Announcing a Hanger Dance at T&S Central

I was treated to an interesting little piece of history the other day after posting a few pics of this Thomas Toy loudspeaker truck on one of the facebook groups I belong to. Mike M. states:

"Up at Ft. Leavenworth in WW2, they had "hanger dances". Maybe this truck provided the tunes.

On a humorous note, when my mother-in-law told my wife about sneaking out to those, my wife somehow pictured all of the girls showing up with handfuls of clothes hangers (for metal drives), hence the name hanger dance.".

Of course the mother wasn't talking about clothes hangers for metal drives but rather an airplane hangar where the dance was held, something the little girl didn't yet grasp.

:-) cool!

Thomas Toys No. U.S. Army Loudspeaker Truck

We've covered the history of Thomas Toys before so I won't cover old ground again. In the vein of recent posts of small plastic army trucks we have this nice little Army loudspeaker truck in OD HP. Back in the day it was common for toy companiies to produce the same toy in a wide variety of colors. Those that were olive drab or olive green were simply assumed to be Army trucks whether or not they were lettered 'U.S. Army'. I posted a red & yellow civilian version of this truck - albeit broken - back on Dec 5, 2014. The truck measures 3 7/8" (9.84cm) L x 1 1/4" (3.17cm) W x 1 3/4" (4.44cm) H. Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

Thomas Toys #T-140 Loudspeaker / Sound Truck

We've got another Nifty '50s  toy truck tonight, the Thomas Toys #T-140 Loudspeaker Truck. Waaay back before the Internet, before the Web, before personal computers (about, oh, a million years or so ago) some advertising was done through the use of loudspeaker trucks also called sound trucks. Fire and police departments used them to announce emergency situations, and political candidates blared out their messages with them and they're still used in many countries for disseminating political messages. I don't know when they were first used but the photo below shows one early (and large) loudspeaker truck:

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Political campaign sound truck 1940

Courtesy Wikipedia

Our Thomas version has condition issues - the rear speaker is broken off, but otherwise is a good example and measures  3 7/8" (9.8cm) L x 1 1/4" (3.2cm) W x 1 3/4" (4.4cm) H Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina