Channel Craft booklet

[ta0]

I got The Hardwood Throwing Top (American Boy series) from Channel Craft ($10 at www.fatbraintoys.com) just because I wanted the 20 page little booklet. As Channel Craft makes many of the tops Toycrafter used to offer I was wondering if the booklet was a rehash of one of Don's books. The booklet turned out to be very small: the whole thing could have fitted a single sheet. I started reading it and it did sound familiar. Then under "Throwing Tips" was the picture of Don with the caption: "The Toycrafter Don Olney". Ok, that seemed to confirmed it. But on the last page the credit goes to: "Valery Oliver, copyright Spintastics Skill Toys Inc, 2002" and the address www.spintastics.com appears in much larger type than www.channelcraft.com. Funny!



By the way, Valery wrote probably the best history of the top available on the internet: www.spintastics.com/SSThisttop.html

[Watts' Tops]

It does look much like Don's Woodie. A really good top.

[hemingsoft]

I bought a similar top from Brown County State Park in Indiana. It came with the same booklet.

[Watts' Tops]

I enjoyed much reading the Top history from Spintastic. Well worth the read from anyone. www.spintastics.com/SSThisttop.html

https://www.ta0.com/history-tops

[Larry D.]

Here is another site which appears to have the same top and booklet.
http://www.greenboatstuff.com/clhathtopwil.html

And another site with a peg Top and leaflet.
http://www.alden.org/gift_shop/images/pegtop_l.gif

[MatiasStuntMan]

You can mod it like this:
https://ta0.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=6.msg5101#msg5101

[the Earl of Whirl]

Spin tops in a boat supply store? That is quite interesting! Thanks for sharing that, Larry D.

[the Earl of Whirl]

My wife drug me to a house tour in Tipp City, about 30 miles north of where I live. They had nice houses and all that but the treat of the night was going by this little town's toy store. It was a great toy store for the size of the town and they had a fair number of tops in there. One display was a full row of flat wood tops with a penny in the middle. I proudly told the workers there that I know the guy who invented them! Sadly, the Toycrafter name is no longer on these gems. They now have the name of Channel Craft on them!

I am sure Don Olney has a much more complete story about these penny tops.

[ta0]

I changed the penny on mine for a quarter to take into account inflation and now it spins again . . . . . just kidding

I would love to know the story behind the Chanel Craft and Toycrafter connection.

[silvertop]

I'm off to a craft show we are doing in a few minutes, but will fill everyone in on the "Lucky Penny Top" design process, and the connection between Channel Craft and The Toycrafter. Note_ it often takes some creative editing to come up with ways to make the name of our old business - "The Toycrafter" fit syntactically (is that a word?) The name is "The Toycrafter" as in "not just any toycrafter"!

[the Earl of Whirl]

I get it. I guess I never thought about it before. It's kind of like the difference between The Ohio State University (in Columbus) and Ohio University (in Athens).