'The Toy' was the very first of the Eames Toy designs to be released to the marketplace in 1951. Manufactured by Tigrett Enterprises of Tennessee it was sold primarily in the Sears, Roebuck department stores. The Eames Toy was an ingenious concept aimed at encouraging the user to create and build a construction purely from their own imagination.
The Toy was marketed as a way to produce architectural constructions from colorful panels and was geared at youngsters of all ages to use their creative building skills. The panels came in a variety of colors including yellow, green, blue, black, red and magenta.
The Eames Toy was housed in a beautiful hexagonal shape box with an eye catching design mixture of lettering, example toy builds, colors and black and white squares. The contents included 4 square and 4 triangular panels made from a revolutionary plastic coated paper which was extremely durable and water resistant. 38 wooden dowels enabled the user to build panels together and the included pipe cleaner wires could be utilized to tie the whole creation together. The included instruction sheet gave some fun examples of what could be created using the Eames toy and had numerous witty doodles.
The Toy by Eames was sold only until 1959 therefore finding surviving examples is extremely rare and they have become highly desirable and collectible. The original vintage Tigrett versions are not to be confused by recent re-issues since 2017.
A smaller 'table sized' version of the 'The Toy' was subsequently released in the following year and was named 'The Little Toy' and geared towards being used in conjunction with other toys.
| Height | 3" | 7.62 cm |
| Width | 30" | 76.2 cm |
| Depth | 3" | 7.62 cm |
The Toy contained; 4 colored square panels & 4 triangular panels (both 30"), 38 wooden dowels, instructions and a packet of pipe cleaner connecting wires.
Hexagonal original 1951 Tigrett Enterprises packaging for the Eames 'The Toy'
Witty instructions with 'little devils' show the humor of Charles and Ray coming through
The hexagonal box of 'The Toy' was suggested by retail giant Sears, Roebuck
One of the triangular panels in pink magenta with the original pipe cleaner ties
Original instructions of 'The Toy' showed many example building constructions
The dowel rods of 'The Toy' were pushed into the edges of the panels to provide rigidity