Bujdosné Pap Györgyi - Császi Irén (szerk.): Agria 48. (Az egri Dobó István Vármúzeum Évkönyve - Annales Musei Agriensis, 2013)
Peterdi Vera: Ritka kincsek - Füleki fajátékok a Magyar Nemzeti Múzeumban
wheels and strings for pulling. They can be considered rarities in Hungarian museum collections, and not only because of their ephemeral character. Their manufacturer, a small “toy factory” in the historically significant Hungarian small town of Fülek (today Fil’akovo, Slovakia) only produced toys between 1939 and 1945, when the town belonged to Hungary. The toy manufacturing workshop was not an independent factory, but a part of the Fülek Enamelware and Metalwork Factory and Ironworks Co., which was founded in 1906 and produced quality iron pans and heating equipments. The toy division was established to make use of the waste of the factory’s wood-working unit, which started production in 1932. The modem quality toys were manufactured in series by a few of the factory’s skilled male machine operators and 100-120 unskilled female employees. In 1941, production reached 400,000 pieces. The toys were designed by painter and graphic designer László Bencze (1907-1992), the factory’s own designer. Combining the methods of the traditional Austrian and German domestic wooden toy industry and Hungarian folk art, the workshop primarily produced wooden animal figures with moving parts. The success of the products, which were widely distributed in Hungary and also exported in great quantities, was due to two factors: the suspension of wooden toy production by the German “rivals” during the Second World War on the one hand, and the effective marketing of the products on the other hand. The toys were donated to the museum by their original owners: the three sons of an intellectual couple (a Calvinist pastor and his wife) with four children, living in a small town. The parents purchased the cheap but good-quality toys for the boys when they were aged 2 or 3, between 1944 and 1947, in the local shop. In the knowledge of the history of the manufacturer, the items must have been remainders, and for that there is written and photographic evidence, too. The author also provides information on other wooden toys from the same maker in Hungarian and Slovakian public collections. When identifying the obtained items, the illustrated pricelists of the Fülek toy company from 1939 and 1941 were most helpful. Studying these catalogues together with the donators and comparing them with old family photos made it possible to virtually reconstruct their childhood wooden toy collection. 65
