Original Eames The TOY

For sale: one original The Toy designed by Charles and Ray Eames and produced only between 1951 to 1959. The Toy has been re-issued recently by Eames Office, however this is your opportunity to own an original. The instruction graphics are a fantastic time capsule on it's own. The box shows wear as it is 60+ years old, however, the various waxed paper panels show little to no sign that they were ever actually used. Photos show condition, sold as is.

Here is a bit of history on The Toy:

'The Toy' was the very first of the Eames Toy designs to be released to the marketplace in 1951. Manufactured by Tigrett Enterprises of Tennessee it was sold primarily in the Sears, Roebuck department stores. The Eames Toy was an ingenious concept aimed at encouraging the user to create and build a construction purely from their own imagination.

The Toy was marketed as a way to produce architectural constructions from colorful panels and was geared at youngsters of all ages to use their creative building skills. The panels came in a variety of colors including yellow, green, blue, black, red and magenta.

The Eames Toy was housed in a beautiful hexagonal shape box with an eye catching design mixture of lettering, example toy builds, colors and black and white squares. The contents included 4 square and 4 triangular panels made from a revolutionary plastic coated paper which was extremely durable and water resistant. 38 wooden dowels enabled the user to build panels together and the included pipe cleaner wires could be utilized to tie the whole creation together. The included instruction sheet gave some fun examples of what could be created using the Eames toy and had numerous witty doodles.

The Toy by Eames was sold only until 1959 therefore finding surviving examples is extremely rare and they have become highly desirable and collectible. The original vintage Tigrett versions are not to be confused by recent re-issues since 2017.