Toys For Christmas

Toys For Christmas

Toys for Christmas. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.
I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t like toys for Christmas. Okay, I may be over 50 but my lovely wife knows that there has to be at least one toy under the tree for me. I may have to share with my 2 year old grandson but he’ll have to take a nap at some point! My toys have changed over the years going from the play kind to the collectible kind but I guarantee when I’m 80, there will be toys in the house. One of the most collectible and enjoyable by all ages is a tractor model with the name Ertl on it. Joe Ertl is President of Scale Models in Dyersville, Iowa and has been making toys a long time.

ERTL: Well it started way back in 1945 when my father was on strike at a local foundry and he started making castings in his basements and one day he made a farm toy and I was 10 years old at the time and at that time the toy tractor sold so well he never went back to his job again and of course I grew up with the business. And then when I was in my senior year of high school I started taking drafting courses and we went from sand-casting to die-casting and we had to have drawings so I started making the drawings for the toys and I’ve been designing them ever since.

Each year at the annual National Association of Farm Broadcasters convention in Kansas City the absolute hottest item in the charity auction is one of Joe Ertl’s farm tractor toys. And of course it is always a pleasure to bid against my fellow broadcasters for one. Ertl believes there is really something wholesome about his family’s products.

ERTL: It has been a pleasure for me to work my whole life here in the designing of these toys which have made so many people happy. The farmers have really been great to our family and I can’t think of anything more wholesome than a little toy tractor and to pretend to be a farmer. It’s so much better than some of these toys I’ve seen made over the years and it’s been a pleasure for me to be associated with the farmers and the farming industry and everything.

With Christmas just a couple of days away it is probably too late to put an Ertl toy tractor under the tree but be sure and mark their website, scalemodeltoys.com so that come next year you can stock up. Oh and they are completely American made toys. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

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