Toy OTD: Fisher-Price #464 - Gran'pa Frog (1958)

I love this era of Fisher-price toys - made with simple wooden shapes, but the paper labelling is well drawn and tastefully rendered in a storybook style. Plastic parts are just starting to creep into the equation, but it's only used for the parts that would be too fragile if they were made of wood. And of course, the noise-maker is totally analog - serrated wheels, offset axles and a paper and wood resonator make an appealing 'croaking' sound when the toy is pulled.

Your best bet to find one of these is either at a toy show, or on eBay (that's where I've scored most of my F-P collection). Make sure to ask a lot of questions before you bid - a lot of people sell 'display pieces' that won't roll or move properly, or have a broken noisemaker. Sometimes the item descriptions don't exactly lie - but they're not always very forthcoming, either.

Here's an auction for a reproduction that's starting at $9.99 + $8.45 postage. I haven't seen this one up close, so I can't say if it's inferior to the original toy. Sometimes I buy repros if the originals are prohibitively expensive - be warned, when you start getting into '50s F-P toys (and older), things get pricey.