1/15/2024 0 Comments Molded plastic playsets 1960s![]() They made it as far north as Bemidji, where a Paul Bunyan figurine was made that decades later would become a rare collectible, reportedly worth $200.įor years, a Twin Cities resident named Paul Nathanson was Minnesota’s Mold-A-Rama man - a district manager for Mold-A-Rama Inc. Those machines, which cranked out toys for a quarter, quickly spread to the rest of the country, including Minnesota, which got its first one (it made tiny reindeer, angels and Santa’s helpers) in November 1962.īy summer 1963, Mold-A-Ramas were at the Minnesota State Fair, making plastic elephants outside the Republican Party booth and statues of President John F. Automatic Retailers of America bought the concept and debuted Mold-A-Rama vending machines at the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962, then the New York World’s Fair in 1964. In the late 1950s, Miller developed a toy molding machine that could be taken off the factory floor to sell souvenirs directly to the consumer. His figurines were first made out of painted plaster, then a waxy plastic using injection molding machines. “Tike” Miller, a Quincy, Ill., resident who had a factory business making novelty figurines for dime stores. The origins of Mold-A-Rama start with a guy named J.H. ![]() These days, Slabiak’s machine makes a public appearance on Halloween, when he pushes it out to the driveway so neighborhood kids can make their own little plastic gorillas - and something else: “It makes something that’s almost like magic,” he said. You see photos of people out there just looking at them.” “When this thing came out, there was awe. “Even in the ’70s it was an amazing thing to watch,” said Dave Slabiak, a Mounds View pinball and arcade machine collector who owns what may be the only Mold-A-Rama in a private collection in Minnesota. They want their own memory-making machine. Getting a plastic gorilla, lion, polar bear or sea lion is reason enough to visit the zoo, even if they have to travel hundreds of miles to do it.įor the most mold-manic fans, it’s not enough to just collect a souvenir. Paul’s Como Park Zoo, where they’ve churned out hundreds of thousands of souvenirs over the decades.Ī plastic lion, gorilla, polar bear and sea lion from Como Zoo’s Mold-A-Rama machine.įor collectors, there’s nothing more retro-cool than these 3-D printers of the baby boomer generation. Now the only public place in the state where you can find the nearly 60-year-old machines is St. Once they could be found just about everywhere: in dime stores, movie theaters, train stations, the State Fair, the Mall of America and every tourist attraction worthy of the name.īut over the years, they gradually disappeared. Mold-A-Rama machines have been a Minnesota mainstay for decades. This, you think, is way better than a squashed penny. ![]() ![]() The toy drops into a hopper and you pick it up, still warm, like a freshly baked cookie, except that it smells like a warm crayon. Then the pistons open to reveal a small, freshly molded plastic souvenir: a zoo animal, a spaceship, a statue of a president. Temperature and pressure dials twitch as chilled water, compressed air and molten plastic hum through tubes. Through a clear, bubble-shaped top, you see the hydraulic pistons push two halves of a metal mold together. It is the memory of quarters begged from parents, clutched in sweaty fists before being shoved into a jukebox-sized vending machine that calls itself the Mold-A-Rama and bills itself as an “automatic miniature plastic factory” - one that you could watch at work. It’s the smell many of us remember, the warm waxy scent that’s a memory trigger of childhood, evoking recollections of school field trips to the museum, vacations to amusement parks, family outings at the zoo.
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