Our story at the Mary Meyer Museum in Vermont

Our story at the Mary Meyer Museum in Vermont.

Just imagine it’s 1933.

- A young women follows her passion creating and sewing small fabric toys.

- A German bachelor arrives at Ellis Island with bearly a penny to his name.

- In New York, the city that never sleeps, the roaring 20′s are a distant memory.

- And a stalled economy that will become known as The Great Depression is in full gear.

Combine the above ingredients into a bowl and stir.  Who would have thought this had the makings of a toy company that would still be thriving almost eighty years later?

With the mixing complete, Mary, her husband Hans, and the little toy company they created rose to the top of that mixing bowl. After a decade in business, they left the Depression and New York behind and moved north to Vermont.  This has been the home of Mary Meyer stuffed toys ever since.

It’s good to make things.  For the next forty years, Mary, Hans, and their son Walter lead a small band of toy makers here in Vermont.  At the same time, Walter’s sister Lorraine, moved to Germany where she started a Mary Meyer toy company in Bavaria.  Toys just seemed to be in the family genes.  And good thing because Walter and his wife Elaine had six children of their own.

Today the world is a far different place.  Mary Meyer was one of the last American stuffed toy companies to move production overseas.  A decision that saved us and changed us, overseas production has allowed us to use a great variety of quality fabrics, implement excellent safety standards, and to sell toys at a price everyone can afford.

All our toy design continues here in Vermont where talented artists “draw with their eyes.”  Whether we are sketching, cutting, stitching, or using the mouse, we always have an eye on what’s new, how children are playing and what the world looks like through their eyes.  Our designers work inside the original toy shop here in Vermont and we like to think that some of the karma of our rich past makes it into every toy we design.