The Anaconda standard., 1899-12-16
ANACONDA NEWS.
new TOYS FOR HOLIDAYS
Styles in Playthings Have
Changed This Year.
SCIENTIFIC is IN VOGUE
While the Military Idea Has Been Rele-
gated to the Background-Engines
and Machinery Are the
Popular Fads.
SCIENTIFIC IS IN VOGUE

{ The holiday season of 1899 brings its
quota of new ideas in children's play
things. The store windows are crowd
ed with fresh concets in toys, showing
that the Yankee has not thought it
unworthy his genius to apply himself
TO the invention of gimcracks for the
young. True, fully 80 per cent. Of the
toys offered for sale in Anaconda were
not made by Yankees. They came
from France, Germany, Switzerland,
Italy and various other foreign coun-
tries, for when the pleasure of young
America is in question the element of
distance is an inconsiderable factor,
but the fact remains that the really
new toys, or those embodying new
combinations of old ideas, We're made
in this country. The imported article,-
generally speaking, conforms closely to
tine conventional in gewgaws. 1t is to
the Yankee that the youth of the coun-
try must look for innovations, and he
seldom looks in vain.
Nothing, perhaps, more faithfully re-
fleets the spirit of the times than the
toys of the holiday season. They are
true barometers of things industrial
changing. Had an observant Rip Van
Wrinkle awoke from a 20-year nap in
toy store a year ago doubtless his
first words after surveying the lilipu-
tian arsenal would have been: MY
country is embroiled in war" Now he
would say: Verify, these are prosper
Gus times, and this is the age of steam,
electricity and the continuous vaude-
ville." For in the IL months just
passed the taste Of Young America has
undergone wonderful transformation.
A year ago it ran to guns, cannon,
matt rc'
now it is addressed to the munitions
of peacefare-engines, tools, trolley
cars and the various other mechanical
and scientific playthings, with a liberal
side line of performing dogs, acrobatic
Japs and trick donkeys. He deigns
ippines. The war in the Transvaal is
matter of which he takes no cogni-
zance. To him the world is at peace.
The Russian emperor doubtless would
be pleased to know that at least the
youth of this country is in sympathy
with the recent conference at The
Hague.
Thus it is that the place of honor
in a Main street toy store is occupied
by a toy railway train and track, while
toy. battleships and toy cannon occupy
secondary places. All day long the lit
tie engine pulls it's train around a cir
cular track while small boys and, it
must be admitted. children of a larger
growth also stand outside the window
in open mouthed wonder at the sturdy
little engine.
d Hot air as a. substitute for steam has
been Introduced into the world of me-
chanical toys, with the result that
nearly half the stationary toy engines
now on the market are driven by this
motive power. In appearance they diff
fer very little from the steam engine,
but are said to be superior to it in
point of safety. Another hot air toy.
presenting a man saving wood, is pro-
PEELED by windmill, itself driven by
the upward draft from a radiator or
stove.
A tin fish that will swim at uni
form distance beneath the surface of
water by a swift movement of it's fins
and tail made it's debut this year. The
toy is wound up like a clock. and
maintains its position in water by
means of a system of weights and
vacuums.
Vaudeville, it seems, receives it's
share of attention at the hands of the
toymaker. Among the most ingenious
OF the articles under this head is the
mechanical Chinaman," who, upon
being wound up, plays several pieces
upon metallophone. The music
a perforated strip of brass similar in
principle to that used in the gramo-
phone-passes slowly underneath the
platform upon which the tin Celestial
stands. The melody" adduced is un-
Then there is musical juggler" and
a pair of "acrobatic clowns. Two
painted tin dogs do impossible things
on ladders, and a savage Turk lifts his
mustache and rolls his eyes in response
to a hidden spring. But by far the