Featuring Research Volunteer Contributions

Toys

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Toy mailbox bank

Post offices, letter carriers, mailboxes, stamps, letters, and packages are such easily recognizable images for children that they find their way into countless children’s toys and games. As part of our national shared experience, postal imagery gives all children, regardless of location or socio-economic status, an icon that is part of every day life. Toy makers know that postal imagery is easy to recognize and understand. By creating items that are from the postal system, toy makers produce toys with built-in stories.

Toymakers have turned mailboxes into kids’ banks and postal vehicles into toys. The shapes, images, and themes of stamps, letters, and packages provide an endless well from which to craft tales and games.

Nancy A. Pope, National Postal Museum