For three generations, a Tonka Truck has been more than a toy. It's a shared memory of childhood, evoking Christmas mornings or summer evenings in the sandbox.

This classic toy was born in 1947 in the Minnesota community of Mound, on the shores of Lake Minnetonka. Hence the name, Tonka Toys.

Unlike many children's toys, Tonka Toys were built to be nearly indestructible. For decades they were manufactured from pressed steel, created to be realistic and workable, and engineered to survive endless crashes and dirt pile adventures.

"Their durability encouraged a certain kind of play that got kids moving, got them thinking, got them rearranging piles of sand, mud and all kinds of things," said Patricia Hogan, curator of the National Museum of Play in Rochester, N.





The company was founded in 1946 by a group of Minnesota teachers, who intended to manufacture garden tools. A year later, it acquired a company that had a toy steam shovel. They added a working crane and sold 37,000 toys the first year.

A toy company was born. Renamed Tonka Toys, it added semi trucks, dump trucks, fire trucks and scores of other vehicles. Its biggest seller came in 1964, the yellow Mighty Dump Truck.

It spawned a classic TV commercial with the tagline, "A toy shouldn't break just because a kid plays with it."

What makes the Tonka truck a classic, Hogan says, isn't just durability and popularity, but its ability to spark a child's imagination.


As children play with these trucks, "They're (often) sort of narrating a kind of story about what the trucks are doing, or where they're going," she said. "That sort of make-believe is a kind of play that all kids crave. And Tonka is one of those great toys that facilitate that."

Tonka Toys' corporate history is somewhat less magical. After some prosperous decades, it moved its manufacturing to Mexico in the 1970s, acquired other toymakers in the 1980s that burdened it with debt, then sold the business to Hasbro in 1991.

But the name -- and the memories -- live on.

In 2001, the Tonka Truck was elected to the National Toy Hall of Fame. It joined Play-Doh, Barbie, Frisbee and a number of other American classics.

"We realize Tonka made more than trucks," said Hogan, the hall's curator, "but when you say Tonka to anybody, they think, 'Oh, yeah, the trucks.' "
