The Zep – This red beauty featured a flared, streamlined body with touches of Art Deco style. The red wheels were partially covered with flared fenders, and the side boasted the name “Zep” in white letters. However, you are able to earn and redeem Kohl’s Cash® and Kohl’s Rewards® on this product. Found something you love but want to make it even more uniquely you? Many sellers on Etsy offer personalized, made-to-order items.
Radio Steel continued production unabated, even though the toy industry in the United States began to change. In the 1970s, the industry consolidated, with many small, private firms being bought out by bigger competitors. These large firms, including Mattel and Hasbro, made inroads into the wagon market with branded products of their own. By the 1980s, the market had swayed away from simple, classic toys to increasingly high-tech items like video games. Big toy companies also poured money into faddish toys and toys that could be marketed through licensing tie-ins to movies and television shows. Despite these developments, Radio Steel plugged away in much the same way it always had.
The Radio Flyer Ranger wagon has a full-sized seamless all-steel body with no-scratch edges and a seat back for comfortable rides. This wagon includes a child seat belt, and extra long handle for easy pulling and durable molded wheels. Radio Flyer has one of those incredible rags-to-riches stories attached. The Chicago-based company, known for its iconic little red wagons, was launched by a young razor ride ons Italian immigrant named Antonio Pasin, who came to Chicago practically penniless in 1914. A cabinetmaker who had trouble getting work in that field, Pasin dug ditches, washed vegetables, and took whatever work he could find, carrying his tools in a wooden wagon of his own design. After the war, the factory went back to making wagons and developed several new models in tune with the times.
As of next year, the company will have been around a full century, with roots stretching back to the early 1900s when the future founder of the company, Antonio Pasin, arrived in America. The red test bike, an aluminum-framed M880 with a cloth front basket and a water bottle holder, is on the large side, and gives off an air of solidity. The styling is low-slung and retro, perhaps suggesting a 1930s motorcycle.
From 1942 to 1945, the company shut down its production of wagons and made five-gallon steel gas cans for the war effort. As men returned home at the end of World War II, housing was short and the 1944 G.I. Bill subsidized mortgages, allowing many to flock to the suburbs. The sale of wagons surged during the subsequent baby boom, and Radio Flyer frozen ride on toy branched out into gardening wheelbarrows to meet changing demands. Today, Radio Flyer still makes those red wagons, but it also makes electric bikes and scooters, tricycles, bounce houses—and Teslas for kids. The factory on the west side of Chicago closed in 2004 (it’s the design office now), and most products are currently made in China.
The Radio Flyer and Starlight teams collectively poured more than 1,000 hours into the charitable project, estimates Mark Johnson, vice president of product development for Radio Flyer. The Hero Wagon is now in hospitals in 82 cities across 33 U.S. states and counting–each year, the organizations donate 1,000 wagons, with half going to medically underserved communities. The readily recognizable little red wagon manufactured by Radio Flyer is used in several artistic works, including film and television. A character in the 1992 drama film Radio Flyer flies to safety in a converted Radio Flyer wagon. Radio Flyer wagons appear in a store display in the 1983 film A Christmas Story.