WORLD'S LARGEST TOY MUSEUM
The World's Largest Toy Museum is in Branson, Missouri
When in Branson, MO, last fall I visited The World's Largest Toy Museum
with over a million items from the19th century to the present time. My mind was flooded with memories about my
childhood. I remembered the toys I had and the ones I would like to have had if
we had had the money.
This is obviously a common response, and parents and grandparents
bringing children will see a lot things that will trigger memories that can be
shared.
There were toys for every age group.
I could see, however, that some of the kids walking around with an iPhone in their hands were wondering how
anyone could have found some objects interesting enough to spend time with.
My first strong response was to the National BB Gun Collection, with
over 500 guns. I would have loved to
have had a grandchild or two with me so I could tell them about the BB gun wars
of my childhood.
There were 500 BB guns in their collection
I would tell about my dissatisfaction with my Buck Jones pump and my
envy of those who had a Red Ryder lever action.
Those were the days of little parental supervision. and I'm not sure my
mother and dad knew the hazards the guns created.
In the checker museum I could have bragged about winning the nine-year-old
checker championship in Jamestown, N.D.
The Lone Ranger section took me back to lying on the floor in the dark
listening to him and his faithful companion Tonto on the radio.
Dolls play a large role in many people's childhood memories, and the
museum has a wide range of them. My wife
Carla especially enjoyed the displays. Our daughter Jerilyn has added several
hundred of similar ones in her collection at home.
I found a number of special displays. The first group was labeled
Vintage Store Front Mechanical Dolls.
Here I saw James Cagney, John Wayne and Jack Kennedy standing with a
group of realistic dolls dressed in outfits appropriate to who they were. They didn't appear to me to be something a
child would want, rather something an adult would keep for display.
The second large display had GI Joe boxes in the exhibits, but the
figures were dressed and armed German, Russian and other participants in World
War II. Again I didn't see them as
children's toys but as collectables for adults interested in fine details of
uniforms and weapons.
The last group was again GI Joe labels, but were Civil War figures,
finely detailed with individualized faces.
More likely again for adult collectors.
The owners, Tom and Wendy Beck. started the museum in Texas in 1998 and
moved to Branson in 2001with a mission "to build a toy museum that would
bring people back to their childhoods, bring forgotten memories back to life,
and offer opportunities for sharing those recollections with family and
friends." I feel that they
accomplished that goal very well.
As toys have been added, more building has been added and museum now
covers three buildings, with 26,000 feet of exhibits.
It is not all toys. Space has
been given to Harold Bell Wright who wrote "Shepherd of the Hills," a
novel that sold millions and became a play that was part of the start of
Branson as a tourist center.
We watched a movie on Wright's life and saw a copy of the letter written
by President Ronald Reagan about the positive influence of Wright's novel on
his life.
In the last building we visited there were several large railroad
displays, unlike anything I knew about as a child. Finely detailed buildings, tracks that
intersected and trails built on a special scale. My contact with this sort of thing was as an
adult with friends who had turned their basements into train stations
fulfilling a childhood dream.
For adults this is a very pleasant drop back into our past and for
children to have fun exploring .
My wife,
Carla in startled by a masked manikin
A Civil
War GI Joe collection
The Museum has a special section on checkers