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Playmakers: The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created the Toy Industry in America
In 1902, Morris and Rose Michtom invented the Teddy Bear--bound by clothing scraps, stuffed with sawdust, and...
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In 1902, Morris and Rose Michtom invented the Teddy Bear--bound by clothing scraps, stuffed with sawdust, and given button eyes with a sad, longing expression--in the back room of their Brooklyn candy store. Together they launched the Ideal Toy Corporation, joining a set of other poor, first-generation Jewish toymakers: the Hassenfeld brothers of Hasbro, Ruth Moskowicz and Elliot Handler of Mattel, and Joshua Lionel Cowan of Lionel Trains.
From Barbie and G.I. Joe to Popeye, Superman, and Mr. Potato Head, Playmakers reveals how the toy industry created the idealized American childhood: an enchanted world, full of wild creatures and eternal struggles between good and evil, with endless realms of fantasy and beauty. For much of the twentieth century, every part of the American toy business was largely Jewish--the company founders, executives, and designers, as well as the factory workers, wholesale distributors, retail outlets, and armies of salesmen. A descendant of the founders of the Ideal Toy Corporation, Michael Kimmel shows how these poor, often Yiddish-speaking, tenement-dwelling children of immigrants invented a world they never experienced for themselves. Along with the toys and Jewish toymakers that climbed the ladder of success, Kimmel also portrays the rise of an entire culture focused on children, led by Jewish comic book creators, children's authors, parenting experts, and child psychologists.
The first full-scale toy history of the United States, Kimmel's story conjures the colorful, imaginative, restless spirits who followed the promise of the American Dream--and describes the ways in which the world they came from molded their beloved creations. Playmakers shows that the overlapping experiences of being a Jew, an immigrant, and a child in twentieth-century America--an outsider looking in, a person desperate to be accepted--created childhood as we know it today.
Author: Michael Kimmel
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 02/17/2026
Pages: 432
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.55lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.10w x 1.70d
ISBN: 9781324105282
Review Citation(s):
Booklist 02/01/2026
Publishers Weekly 02/16/2026
Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2025
About the Author
Kimmel, Michael: - The great-grandnephew of the founder of the Ideal Toy Corporation, Michael Kimmel is a SUNY distinguished professor emeritus of sociology and gender studies and founder of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook University. The author of Guyland, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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