Tészabó Júlia - Török Róbert - Demjén Bence: „A Babatündérhez”, a budapesti játékkereskedelem története, 2009. november 20 - 2010. június 7 időszaki kiállítás (Budapest, Magyar Kereskedelmi és Vendéglátóipari Múzeum, 2010)

RESUME

RESUME The first specialized toy shops opened on locations where the bourgeoisie lived in big numbers and had considerable purchasing power, i.e. in bigger European cities, capitals and economic centres. Giving gifts to children was inevitable part of the newly formed holidays - name-day, birthday, and the religious holidays as Christmas -, and among the well-to-do these gifts were always toys. The parallelism is no coincidence between the formation of the Christmas customs, the gift giving to children becoming a holiday and the increasing of supply of toys. The first toy traders - as in any other trade-industry were the itinerants and the market-men. Toy booths first appeared in the markets of Hungary in the mid 1800s. Budapest only joined in the European development of toy shops from the second half of the 19th century, although by this time the product range of the big toy shops was not far behind of those in Western Europe, thanks to the "widespread import" of toys. But there is one big difference between the Hungarian and the European toy shops: while many of the big toy traders of the European capitals are still in business, their Hungarian counterparts were lost in the storms of history At this time toys were sold in Nuremberger ware shops. The Nuremberger - or Norinberger - wares were handicrafts made of wood, metal and bones, optical and mathematical instruments, musical instruments, household goods and delicacies. One could find toys among them too from the very beginning. The biggest Nuremberger ware shops in Budapest retained this general shop character for decades. Tódor Kertész opened his Nuremberger ware shop in 1861 and although it wasn't really a toy shop at that time, it also sold toys beside the many personal effects. (1861-1935). It seems that the first real toy shop was opened in 1835 by Károly Rippel in Downtown, Budapest ( 1835-1931 ). His shop was registered as toy shop from the very beginning. Brunner's shop, "To The Swiss Family" was also registered as toy shop from its start in 1867. Later it was renamed to "Child's Paradise" (1867-1910). Zsigmond Liebner opened his shop in 1868 and later named it "To the little fairy" (1868-1949); Vilmos Braun (Barnai toy trader started his own business in 1879 operating in different locations on the Great ring-road and on Kerepesi street. Késmárky and Illés opened their Nuremberger ware shop around 1870, and this always had a separate toy department. In 1909 Illés opened Budapest's biggest toy store, the "Árkád Bazár" that operated until 1924. We have data on Ferenc Pesendorfer"s toy shop on lózsef square from 1880, but it probably had already been well known by this time. The biggest toy wholesaler of this era was Miksa Bettelheim trading Nuremberger wares and toys on Váci ring-road from 1872(1872-1934). The number of specialized toy shops grown significantly from the turn of the 20th century. Apart from the shops of Kálmán Bukács (1905-1943) and the Konta brothers (1901-1928) many other shop opened in these years. The Hungarian toy manufacturing was not able to meet the demand of these shops, and while many merchants also had interest in the manufacturing industry, the shops sold mainly imported toys. 112