A toy fort is a miniature fortress or castle that is used as a setting to stage battles using

toy soldier A toy soldier is a miniature figurine that represents a soldier. The term applies to depictions of uniformed military personnel from all eras, and includes knights, cowboys, American Indians, pirates, samurai, and other subjects that involve ...

s. Toy forts come in many shapes and sizes; some are copies of existing historical structures, while others are imagined with specific elements to enable realistic play, such as moats, drawbridges, and

battlement A battlement in defensive architecture, such as that of city walls or castles, comprises a parapet (i.e., a defensive low wall between chest-height and head-height), in which gaps or indentations, which are often rectangular, occur at interv ...

s. Toy fort designs range from the

château A château (; plural: châteaux) is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor, or a fine country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally, and still most frequently, in French-speaking regions. Now ...

x of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

to the stockade forts of the American wild west.

History

Toy forts and castles first appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, a country that dominated the world of

toy A toy or plaything is an object that is used primarily to provide entertainment. Simple examples include toy blocks, board games, and dolls. Toys are often designed for use by children, although many are designed specifically for adults and pet ...

manufacturing up until

WW1 World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. The earliest examples came as a set of generic wooden blocks which could be configured in many different ways. As time went on, some of these sets were designed to portray specific structures associated with real

battle A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and force ...

s. Around 1850 dollhouse manufacturers started to apply their production methods and capabilities towards the production of toy forts and castles. Sets would consist of wooden components, some blocks and some flat, painted to depict details such as stone, brick, windows, arches and vegetation. The parts would be shipped in a box which was designed to be inverted and then used as the base for the toy fort. This design became the standard design for toy forts and castles for the next 100 years. The Germans dominated the toy fort market until about 1900 when other manufacturers from France, Denmark, Britain, and the USA started to appear on the scene. As technology progressed, new materials were used in the manufacturing of toy forts including

tin Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal. Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...

zinc alloy Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodic ta ...

, composition,

cardboard Cardboard is a generic term for heavy paper-based products. The construction can range from a thick paper known as paperboard to corrugated fiberboard which is made of multiple plies of material. Natural cardboards can range from grey to light ...

hardboard Hardboard, also called high-density fiberboard (HDF), is a type of fiberboard, which is an engineered wood product. It is used in furniture and in the construction industry. Description Hardboard is similar to particle board and medium-densi ...

, MDF, and finally plastics.

Manufacturers

The three best-known manufacturers of toy forts were Moritz Gottschalk (Germany), O. and M. Hausser (Germany), and

Lines Bros Lines Bros Ltd was a British toy manufacturer of the 20th century, operating under the Tri-ang Toys brand name. Lines Bros Ltd, at its peak in 1947, was claimed by the company to be the largest toy maker in the world. Under the Tri-ang Toys bran ...

. (

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...

Germany

* Christian Hacker * Moritz Gottschalk (1840—1905) started his career as a bookbinder, but by the age of 25 had branched off into children's toys which would eventually lead to him becoming one of the world's most influential toy makers of the late 19th to early 20th centuries. He started with the dollhouses that he is most famous for and quickly went from a cottage industry to running a factory. Once his infrastructure was in place he was able to diversify adding the manufacture of other toy buildings such as forts, stables, and grocery stores to his repertoire. * Dr. F.A. Richter * Emil Schubert * The Hausser Brothers * Carl Moritz Reichel * Emil Weise and Carl Krause * Richter and Wittich

Great Britain

* Lines Bros./Tri-ang. Toy manufacturer Richard Lines, in partnership with his brother George, ran the company G & J Lines until 1903 when he bought out his brother and continued to make toys with the help of his four sons. In 1919 three of the sons, Walter, Arthur, and William formed the company Lines Bros. Ltd which used the brand name Triangle Toys, later shortened to Tri-ang. The company's toy forts first hit the toy market around 1931. * C.E.Turnbull/Charterhouse * Chad Valley * A.J.Holladay/Skybird * Burnett & Co/UBILDA * Binbak * Elf (Joy Toys) * Tudor Toys *

Britains Britains, earlier known by the founder's name W. Britain, is a British toy brand and former manufacturing company known for its die-cast scale models of agricultural machinery, and figurines. The company was established in 1893 as a toy soldiers ...

Timpo Timpo Toys Ltd. was a British toy company created in 1938 by Salomon "Sally" Gawrylovitz (born in Frankfurt 1907, died September 28, 2000 in Zug, Switzerland), also known as Ally Gee. History A Jewish refugee from Germany, Gawrylovitz starte ...

Spain

Reamsa Reamsa is a defunct Spanish plastic toy brand that was active from 1951 to 1978. The figures of this brand are representative of plastic toy soldiers that were a favorite of Spanish children in the 1960s. They are well distinguished from other si ...

Belgium

Denmark

Materials

References

{{reflist

External links

Allen Hickling
Scale modeling Toy collecting Traditional toys Wooden toys Toy companies of the United Kingdom Playscale miniaturism