National Museum of Play Online Collections

Eclipse

toy stove

ca. 1935

In the last fifty years, standards for toy safety have undergone considerable changes. This Tappan tin and granite range stove illustrates just how much these standards have evolved. The miniature, fully functioning stove has double ovens and a stovetop that actually burned gas. Children could use a toy like this to cook over an open flame, mimicking the stoves their mothers used at the time. The Easy-Bake Oven, modern relative of cast-iron toy stoves, uses instead a light bulb and contains a cooking chamber, sacrificing the realism of early cast-iron toy stoves for a child's safety.

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