Every toy tells a story 
Frank Kidd travels the world collecting vintage playthings to make up for a no-frills childhood
BY STEPHEN BLAIR     Issue date: 1/10/2003
The Tribune

You could drive by Kidds Toy Museum every day and never know it was there. Located in a bland, gray building on Southeast Grand Avenue, it announces itself with only a small white sign on the door.

Plenty of eye candy awaits inside. Curator Frank Kidd  who also owns the auto parts business next door packs the space with vintage toys. Gumball machines, piggy banks, Disney paraphernalia and toy trucks fill display cases protected by glass. Its a touch with your eyes, not with your hands kind of experience.

Frank jokes that he never had toys as a kid, says Mark Lauer, Kidds son-in-law and employee. Thats why he collects them now.

Kidds first acquisition was a Buddy L pedal car, which he purchased 35 years ago. Since then, hes traveled to toy expositions in the United States and Europe to gather his booty. I can go all over the world to meet other jerks who have toys, he says.

Now semiretired, Kidd, 71, comes to work midmorning wearing sweats. I didnt have a lot of toys growing up, he confirms. I played in the streets. I did have a bicycle and a BB gun.

The most modern items in the collection are plastic banks that Kidd inherited from a friend. A bank called Dual at the Dome shows a football player making a last-ditch effort to tackle an opponent before he scores a touchdown. Another bank depicts presidential candidates George Bush Sr. and Michael Dukakis peeking though the holes of an 88 logo.

Children of the Nintendo age may wonder how the vintage toys, such as trucks that haul coal, ever qualified as entertainment. Lauer says that the museums nostalgic quality makes it appealing to the 50-and-over set. People come in and say, I had one of those, and tell their grandkids how the things work.

Kidds collection is not limited to the museum. He displays hundreds of Dinky brand toy cars at his auto parts store next door, along with comic book-themed gadgets like a Dick Tracy wrist radio.

Offices and warehouse space for Kidds business are located across the street. Kidd hides his pride and joy in a locked room, upstairs from the offices. Hundreds of mechanical banks, some dating to 1869, fill the display cases. Powered by springs and levers, each bank does a trick when you feed it a coin.

The toys speak of the time they were created, Lauer notes. Some are highly inflammatory today. One bank, for example, is a grinning man in blackface who raises a coin to his mouth and rolls his eyes back.

A highlight of the collection is a pair of banks that depict Jonah being swallowed, and then spit out, by a whale.

From his immaculately arranged exhibits, its obvious that Kidd is passionate, even compulsive, about his collection. But he keeps a lid on his enthusiasm when explaining his choice of hobby.

I dont know, he says. I didnt drink, and I didnt play golf. My wife didnt let me chase women.

Contact Stephen Blair at sblair@portlandtribune.com.