I doubt it. By Christmas '42, almost all metals that were used for consumer goods were now strategic materials, so toys were made of wood, made of thick paper cardstock, anything that wasn't used for making war materiel. So toys like that, unless they somehow didn't get played with at all, fell apart after a couple years worth of play. My dad had some HO trains made only of cardstock, and the few pieces he had left were fairly tattered, and unusable with standard train models in any manner.
All I know is this is what it said with the photo. The toy department at Kresge’s on Church Street is packed with Christmas shoppers in this Detore photo taken on December 7, 1942.
It does occur to me, the wagon could be older stock that wasn't sold earlier in the year. Too bad Dad isn't around; I'd show him this photo, see what he'd have to say about it.
Yeah, after the wagon, that was the next toy I saw. In '42, people were expecting the war to go into '47-'48, so if it went to someone in Junior high or high school, they'd be ready for actual flight school.
Man. I know life wasn't perfect in 42 by any stretch. And that we look at the past through rose colored glasses. But somehow I still wish I could be there in that department store in 1942 instead of here in 2022.
Yeah, I'm sorry to say, 9/11 didn't have the same galvanizing effect that Pearl Harbor had. Even with Republicans vs. Democrats in late 1941, when FDR called for a declaration of war in Congress, the entirety of Congress passed it. But when 9/11 happened, it wasn't a belligerent country, but a huge group of terrorists. So, trying to figure out who the culprit was, that allowed the population to cool off. So backing the government going into Iraq and Afghanistan was only just lukewarm. Remember, it was separate from the population's support of all the military personnel. So, what we felt and had in 2001 and after, was different from 1941 and after.
