August/September 2010

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t is no accident that many of the visitors to toy museums are multi-generational groups – parents, grandparents and children arriving together to gaze at doll houses, dolls, miniatures and other toys. These museums remind adults and seniors of carefree moments spent playing, or of that special toy their parents may have passed down through the generations. And with the help of museum stores, today’s children get to play with the toys of the past through the purchase of replicas and kits or to enjoy modern items that could become collectibles in the future.

Gift store merchandise relates to the mission and content of the Delaware Toy and Miniature Museum in Wilmington, Del., according to Beverly Thomes, founder and director. The museum’s other founder is Gloria R. Hinkel. The museum opened in 1994, starting with a collection of doll houses, miniatures and sample-sized furniture passed down to Thomes from her mother. Antique dolls, toys and childhood playthings have been added and overall, the pieces date from 1770. The facility has gained international attention. In 1996, after being discovered on the Internet, the museum was invited to exhibit 50 furnished dollhouses for a month at the Living Design Center in Toyko, Japan.

For sale in the store are educational books, antique collectibles, newer doll house accessories, collectible and antique dolls, Britains toy soldiers, miniature furniture and vases, antique Christmas ornaments, plush, wood Noah’s arks, metal and pressed tin dollhouses from the 1940s and 1950s, new doll houses, antique silver baby cups and rattles, miniature-related jewelry, post cards and greeting cards. “It’s small, we have it jampacked. It’s about 250 square feet and we make good use of the space,” Thomes says.

Best sellers are handcrafted miniature dolls and books. Sterling silver miniatures are also very popular. “People that collect sterling silver like them, not too many people carry that stuff,” she says of the miniature silver furniture, chairs, tables, statues, chandeliers and other items. “People use them in dollhouses, tableware, plates, spoons and knives, one-quarter of an inch long, very tiny.”

The museum uses display cases, antique china cabinets, child-size furniture, round skirted tables, lighted cases and artificial Christmas trees for display purposes. “We just use it all. We use the floor, ceiling, walls. We are very eclectic,” she says. The price range at the shop is from $1 for children’s items to several hundred dollars. Museum visitors include school groups, families, senior citizens and tour buses.

“We’re very unique and our location, we are right next to Hagley Museum. They have machines and we are the softer side of things. The thing that makes our museum appealing is that it appeals to everyone. We get three generations of families coming in,” she says.

The museum’s staff are retired schoolteachers who have researched and learned about the content of the facility and who create a non-intimidating atmosphere. “Everybody that comes in is almost like a guest. We really do personalize the orientation to what the group is interested in,” she says.

The museum is 4,000 square feet and there are only three other museums like it in the country, she adds. And the variety of miniatures and toys sets the facility apart.

In April 2004 at the Toy and Miniature Museum of Kansas City in Kansas City, Mo., the museum finished a remodeling and expansion of the 580-square-foot shop and the museum. The shop gained slat walls for display, storage and shelving and was repainted and carpeted. The color scheme is an orangey brick, olive green and peach, says Sandi Russell, assistant director and gift shop manager. “We decided to make the gift shop stand out more so we decided to use colors that weren’t part of the museum,” she says. “It’s carpeted instead of the linoleum. It’s made it a lot warmer looking and feeling. It’s a lot easier on our volunteers’ backs and feet. It’s a speckled carpet so it brings all of the colors we have in the gift shop into the carpet. It looks really nice, it’s more inviting.”

The new built-in shelves give Russell a better opportunity to display books and the items that go with them. And the free-standing shelving makes for a better flow. There is also a four-sided glass tower that is used to highlight special exhibit and seasonal merchandise. And a window shelving unit, which can be viewed from the lobby, is a great place for books, ornaments, seasonal goods and miniatures for sale.

The store also does well with Winnie and Mickey plush. Items must be at least 50 years old to be on display in the museum and the store also stocks goods that will be collectibles in the future, such as the Raggedy Ann book series, which has been republished with the old illustrations, select plush from Boyd’s and Bearington and Dept. 56 merchandise.

There are also items from Midwest of Cannon Falls. “They are reissuing a lot of beautiful pieces that have the same look, textures, of the 1920s, 1930s, 1950s, reproductions of old candy containers that we also have on display throughout the museum,” she says. Also in what the company calls its Seasons division are “cotton batting figures and ornaments. They are amazing and we sell a lot of them. They have done an incredible job of bringing back the old look of toys and ornaments, decorative pieces. They are one of the few companies doing glass ornaments in the old shapes and colors that look like they have been around for 50, 60 years. They are just beautiful,” Russell explains.

Best sellers include a specially designed museum patch, plush and dolls. “The teddy bear has been a long time collectible,” she says. And when the store can get good dolls to sell at reasonable prices they do well. “It’s hard to find a good quality doll at a reasonable price. Richard Simmons had a doll line, beautiful pieces at a reasonable price,” she says. Russell said the exercise guru and Goebel, the manufacturer of the line, which was called Master Doll Makers, have parted ways. “They were just a very, very good piece for us. I just sold the last piece in stock. Hopefully Richard Simmons is going to be out there doing it again.”

The store also stocks magnetic board games, a farm-related board to relate the museum’s farm area and a fire truck board. The 15 Game, a reproduction of a 1950s diversion, also sells well, as do doll, horses and farm equipment coloring books. “It’s hard to find merchandise for our gift shop, to keep it in the realm of the collection and affordable and of interest to the people who are coming to the museum,” she says.

The museum gets many parents, children and grandparents who visit together as well as tour groups of mostly senior citizens. It is not a hands-on facility, with items instead displayed behind glass. It has an extensive doll collection, and the store stocks dollmaking kits from Gail Wilson Designs of South Acworth, New Hampshire. The kits contain a pattern to make a cloth doll, with hair either stitched or painted on.

In the gift store, seniors mainly look for items for their grandchildren. Popular with this demographic are sock monkeys, wood yo-yos, jacks and balls and tops, toys this group remembers from their own childhoods. The Raggedy Ann and Winnie the Pooh books are also popular gifts, as is the republished 1929 book, “Hitty – Her First 100 Years,” by Rachael Field and illustrated by Dorothy Lathrop. The shop also sells the wooden peg doll on which the book is based. The doll can be bought as a kit that includes instructions on making the doll and outfits from Susan Sirkus, and as a kit with assembled dolls (Hitty and two friends) and outfits to put together from Robert Raikes.

Winning Moves Games in Danvers, Mass. goes by the slogan “Classic, Retro, Cool & Fun.” Retro games are a good fit for many museums, says Laura Pecci, director of innovations and acquisition for the company, which tries to find games that fit in with the spirit of the slogan. Like the classic toys available at the Kansas City museum store, the games are highly popular with adults who remember them and like to introduce them to their children and grandchildren.

The company, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2005, sells Rubik’s Cubes (both regular and miniature) to science museums in Boston, Oregon and Chicago. Pecci says this popular 1980s diversion is a good fit for science centers. “They have a fun, cool design and it is a mental challenge,” she says. “The science museums carry the Rubik’s item because it is a natural fit. …Gift shop buyers look for items that someone who visits their museum would gravitate toward.”

And at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Winning Moves’ 1935 version of Monopoly is in stock. The game has a retro, clean and classic look that art aficionados like, she says. The museum also sells Mille Bornes, an auto racing game from the 1960s that features classic artwork.

The main audiences for The Museum Store at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Ga. are school groups and families, and best selling are small marionettes from Ganz that come in 50 styles and retail for $10.95, says Susan Kinney, museum manager,. The styles include cats, dogs, birds, teddy bears, ostriches, poodles and many others. They have been carrying the item for about four months. “It’s a good price range and they are cute as can be. It’s simple, but it does something. It’s a simple movement to make it look alive so kids can do it easily,” she explains.

The museum store opened in 1980, two years after the center debuted. The museum features old and new puppets from far flung locales such as Asia, Africa, Indonesia and Europe, as well as Jim Henson pieces. The facility also owns several pre-Columbian pieces and the overall collection ranges from hundreds of years old to 20 years old.

The shop is 1,500 square feet and sells anything that can be manipulated, including hand puppets and lots of toys, Kinney says. There are replicas of Indonesian, Chinese and Indian puppets and prices range from 50 cents to a couple of hundred dollars. And the shop is in the process of going online with merchandise for sale.

Also good-selling are puppets from Folkmanis. “Folkmanis is always a good seller. They have a lot to choose from, they have a pretty big price range from $12 to $60. They are well made, parents seem to appreciate that when they are buying a gift,” she says.

The shop also sells DVDs of productions, with three shows available currently and seven more expected in the next year. Goods relating to shows do well, as when the center performed the Velveteen Rabbit and sold bunny-related merchandise. Still, it can be difficult to tie in gifts with shows. “Three Billy Goats Gruff, it was really hard to find a goat puppet of any kind,” she says.

Space is a concern at the shop, so Kinney makes use of it all. “We hang marionettes. We have a special device to hang them from the ceiling,” she says. “We just put them in easily accessible areas and let them do the hands-on thing. Most of them are plush anyway,” she says of other merchandise. The shop also has a window facing the lobby that is themed to the current show. For example, for Charlotte’s Web, there was a spider hand puppet on a web and a small pig in the window. “We keep everything well lit so it looks bright and inviting, that’s part of it too,” she says.