tripleo posted:If you want to prepare a hot snack while playing with your train, Lionel had just what you needed. I doubt this would be accepted in this day and age - too dangerous for little kids, ya know.
"...two working burners and an oven..."
That's to keep your daughter too busy to play with your trains.
In 1930 Lionel offered a realistic stove for girls. Standing about 34 inches tall, the stove featured a working oven with built-in thermometer, two functioning electric burners, and a clean porcelain finish. Lionel’s oven bore an amazing likeness to a real kitchen stove, constructed, Lionel advertised, “as substantially as the one Mother uses.” Such a well-made toy, however, came at a cost. And therein lies the stove’s demise: Lionel introduced its authentic-in-every-detail stove in the year after the U.S. economy tanked, signaling the start of the Great Depression. According to Ron Hollander’s All Aboard! The Story of Joshua Lionel Cowen and His Lionel Train Company (2000), the toy stove, at $29.50, cost as much as Mom’s gas stove. Purchasing the toy stove commanded more than a public school teacher made in a week in the 1930s. At a time when Americans faced 25 percent unemployment, few could afford such a toy.
Good post, Leo. I had never heard about this one.
