Back in 1974, Jack Schylling, working in Cambridge, MA, saw a wind-up bird fly past his third-floor office window. He immediately ran down to the street and bought one from a vendor.
Enchanted with the item, he then wrote to the manufacturer in France to order his own supply, and subsequently went into business selling the toy birds on the streets of Boston.
Twenty-five years later the Schylling Toy Company sells more than 300 different types of toys in some 15,000 retail locations around the world.
Schylling offers one of the most complete library of tin toys ever made. Some of Schylling’s reproductions are toys from fifty years ago, and others were originally made in the turn of the 20th century. Tin toys were made as early as 1895, but after WWII the Japanese renewed the industry with high quality mechanized tin toys, many with battery-powered flashing lights and motors.