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Clackers of the 1950s

Clackers are a children's toy whose main purpose is to make noise---a clacking sound made by two objects hitting each other. Clackers are made of tin, wood, plastic or other hard material. The most common form of clacker---popular in the 1950s---is a small piece of tin with a strip of tin or other metal that can be pressed into the larger one with rapid succession creating a "clack, clack, clack" sound. Children like them because they are simple to use, as the noise can be made by pressing the clacker between the thumb and forefinger.

An older form of clacker was popular as noisemaker for gatherings like baseball games and movie premieres in the 1920s and 1930s. These clackers were made of wood and six to eight inches in length with a simple handle carved into the bottom. On both sides of the upper part of the clacker, a ball was attached to a small piece of spring metal. When shaken, the balls hit the wood from both sides, making twice much clacking sound as just one ball.

Clackers Get TV Boost in Post-War Years
- Gradually, the tin clacker replaced the wooden clacker. The tin clacker was especially popular in post- World War II and incorporated into entertainment targeted to kids. Some of these vintage 1950s clackers have value as collectibles.
Mickey Rooney One-Man Band
- The clacker played a big part of the Mickey Rooney One-Man Band toy of the early 1950s. The one-man band was a washboard with a number of "instruments" attached: two lithograph tin clackers (similar to hand-held clackers), a horn, a bell, and two pie pans attached to the washboard. The washboard has a paper label featuring a head and shoulder picture of Mickey Rooney.
One-Man Bands Had Movie Tie-ins
- The toy was distributed as Rooney's film career was fading. His last movie was made in 1950. According to the Oct. 3, 1953, issue of "Box Office," Mickey Rooney One-Man Band Clubs were first introduced in Seattle and "are now being formed in all Sterling picture houses. These neighborhood clubs will enable band members to appear on stage and perform with their instruments on kiddies Saturday matinees."
  
  Rooney faded from the scene about the same time the tin clacker did. Five years after his last film, "The Hardy Family," he starred in a short-lived television show, "The Mickey Rooney Show," also known as "Hey Mulligan," which ran from August 1954 to June 1955.
  
  A Mickey Rooney One-Man Band in its original box was recently valued at $40.
Tin Clacker Gives Way to Plastic
- The 1950s was the transition era of the clacker. The popular tin version featured on the One Man Band was replaced by a new kind of clacker that used string and hard plastic balls. This clacker had two strings on a ring with the balls attached at the end. By holding the ring and making a fast up-and-down motion, the balls would hit above and below.
  
  The plastic models proved popular throughout the latter half 1950s and into the 1960s, but by 1971 a new version had come out using glass balls that looked like oversize marbles. However, the balls would crash into each other and shatter, so this version of the clacker was taken off the market in one of the biggest toy safety recalls of all time.

Childrens Toys