American kids growing up in the early 20th century had a choice of games they could play on the floor: Tiddlywinks or marbles. The former were originally called Tiddledy Winks and were made by the Transogram company, headed by first-generation American Jew Charles Raizen. As it happened, Jack Pressman, the “Marble King” of the United States who kept business booming even during World War I, was also an American Jew born to immigrant parents.

In fact, many Jewish names appear in the narrative of childhood in America during the 20th century. The chosen people — especially first-generation ones — figured prominently in the ranks of those who invented, designed and distributed toys; who wrote and illustrated children’s books and comic books; even those who addressed childhood through the emerging field of psychology.

A new book puts all the puzzle pieces together: “Playmakers,” by Michael Kimmel, an emeritus professor of sociology at the State University of New York.

“Everywhere I looked, there was like this parade of Jews,” Kimmel told The Times of Israel. “Virtually all but one of the major, major toy industries in the first few decades of the 20th century were founded by first-generation Jews … How come I never read this before?”

Kimmel has a family connection to the story: In the first decade of the 20th century, his great-great-uncle Morris Michtom is credited with inventing one of America’s most beloved toys, the teddy bear, which Michtom sold through the company he founded and ran, Ideal. Kimmel initially thought he would write a brief family memoir about Michtom — then he started unearthing the names of more and more Jews connected to the toy industry.

“They imagined a world where other children could have the experiences they lacked — and, in so doing, they transformed America,” Kimmel writes in the introduction. “They didn’t just transform the way we understand childhood. They invented twentieth-century American childhood.”

As noted in the book, many non-Jewish names also loom large over the narrative of childhood in 20th-century America, including Disney, Schulz and Seuss (or Geisel). And yet, the cast of Jewish characters is quite extensive.

Joshua Lionel Cowen (originally Cohen) created the toy trains that continue chugging along tiny but extensive railroad tracks. Toymaker Louis Marx’s string of successes earned a comparison to Henry Ford. Three siblings, the Hassenfeld brothers, founded Hasbro, while a married couple named Ruth and Elliot Handler and their friend Harold Matson created Mattel, maker of Barbie. (Rhea Perlman played Ruth Handler in the 2023 Barbie........

© The Times of Israel