If you’re as painfully old as I am, you may remember playing with beefy metal Tonka trucks as a kid. I know I sure as hell did, shoving them through embankments of sticks and sand, filling them with rocks and launching them down driveways, watching them plummet off picnic tables, and they always stood up to such abuse.
I also know of one that was launched into the face of my friend’s big sister, but I promise I had nothing to do with that.
Tonka was known for making fun, basic trucks and construction vehicles and even some cars – I had a fantastic green pressed metal Tonka VW Beetle that I still have to this day:
Look at that absolute unit! This has to be well over 45 or so years old, and, as you can see, has not been babied, and here she still stands, rusty but unbowed.
Toughness was Tonka’s trademark, and their mission in the ’70s seemed to be making unbreakable toys, which is what their advertising focused on. I don’t really recall any of these old commercials myself, but this one in particular, which seemed to be for the UK market, really meshes with my interests of old Volkswagens and desperation fixes:
Look at that! I remember those huge yellow Tonka dump trucks, and this doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. What is a bit more surprising is how hard a life that VW in the ad seems to have led; this commercial is from about 1975, and that looks like a ’67 Beetle, making it less than 10 years old, yet it’s quite battered looking.
Maybe that is one of Tonka’s test vehicles where they set it up for kids and perhaps the occasional chimp to fling Tonka trucks at it, for durability testing.
Also, I wonder how that truck held up when steering? The commercial does make a decent case for keeping a big Tonka truck in your car, especially if you drive something without an actual spare.
Tonka wasn’t just satisfied with Beetle front ends; they got an elephant involved, too:
I like that they shot another ad just to prove to people they weren’t faking with the elephant standing business. Of course, that elephant may not be putting that much weight on its foot, but it’s still likely a good amount of weight, certainly more than a six-year-old hopped up after doing a fat rail of raw Kool Aid powder.
Now I want to try using a Tonka truck as an emergency wheel. If I do, I promise I’ll video it.
In my neighborhood we created a racetrack in the dirt in a vacant lot and raced by pushing our Tonka trucks. Got harder as you got bigger…
My tonka dump truck from my childhood is currently in the living room covered in stickers as it is doing duty for my 3 year old. And honestly I don’t even know if my parents got it for me new or found it in a garage sale…
I remember seeing an article about someone who used a automotive jack as a spare so practically anything wheeled is better than that.
Tonka trucks, slant 6s and avacado green refrigerators from the 70s are things that will outlive you
I grew up ‘low income’, so I got Buddy L plastic trucks cuz Tonka was too expensive.
I’m old enough my Buddy L were metal bodied.
I had a metal Buddy L in the early ’60s that looked like a Ford Country Squire. I loved it so much I actually took care of it. My dad even waxed it. Fun for all ages.
David Tracy sees the picture of Torch’s Beetle and immediately offers him $15,000 for it.
“practically rust-free”
Man, do I wish they still made these. I have a kid that breaks EVERYTHING. We used to joke about renaming him Bam-Bam.
The elephant, though young, does appear to be putting significant weight on that truck, but I have another question: why did they have to use 30 trucks if each one held up?
I think they still do make them. I bought my nephew one for Christmas a few years back. He and his little brother are not gently on toys (neither were my brother and I) and that thing is still kicking.
“Held up” is the key, it looks like the dumper is getting pretty well bent.. I also suspect that other shots where the elephant twisted it, it deformed or really damaged the truck. still play worthy? Sure, but the idea was to place a pristine new Tonka down and have the elephant step on it.
At a local tire shop (now retired, ha!) the owner displayed hundreds of Tonkas along the walls of the shop along with lots and lots of other vehicle stuff toys and other car suff. I gave him a Heathkit auto diagnostic kit I found somewhere. I went in with my grand kid and showed the trucks on the walls to the kid. Gobsmacked! The owner selected a couple of ecent purchased rusty ones and gave them to my grand kid. I miss that shop, a true one-owner shop.
The name comes from the plant near Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, they made patio stuff and expanded into toys so they’d have something to build I the off season. The best Tonka Trucks were built there, when they closed the plant the brand almost died!
Let’s not forget the greatest Tonka commercial ever, where a Tonka dump truck and an actual dump truck were pushed off a cliff side-by-side.
Came to the comments to post this! I was the target market at the time, and that was some impressive stuff.
Used to have two real metal dump trucks. They were the perfect size for 8-year-old me and my best friend to sit on and ride down the hill in his backyard.
Hundreds of trips down the grassy hill. Many a wipe out. Those trucks took all the abuse and kept on rolling!
There are several YouTube restoration channels that specialize in restoring these old Tonka trucks back to life. If you get a chance, go look them up, they take some of these old toys that obviously had a fun but hard life and bring them back to glory. Also a very relaxing ASMR experience.
Been looking for a decent Tonka to restore for years.
Getting harder to find everyday.
Probably BECAUSE of all those YouTubers…. hope you find one!!
I saw several very good candidates for restoration at a flea market in NC last weekend. If you have something similar near you, you might get lucky.
I have an original crane from my childhood I’d love to restore but I don’t have the skills and tools to do what those YouTubers do.
The cranes were cool.
Yes the You Tubers go pretty deep on the resto process.
I want an old school dump truck, like the one rode around on as a two year old.
I have to say, OG metal Tonka Trucks feel like one of the few toys that have maintained their quality. My parents bought my daughter a new one when she was 1 or 2, and she’s played with it and ridden around the house in it constantly since then. She’s now 7 and still sits in the bed of the dump truck (she barely fits) and cruises around the house. The thing is still going strong.
Good the hear. I thought they had changed to plastic a while back.
I suppose it’s actually a mix of metal and plastic (it’s this truck – https://www.amazon.com/Tonka-Steel-Classics-Mighty-Truck/dp/B07ZS7J192?th=1 ) – the frame underneath is thick plastic while the axels, cab, and bed are all metal, but it’s been incredibly durable.
I suppose if it keeps them affordable while maintaining quality then they’ve done the right thing.
Yup, I was so excited to get my nephew one a few years back. I didn’t know they had still made them, but when I saw it, I HAD to buy it. It probably has more plastic in it than the originals, but the body is still metal, and it has so far survived him riding in it and being left in the yard.
I’m quite a bit older than Torch so my toy truck collection was mostly Structo and Nylint, but I did have a Tonka dune buggy and some Jeeps. My pride and joy was a Tonka pumper fire truck with working fire hose. It came with a scale fire hydrant that you hooked up to a garden hose then connected to the pumper with included rubber hoses. Water flowed through the hydrant out to the truck and to the hose reel. That hose could be extended and retracted with the functional reel. You could shut the water off at the hydrant with the attached hydrant wrench, just like the real thing. Loved that fire engine.
That sounds so fun, even now when I’m old.
I remember those commercials, and when Tonka trucks were 95% steel, not plastic.
Yup, getting old.
One of the best Christmases as a kid was getting a veritable fleet of Nylint steel semi-trucks. IIRC, the Sears, NASA, and Roadway ones, all with International cabovers.
Uh, was that the truck with the little plastic Space Shuttle on it? I also had a Coke giveaway one- I remember you could take the little cases of pop in and out.
No, it was a base station sort of thing with a deployable satellite dish, IIRC. These were the big metal trucks, like 3′ long.
I think it was the same as this but with NASA decorations:
https://www.ebay.com.my/itm/226175065567
45 years ago though…
Yeah, on second thought I think my NASA truck was BuddyL
Looking at pictures on the net, my Sears truck must have been an Ertl. I had the big Tonka semi tanker that actually held water too. I was a vehicle geek from a very tender age.
And holy cow do I wish I still had all my toys from when I was a kid – I could retire off what they are worth now. My Matchbox collection alone…
I think there’s probably still one of the little Tonka trucks with the electric-shaver grille buried somewhere in the back yard of the house I grew up in. No, I don’t remember why I buried it; I just remember that I did.
Seem to remember several Tonkas buried in our sandbox in the 1960’s.
Hidden to deceive grandparents so we could ask them to buy us more.
This is all correct. After my mom backed over my prized Tonka dump truck that I had carefully left on the driveway it suffered nothing but some lost paint and a slightly warped bed. It could still roll and the bed still raised and lowered. The truck sound effects still worked too, since I was not playing with the truck when it was run over.
Oh man, I almost forgot about the crown jewel of my trucks: Tonka cement mixer.
I used to fill it with mud and rocks and use the little crank to make it deposit my child’s cement on the ground. It had a segmented and swiveling discharge chute just like a real cement mixer. My parents didn’t like me tearing up parts of the yard to make mud, so I told my mom I wanted a glass of water and lied when she asked me if I was going to use it to make mud for the cement mixer. I lost my Tonka trucks for a little while after that one.
I recall a roadshow where a old tonka grader was worth serious money. Sadly the exact same thing as I had but the one I had was made of rust and nothing intact. So it was worth approximately nothing past leaving in the sandbox
When my Grandfather retired from the rural area state hwy dept, they gave him a yellow Tonka road grader with the state hwy dept decal on the sides. My Grandfather work at Caterpillar factory during early part of WWII before being drafted into Army Air Corp where he built runways in South Pacific with a motor grader and then worked for hwy dept running road grader maintaining gravel roads/clearing snow in rural area.
My son has it on bookshelf at his house.
I had a Tonka pickup 4X4 with removable tires! Thye had a little twist lock on each wheel that would twist the tires on. I ran that thing through all kinds of “missions” and get it stuck with flat tires and ahve to repair them. I loose track of it by 10 years old though and have no idea what became of it.
Here’s an old ad for them!
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5e/c3/6b/5ec36b1fcc35bf4e43f852d91b5e9f7c.jpg
I had that too! Along with the mustache dude with the mirror sunglasses.
Trucks i had were new and worth slightly above nothing even new
In the mid ’70s when I was in 1st grade my class took a field trip to the Tonka factory. Everybody got a small version of their ubiquitous yellow dump truck. It was glorious.
I had a friend who lived across the street, and we each had a regular-sized version of that same dump truck. Our driveways ran downhill about 40 feet to the street, and we would sit on them and ride them into the road. As we got older, we would use two trucks as makeshift roller skates to zip down the hill.
Wow, LUCKY! That had to be awesome. Only factory tour I got as a kid was the Eveready Battery plant that my dad worked at. A souvenir 9-Volt just isn’t the same!
I remember that part of their history of Tonka included showing us some of the gardening tools they made before switching to toys. I think the attitude of making tools stuck around for a bit.
Awesome!! I’m glad I grew up in an era when kids could still get admitted for plant tours. I got plenty of tours of the pickle plants where Dad worked (field trips for the first one, unofficial for the second one). After one of the field trips, I remember they gave the teacher enough jars of pickles for all the kids in the class. I also got to see Ben & Jerry’s (back before Unilever), Cabot, a cigarette plant (I can’t remember the brand), and a Budweiser facility.
I still enjoy plant tours, and I’ll happily volunteer for a work trip if the location does something really cool. One of my favorites has been a generator repair facility; it was wild seeing such massive pieces of equipment being torn down and reassembled.
Plant tours are awesome! I recently went to the Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory in Tuscon where they make massive mirrors for telescopes for a tour with an uncle who has his own small observatory. It was amazing.
Yeah, I remember riding down the gentle sloped sidewalk in front of my house on my Tonka truck. When I got bigger, I graduated to riding my Radio Flyer wagon, Calvin and Hobbes style, then a Kettler Kettcar.
The Kettcar is a metal chassis gokart-like pedal car with bicycle chain drive, a clutch to disengage the pedals, a drift-style handbrake, and rubber tires. That thing took an absolute beating through my entire childhood, and is still going strong today with my kids.
The earliest personal toys I remember are a red Tonka pickup truck–sort of a cabover design with a creased bubble of a windshield–and a Matchbox Ford Cortina GT.