PLAYMAKERS

Geppettos to the world.

Jewish men and women have shaped American popular culture with Broadway melodies, Hollywood westerns, advertising slogans—all contribute to the American vernacular sense of self, an ideal of longing for an Eden in the wilderness, a love requited, and a society of justice and acceptance. So too, as this book illuminates, Jewish entrepreneurs gave birth to our favorite toys. Kimmel, a scholar and great-grandnephew of the founder of the Ideal Toy Corporation, writes, “First-generation Jewish immigrants…remade America—and in particular, American childhood—not in their own image but in the image of what they wanted them to be.” Morris Michtom brought together scraps of cloth, sawdust, and buttons to create the Teddy Bear—like some urban God shaping his Adam from the dust. Louis Marx, dubbed “America’s toy king,” made a fortune in model trains and became one of the first advertisers on the Mickey Mouse Club television show. Ruth and Elliot Handler founded Mattel. Hasbro, Ideal, and Kenner all had Jewish founders. The core of this book is a social history of American childhood told through marketed commodities. It argues that the escape from pogrom and shtetl provincialism in the early 20th century uniquely constellated the desires of these new Americans to make the world their own. Like the émigré musicians who gave us the soundtrack to the Old West, and like Irving Berlin, who gave us “White Christmas,” these toymakers and their families gave us memories and ideals. Barbie, that icon of blond beauty, “began in a Jewish immigrant family.” More than a toy, she has become “a trope, a symbol.” Children aspire through their toys, and they still play with the creations of immigrant aspirants wanting that ideal life.

An enlightening social history of how Jewish family businesses created America’s most iconic playthings.