Playmakers: The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created the Toy Industry in America

The untold story of the first-generation Jewish American toymakers who literally manufactured "the century of the child."

In 1902, Morris and Rose Michtom invented the Teddy Bear-bound by clothing scraps, stuffed with sawdust, and given button eyes with a sad, longing expression-in the back room of their Brooklyn candy store. Together they launched the Ideal Toy Corporation, joining a set of other poor, first-generation Jewish toymakers: the Hassenfeld brothers of Hasbro, Ruth Moskowicz and ...