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    Gumball Collection

    Gumball Collection
    The gumball collection was inspired by the nostalgic fun of dropping a coin into a gumball machine and crossing your fingers you get the one you want!

    Gumball and vending machine toys have been making us smile since the turn of the century. We took this experience to the next level with a timeless collection of original hand-carved, lost-wax-cast pieces.
     
    After a deep dive on the quirky little gumball-machine charms, we chose the designs that represent the most popular charms from the 1920s through the 1980s. 

    THE STORY OF OUR GUMBALL COLLECTION

    A few months ago I was playing with Lillie and one of her toys. It was a purse that had a chain attached to it and like a gumball machine, little plastic balls with charms inside would come out of it. You could add the little charms to the chain that came with the purse. It was more fun than it should have been and I caught myself saying “I want to get jewelry out of a gumball machine”…

    “I WANT TO GET JEWELRY OUT OF A GUMBALL MACHINE!!”
    There is something so fun and whimsical about gumball prizes. And is perhaps one of the few situations where not knowing what is going to roll out is more exciting than not ;)

    I immediately ordered the CUTEST little vintage-y gumball machine from a great company that’s been making them for the last 50 years!

    I planned to stick our current pieces in it, but my curiosity got the best of me. After spending late nights researching the history of gumball and vending machines, I realized I had to make an official gumball collection.
    Turns out these machines have been delivering little bits of joy in the US since the turn of the century. They started out dispensing gum and peanuts and moved on to trinkets and toys.

    Learning about the actual prizes was a whole other fun rabbit hole. They oftentimes reflected what was going on in our society and you can especially see it in crackerjack toys. Go down that rabbit hole sometime. ;)

    If you poke around on eBay long enough, you can buy loads of vintage and antique vending machine prizes. And of course, in the name of good research, I did.

    For weeks, tiny little boxes arrived packed full of almost 100-year-old toy prizes. I might have been as excited as the kids who first got them in the 1920s.

    I decided to let the toys be my muse. The designs are inspired by the prizes kids have been winning since the turn of the century. The specific ones I chose represent, in some way, the decades from the start of their popularity.

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    Shop the Gumball Collection

     

    Published 9/17/21; Last Updated 7/19/22