“Plenty of toys, but not German ones” in 1917

I was reading through Dan Foley’s 1962 book, Toys Through the Ages*, last night when I ran across an entertaining discussion of WWI’s impact on the American toy industry. Blockades during the war prevented toys from reaching US shores. Foley writes:

“Prior to World War I, three-quarters of all toys sold at F.A.O. Schwarz were imported from Germany, France, and England. The British Blockade changed the production picture considerably, and to a marked degree indicates the beginning of the marked expansion of the toy industry in America.”

That made me wonder what other info was out there on WWI and toys, and a quick dive into the Google newspaper archives quickly uncovered this article in the November 21, 1917, issue of the Pittsburgh Press. If you’re at all interested in how war affected toys during 1917 click through for the full article. What I find most fascinating is that the article tells us Japanese toys had replaced German toys, with “the toymakers of Nippon have made such inroads upon the trade of the Teutons that scores of Japanese lines are now seen in stocks which formerly were filled with the exportations of Berlin and Hamburg.”