Lionel Walt Disney’s Mickey & Minnie Mouse Tin Windup Hand Car Train No. 1100 in Original Box *SOLD*

Lionel Walt Disney’s Mickey & Minnie Mouse Hand Car No. 1100 in Original Box 1930’s

This is a windup Lionel Mickey Mouse Hand Car #1100 manufactured by The Lionel Corporation of New York, USA. It features Walt Disney’s Mickey and Minnie Mouse on a hand car. It comes with 8 original track pieces that can be put together to make a round circuit for the hand car to go around. When the key is wound, Mickey & Minnie’s arms go up and down as they go around the track pumping the hand car. The key that is included is a replacement key as we were not able to find the original. This item is made from a composition of tin, plastic, and rubber. The rubber legs on Mickey and Minnie have both been restored. The legs are hard to find intact as they are extremely fragile and do not hold up well with age. The wheel on the right hand side by Minnie is crumbling due to age. It comes with the original box that is in excellent condition. The hand car is approximately 6 ½” x 7 ½”  x 2”. This is a great item to add to any Disney or Lionel collection!

History buffs take note, this was THE toy that saved Lionel post-depression :

http://www.tcaetrain.org/articles/chronicles/toys_nov/index.html

Lionel Train History.

Engineering entrepreneur Joshua Lionel Cowen designed his first electric train as a store window attraction around 1900. When customers asked to purchase the train instead of the product it advertised, Cowen founded the Lionel Manufacturing Company to meet demand. Lionel built its reputation on train sets noted for their authentic detail, smooth-operating three-rail tracks, and transformers that allowed kids to vary the speed of their trains. This control, along with rolling stock of coal cars, refrigerated cars, and box cars, gave boys an appealing real-world sense of commerce and success.

Shrewd marketing made every boy think of Lionel trains each time Christmas came around. “Everybody is happy when it’s a Lionel Train Christmas,” proclaimed one advertisement. Other ads highlighted father-son bonding. Lionel Trains, they proclaimed, “made a Boy feel like a Man and a Man feel like a Boy.”