What's your collecting obsession?

Alan Dorfman, president, Basic Fun

Boys may be leaving the playground earlier these days, but not without their toys. If they do leave without them, however, they are likely to want them back; and then some! Today's men comprise a large majority of the collector market, toys being a dominant collectible.

Case in point: Alan Dorfman, president and founder of Pennsylvania-based Basic Fun, the innovative company that put the whimsy into the keychain industry.

While Dorfman says his passion for collecting came before his entry into the toy industry, he credits the business with giving him the "means" to pursue his passion. "This is not a cheap hobby," he quips!

Dorfman tells PLAYTHINGS his desire to collect antique toys was driven by a childhood experience: "When I was in elementary school, we took a class trip to the Perelman Museum in Olde City Philadelphia, which housed one of the country's most respected collections of antique toys. I loved it!"

An assignment following the trip was to design and build a toy. "I built a pull toy made from tin cans, wooden spools, wire and construction paper."

Today, Dorfman primarily collects tin mechanical toys, built during the "golden era" of toys—1880 through the 1920s. "Most of my collection is from European manufacturers," he notes. Although his collection is valuable — the oldest toy being from the early 1860s — he says the emotional value he derives from it justifies the monetary value.

Part of his assortment is focused on specific manufacturers. "As I get closer to completing the collections, the toys get harder to find, and therefore are more costly." Ironically, Dorfman tells PLAYTHINGS , the hardest to find were the commercial failures, as less of them were made.

Some of Dorfman's favorite toys are not very costly. "They were well made, visually pleasing, and cleverly functional—making them popular in their day, more highly treasured and therefore better cared for," he explains.

He notes the Toonerville Trolley made by Nifty as a good example. "It is almost a must-have for tin toy collectors. But finding one in mint condition is challenging!"

Although being a collector has not influenced his business per se, Dorfman says it has made him a student of the toy industry. "I have been able to see trends, successes, failures and technologies over the past 100 years."

While toys from the 50s like Etch a Sketch and games like Monopoly and Life, which date back to the early 1900s, are still around, tin toys ceased to become children's playthings when the government determined that the sharp metal edges were hazardous, Dorfman points out. "So the whole industry went away," he says, "only to survive by a few importers/manufacturers today that sell them as adult collectibles."

Dorfman believes some of the best toys were made in the early part of the 20th century, "when mechanical toys were wonderfully creative and complex." About this time, lithography, a method for printing on sheets of tin, was developed to replace hand painting. "The result was beautiful patterns, colors and detail," he says. "The combination of function and deco made for little works of art that stop and make kids and adults smile, even today."

Muses Dorfman: "Oh man, if I could only have been in this business 50 years ago! That is when the sky was the limit! There were toy stores in every town, toy departments in every variety store and hundreds of distributors and wholesalers. You could make toys and then sell them," he tells PLAYTHINGS. "Today you have to design them, show them, hope they get picked up by one of the few major retailers left and then you can make them. Fifty years ago, innovation and quality counted. Today, price, promotion and licenses sometimes take priority over play value," he notes regretfully.

"I am afraid that collectors years from now may see these times as lean ones for toys!" Dorfman says.