For most kids in the United States today, holidays mean getting toys. Families who celebrate Christmas traditionally give their kids toys as gifts, and families who celebrate other holidays often find ways to add toy-giving into their holiday celebrations. For weeks leading up to the holidays, kids and their parents are bombarded with ads for toys competing to be the ones bought and eagerly unwrapped.
But how did we get here? Toys weren't always the first thing people thought of when shopping for presents. Once upon a time, holiday presents were nuts and sweets or small trinkets. In the United States, toys couldn't even be bought in stores at all until the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s!
Notes from Toyland tells the story of how toys went from homemade playthings to the mass-manufactured, heavily advertised products we know today. Join us as we explore the history behind that transition and take a walk through a century of toys in Montana. Learn how much toys changed (or didn't change!) between 1900 and 1999.
This exhibit uses images from HMFM's permanent collection, newspaper archives from around Montana, and artifacts from other institutions. Sources not listed in the image description are attached to the image as annotations. A full list of sources can be found by clicking the Image Sources link at the bottom of this page.
