban Missile Crisis loomed. And true to its era, this 1962 Marx dollhouse comes with its very own fallout shelter:
I love dollhouses for their craftsmanship and creative potential, but I think many people underestimate their usefulness as historic artifacts Not only do they present us with a view of how children in the past have played, they also provide insight into the climate of a culture at a given point in time.
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