It was Orange and Black

Sunday, August 10,2014
                   Sunny and hot

It was Yellow and Black

   Have ever seen an American movie from the 1920's-1940's, that takes place in a  large American city? If so,you would have seen the typical stock scene of 1000's of taxis driving on the main avenue downtown. Of course the movie would have been in black and white, but the taxis would have been yellow and black.  The interesting thing though is that the toy manufacturers made their toys in orange and black. 

   What I've always found interesting to  early American toys and manufacturers is that there was that  perhaps some "unwritten" code of honour, whereby different manufacturers would make similar-looking toys. There appears not to have been any lawsuits like we have today to round corners on cell phone patent infringements or screen size. It was (perhaps I might be wrong), a "live and let let" environment. 

   Another very interesting bit of information that I recently found is that cars way back were made of wooden parts. I'll of course need to investigate further, but here is an interesting link to a current manufacturer of replacement old car parts:

Please click here to visit a very interesting early Ford car parts manufacturer

You won't understand today's post title so here's the background that I wrote:

A bank robbery happens in downtown Detroit in 1922 at midday. A police car breaks down  during a chase, so the police commandeer a taxi cab. Other police come on the scene where the broken down police car is and want to know where the police are.

Police officer: "did you see where the other officers went?"

Witness:  "Yeh, they went east on Fairmont Avenue"

Police officer:  "Did you see in what car they went in?"

Witness:  "Yeh, it was a yellow and black taxi cab"

Please click here to visit this fine American auction company

I was able to find  a similar real taxi photo similar to the Arcade toy above.

I "love" those gigantic springs on the front of the car. 

Below is the Freidag Mfg. C company's version of the taxi cab.
Today the Freitag Manufacturing Company is much lesser known than the other cast iron toy manufactures of the 1920's-1930's However, they made a nice collection of toys at the time. If you do a search on the Net, you'll find lots of nice examples of their toys.

I like how the cast iron toy design copies the rounded door design of the real taxi cab.

Of course, I'll be writing about more taxis in the future and I'll be eager to find toys with those beautiful spoke wheels as you see in the photo above.

Below is the Dent toy company's cast iron version of their taxi

Most of the American cast iron toys of this period (1920's-early 1930's) have disc either painted or  plain (shiny bare metal) wheels. Tow of the toys presented today have rubber tires   mounted on metal wheels.

Today in Montreal, taxi cabs come in all sizes and manufacturer's makes and models.

Of course, my problem if a policeman asked me the question in my mini "script" above would be in remembering the license plate number. We now have 6 letter and digit combinations:

Was it  JKL 421, or KLJ 241, or 314 IKI?

You get the picture!

Thanks for dropping by to visit,

and as always, 

have  a great partfoo the day or night,

wherever you may be,

Stacey.

toysearcher@gmail.com