Toy car

A toy car or also toy car is in most cases an object modeled on a car, which is mainly used as a children’s toy.

Table of Contents

Models

the palette of vehicles ranges from elaborately designed, highly detailed model cars, which are only used for collecting and looking at, to simple four-wheeled objects made of wood or tin cans, to constructions on which a child can sit and move around. The latter include the bobby car, the kettcar, various pedal cars and ride-on cars, as well as ultra-modern electric vehicles for children.

Famous vehicles were produced by the company wiking: faithful replicas in the ratio 87:1.

Somewhat larger vehicles were made in metal by siku and many others, sheet metal is still used today by the czech manufacturer KOVAP.

Today, the metal vehicles are equipped with friction engines, models made of sheet metal are often equipped with clockwork drives.

History

when karl benz invented the car in 1885, the first toy car was also developed quite soon. But long before that, children imitated rolling locomotion in games and with accessories. wooden carriages, later carriages and covered wagons represented the precursors of toy cars. While wood was the preferred material for toy cars at first (similar to the rocking horse), tin toys became more and more fashionable with industrialization.

Small models

After the 1. After the Second World War, there was a great demand for mechanically moved toys, mostly based on a tensioned spring, including cars and trains in many shapes and sizes. Marklin and schuco were well-known manufacturers for the german-speaking area. as late as the 1950s, schuco was still producing wind-up model cars the size of children’s hands that could move on fine wires, similar to the electric locomotives on rails, in self-designed tracks and represented an inexpensive alternative to that more costly model railroad hobby.

From the 1960s, as the number of cars increased in europe, more and more racing cars and later, with the invention of remote control, even remote-controlled toy cars were sold in the toy sector. Also action-car games such as the hot wheels series are becoming more and more popular in children’s rooms.

Pedal-, seat-, roll- and slide-models

Play cars for sitting in appeared as early as the turn of the 1900s and were given the name soapboxes after their manufacturing principle. From 1904, oberursel races were even held with it in germany. later the company kettler produced the kettcar named after it and modeled after the bicycle drive.

The bobbycar was developed to help young children learn to walk and has been in production since 1972.

Today you can meet battery-powered electric cars on playgrounds, but like all toy models, electric scooters are also, not are allowed for road traffic.