How a toy maker put young minds to constructive play

A.C. Gilbert was a turn-of-the-20th-century Renaissance man: a gold-medal-winning Olympic athlete in the pole vault, a Yale-trained physician (though he never practiced medicine), a wow-’em magician specializing in sleight of hand, and a successful inventor. He was known to many as the boy who never grew up, and his greatest achievements were born of a profound fascination with playthings, explains Bruce Watson in “The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made,� a profile of Gilbert and the role his famed Erector Set played in developing the psyche of the early- to mid-20th century American boy.

The year was 1911, journalist Watson tells us, when Gilbert, “twenty-seven going on seven,� was riding the train to perform magic tricks in the Manhattan storefront window of Mysto, his do-it-yourself magic trick company. As the city’s skyline came into view, Gilbert gazed in rapture at the tall steel girders. “Wouldn’t it be great fun to build towers like these in miniature? Wouldn’t boys like him just itch to get their hands on them and start building bridges, cranes, and derricks right in their own living rooms?�

The following year, Gilbert produced a working prototype of his Erector Set; by 1912 he was hosting toy buyers demonstrate his creation, and within three years, Erector had racked up more than $1 million in sales. (This when the American toy industry was still in its infancy and toy sales domestically were only around $10 million a year. Gilbert is credited with creating the category of “educational� toy.)

In this knowledgeable, if at times dry, account, Watson probes beyond Gilbert’s life and iconic toy invention. He considers the zeitgeist that allowed Erector to gain its prominence. The toy addressed society’s “boy problem� by giving unruly boys something constructive to do with their pent-up energy; Gilbert’s marketing genius changed how products, particularly toys, were pitched to children. He offered young builders extravagant prizes for the best inventions, wrote personal-sounding letters to “his boys� and bestowed the coveted Expert Engineer distinction upon those who proved themselves worthy by sending in photos of finished models.

The most fascinating story Watson tells is of the near-loss of the 1918 Christmas toy season. World War I was in full swing when the Council of National Defense proposed a ban on all toy sales in deference to the military effort. The Toy Manufacturers of America, led by Gilbert, met with the council to oppose the ban. There, with goods in hand, Gilbert winningly argued that toys were not mere playthings but the “blueprints of future men and women who would fight wars and preserve the peace. Deprive youngsters of toys, especially educational toys, and ‘the country will lose a generation of doctors, engineers and scientists.’ � The council members were wooed. “Like kids making their first visit to FAO Schwarz, they marveled and played, reached and grabbed .... The secretary of the Navy picked up a toy submarine ... the secretary of Commerce sat examining a toy steam engine.� Perhaps, the council concluded, toys were essential to a wartime economy.

The book introduces readers to Erector-fueled ingenuity, and how passion for building and inventing among boys seemed to have blossomed for a generation or two and then faded, but not before having an effect on countless lives and engineering feats. (Did you know that the first artificial heart pump, designed to keep blood moving during heart surgery, was made by a medical student with an Erector Set, and that the process for making soft contact lenses was perfected with the help of an old phonograph and little Erector Set pieces?) Though Gilbert himself was often portrayed in the media as an overgrown boy, a kind of Peter Pan, it’s notable that he seldom smiled and that executives who worked with him never saw him laugh. His friends found him “about as childlike as your average IRS auditor,� Watson reports.

The book, unfortunately, suffers from a similar fate. In attempting to connect with his subject matter, Watson, who hadn’t been a huge fan of the toy as a child, obtains a classic Erector Set and tries to interest his son in building with him, but to no avail. He manages to construct, solo, a pre-designed “lift bridge,� though he says he “didn’t have much fun doing it.� Finally, he plans and builds his own creation -- an off-kilter version of the Eiffel Tower -- which becomes an escapade of drudgery and duty. Watson’s lack of passion for the Erector experience translates to scant enthusiasm on the page.

The account is missing a crucial component. Readers may sift through the various tales, finding usable parts and absorbing stories here and there, but they will find no sense of what makes for genuine Erector magic: fun.

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‘The Man Who Changed How Boys

and Toys Were Made’

Bruce Watson

Viking: 216 pages, $24.95

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