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  Pieces from a Tinkertoy set | |
| Type | Construction set |
|---|---|
| Invented by | Charles H. Pajeau |
| Company | Hasbro[n 1] |
| Country | United States |
| Availability | 1914–present |
| Materials | Wood |
| Official website | |
TheTinkertoy Construction Set (commonly known asTinkertoy,Tinker Toy, or plural forms thereof) is aconstruction set for children. It was designed in 1914 and was originally manufactured inEvanston, Illinois, U.S. The Tinkertoy brand is currently owned by BasicFun! Inc., which acquired it in 2018.[1][3]
The construction set was designed in 1914 –six years afterFrank Hornby'sMeccano sets– by Charles H. Pajeau, who formed the Toy Tinker Company inEvanston, Illinois, to manufacture them. Pajeau, astonemason, designed the set after seeing children play with sticks and empty spools of thread. Pajeau partnered with Robert Pettit and Gordon Tinker to market a toy that would allow and inspire children to use their imaginations. After an initially slow start, over a million were sold.[4][5]
The cornerstone of the set is a wooden spool roughly 1.4 inches (3.6 cm) in diameter, with holes drilled every 45degrees around the perimeter and one through the center. Unlike the center, the perimeter holes do not go all the way through. With the differing-length sticks, the set was intended to be based on thePythagorean progressiveright triangle.
The sets were introduced to the public through displays in and aroundChicago which included modelFerris wheels. Tinkertoys have been used to construct complex machines, includingDanny Hillis'stic-tac-toe-playingcomputer (now in the collection of theComputer History Museum inMountain View, California) and arobot atCornell University in 1998.
One of Tinkertoy’s distinctive features is the toy’s packaging. Initially, the mailing tube design was chosen to reduce shipping costs. Early versions of the packaging included an address label on the tube with space for postage. To assist buyers in differentiating between the various offerings, sets were placed in mail tube packages of different sizes and also delineated with a number (e.g.: 116, 136) and a name (e.g.: major, prep, big boy, junior, grad). A colorful "how-to" instruction guide accompanied each set. In the 1950s, color was added and the wooden sticks appeared in red, green, blue, and peach.[6]
The main manufacturing location was a 65,000-square-foot (6,000 m2) four-story plant at 2012 Ridge Avenue, Evanston, Illinois.
Tinkertoys were inducted into theNational Toy Hall of Fame atThe Strong inRochester, New York, in 1998.[7]
Hasbro bought the Tinkertoy brand and produced both Tinkertoy Plastic and Tinkertoy Classic (wood) sets and parts.[8] Hasbro later leased rights to BasicFun! to manufacture and market the toy.[2]
The US rights are currently owned by Basic Fun! Inc.,[9] which acquired them in 2018.[1] In 2024, Basic Fun! filed forChapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company will use bankruptcy proceedings to repay its creditors while remaining in operation.[10]
In addition to the spools, a standard Tinkertoy set includes:
Spools and pulleys all have a single groove around the outside; "Part W" has two parallel grooves.
Sticks (or "rods") are slotted on each end, both to provide slight flexibility when inserted into snug-fitting holes, and to allow thin cards, flags, and strings to be inserted into the slots. They are color-coded by size; in the 1960s-era sets, they were, in order from shortest to longest, orange, peach, blue, red, green, and violet. Each successively longer rod is (with allowances for the size of the spools) the next smaller size times the square root of two; thus any two of the same size will combine with one of the next size up, and three spools, to form anisosceles right triangle (45°–45°–90°).
Tinkertoy sticks before 1992 were made with a diameter of 0.25 inches (0.64 cm). The earlier sets had natural wood sticks, but changed to colored sticks in the late 1950s. From measurement, the orange sticks are 1.25 inches (3.2 cm) inches long; peach, 2.15 inches (5.5 cm); blue, 3.35 inches (8.5 cm); red, 5.05 inches (12.8 cm); green, 7.40 inches (18.8 cm); and purple, 10.85 inches (27.6 cm). Spools are 1.35 inches (3.4 cm) inches in diameter with holes of 0.30 inches (0.76 cm) inch depth.
Most of the larger sets also include a driveshaft (an unfinished wooden rod without slotted ends, of an intermediate length between "green" and "violet", normally turned with a small plastic crank.
The Ultra Construction Set also includes connectors, small cylindrical plastic pieces approximately 2 inches (5.1 cm) long with a slot in either end and a slotted hole crosswise through the center of the part.
Sets withbattery-poweredelectric motors were available; these sets also typically included at least one wooden "double pulley" with a single snug-fitting through-drilled center hole, and grooved rims at two diameters, allowing different moving parts to operate at different speeds.
Tinkertoys are present in the filmToy Story, seen scattered across Andy's room. The characters use these as dumbbells for exercise training.
Inthe second film, they are seen yet again scattered across Andy's room. However, these Tinkertoys are wood, not plastic like the first film. They are shown disorganized in the toy box with no container.
They are also seen inToy Story 3, being used as the supports for the railroad in the Wild West scene at the beginning at the film. They are yet again wood, with their very last appearance in the Sunnyside Daycare.
