Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1908-12-16

about most gayly. Swimming men, dancing
Scotchmen, snowballs stuffed with small toys,
and humpty-dumpty circuses come in view
you wander along; while games galore call
aloud for inspection. Toyland certainly never
was so full of splendid things for those who can
spend dollars and cents.
Take another turn, however, and we come to
Tiny Town, where the purchasing power of the
penny is best represented. Sets of kitchen
utensils, traction engines, gunboats, cruisers,
motor Omnibuses railway engines, black
smiths, sawyers, county council trans, light
houses dancing ballet girls, dolls furniture,
sewing sets, gold fishes in globes, minus the
elaborate mechanism of the more expensive
type, but all made to work. Comical figures,
magnetic diver~ shooting galleries. skin ami
mails, and hunyreds of musical contrivances
are priced at few cents.
In the course Of short ramble through Toy
land it is impossible for us to sec all that is
to be seen, br= it is clear that Santa Claus
has never had ruch busy time in making ar
engagements TO. his Christmas eve visit.
The misunderstanding to the great toy en-
poriums whose wonderful stocks are reviewed
above-will prtbably make record from the
business standpoint. Each succeeding year
brings a growth in the demand for better class
toys: and it is happy circumstance that the
English maker s awakening to the possibility
of big business IN this direction
The German snatched the soldier trade from
the French ard for years maintained prac-
tical monopoly; but in turn the German has
been completely Ousted by the Englishman.
In some of the largest toy places in London
this Christmas not single foreign made SOL
der will be sola The same success is appar-
emily awaiting English enterprise in regard to
dolls houses.
Germany still! holds the field as regards dolls,
but in the course Of time even this phase of
Toyland may Undergo a change Games bid
fair to become extremely popular. Diabolo,
"the devil ON two sticks has already
captured Paris, end the demand in London sug-
gests the likelihood of its becoming great
craze there.
At a moment when the toy industry in France
is on the wane. the famous caricaturist Caran
dAche comes 10 the rescu: Being medically
forbidden to f:,low his AIT, he turned, as
hobby, to making wooden animals Unable to
repress the humorous strain in his SOUL he I'M
parted to his creations m:rth-provoktng char
acter which has already made them the rage of
Paris; and t. judge from the Burlington Ar
cade they will ere long become quite a craze
in London.
From the cheap mechanical toy which i'm
pedes our progress through tho streets, az dis.
played on the pavement by the enterprising
camelot, to the wonderful creations which the
Main Bleu, that paradise Of French children
for nearly century, has provided for the PAM
pered darings of the wealthy, the predominant
ing element in the French toy of to-day is
mechanical ingenuity. Never has this been
more noticeable than In the novelties which the
manufacturers are preparing for the coming
holidays.
The average French maker of toys scorns
to offer the little ones such simple things as
our childhood knew; and the wooden doll and
WOOlly baa.lamb are to be found only In the
poorer districts. Dolls made Of wood there