Mengel Playthings Miss America

Yesterday my father and my son were messing with an old toy boat we've had at the lake forever, just sitting up on the mantle with some toy sailboats. I hadn't thought much about it since I played with it as a kid, but they were trying to get it working again and both my father and I started wondering how old it was.

Of course, a quick google search was all it took - we found that it's likely from around 1930, and that it's not all that rare, or at least it's a known thing and there are nice examples kicking around. A google image search shows quite a few on various antique toy and other sites like ebay.



Anyway, I took a few pictures and thought I'd share with you all. It's supposed to wind up and spin the prop, but the driveshaft seems to be bound a little. It spins by hand, but when you wind it up it's not enough force to spin it. The prop looks like it was soldered on at some point, so I'm reluctant to try to remove it and clean out the driveshaft and its housing. That's as far as we got before moving on to some other activity yesterday.











The very thin mahogany piece that makes up the deck was removed to get a look at the mechanism inside, I didn't get a picture of it all assembled. Anyway, I thought it was a neat thing you all might like to see.

When you hear someone say "they don't make 'em like they used to" THIS is the kind of thing they're talking about.

Well since you already posted pictures, I’m guessing Pete’s gonna ask about the proper alignment and prop lap

Sorry Ken beat ya to it

Angle of the dangle, root of the toot. Pretty cool.

How much are the Lobster Rolls at the Market Basket? Yummy

Very Cool Old Toy

Gary S wrote: That is sharp. Quite the prop angle too. Don't forget the alignment begins at the strut

Seriously, what is that strut angle? 30 degrees? Not a planing hull that's for sure.

75 Tique wrote: Good stuff. Certainly not that old, but I cant tell you how many toy electric boats I had when I was a kid. Inboards like this or, in hindsight, cooler, outboards like this. Had a bunch of them. Wish I still had some. Some are worth a few bucks. Dont see toys like this any more.

Nice boat! We have a couple wind-up outboards around, too. One was plastic from the 80's and of course doesn't work.

I almost forgot about my desk lamp. My parents gave me this when I was working at a marina. It's cool and I get lots of comments on it, but it has several details (at least 3) that bother me. Let's see how many you all can spot: