Tonka Toys

The Tonka name was adopted in 1955 by Mound Metalcraft. 'Built Tonka Tough' wasn't just a slogan — these nearly indestructible pressed-steel trucks became the definitive toy truck of American boyhood. Hasbro acquired Tonka in 1991.

Lynn Baker, Avery Crounse and Alvin Tesch, whose Mound Metalcraft made garden implements in a former schoolhouse on Lake Minnetonka before finding that toys were the better business.

Tonka is a lesson in accidental success. Mound Metalcraft was founded in 1946 to make garden tools, acquired some toy tooling with the premises, and discovered that a steel toy truck outsold everything else it made. The name — from Minnetonka, meaning "great water" in Dakota — and the logo came with the lake, and by 1955 the company was Tonka Toys.

What Tonka understood better than its competitors was that the toy should be indestructible and should look it. Heavy-gauge steel, baked enamel, real rubber tyres, and working parts that a child could not break: the Mighty Dump Truck of 1964 is the definitive expression, and it became a category of its own. Tonka trucks were bought by parents specifically because they survived.

The company diversified — acquiring Kenner and Parker Brothers in 1987 — and then, having become too large too fast, was itself acquired by Hasbro in 1991. Tonka steel trucks continue in production under Hasbro licence, and the classic 1960s and 1970s models are among the most recognisable American toys ever made.