Copyright © 2014 All rights reserved. Made By Blue Elf Artist  Terms of use | Privacy policy
THE Blue Santa & Friends
The Blue Santa Story on video!

Around the time when marbles were first being made, there were men on the other side of Akron looking for new uses for rubber. They saw this tremendous new market for children’s products and they turned out the first mass-produced balloons, rubber balls, rubber dollies, rubber duckies and rubber baby buggy bumpers.    

 

Soon other factories in Akron were turning out all kinds of toys and children’s products; tops, and pull toys, bicycles, tricycles and peddle cars (anything that used a rubber tire,) toy banks, toy telephones and the first full-color picture books.

 

There are still a number of major toy companies in the greater Akron area; Little Tikes, Step Two, Eagle Rubber, Maple City Rubber, Balloon Accessories, Inc., etc. At present count (research continues) we’ve identified over 170 Akron area toy companies between 1884 and 2008.

Gallery Photos

More Blue Santa Story
Blue Santa & Friends

The American Marble & Toy Manufacturing Co. in the mid - 1890’s was the first toy marble factory in the USA; it mass produced a million marbles a day and turned out dozens of other toys including the Blue Santa.

 

Made in the old German tradition, wearing a blue hooded coat, the Blue Santa looks quite different from today's Santa.  The modern Santa, with his red suit trimmed in white and stocking cap, originated in 1931 as an advertisement for the Coca Cola Company.  He was the creation of illustrator Haddon Sundblom.  After the turn of the 20th century, German figurines of Santa, made from papier-mâché, were imported to the USA.  The production of the American-made ceramic Santa figurines didn't return until the late 1910s and early 1920s.  

 

Mass-production dramatically reduced the price toys (for a penny a boy could buy a hand-full of marbles) and for the first time in history all children could have toys. The company was so successful that other local entrepreneurs opened up their own marbleworks. By the 1920s, there’d been a total of 32 marble factories in the greater Akron area.

 

c

Blue Santa & Friends
The Blue Santa Story