TOYS Reality for childrens - When the first gasoline pumps entered into service, the epoch of the modern toy had been underway for some decades. The perfection of manufacturing technologies and a society-wide increase in consideration for children favored the establishment in both Europe and America of a good number of companies specializing in dolls, toy trains and sundry other playthings. Objects which in most cases offered a reduced version of adult reality for use by children who, confronting that reality through play, could begin to prepare for the complicated life of the grownup. One of the most successful toy typologies was that which reproduced means of transport, whose furious pace of evolution in reality sometimes outstripped the limits of imagination. A few years after its introduction, the automobile attracted the attention of the toy makers, and by 1898 a German manufacturer was mass-producing miniature cars. But true success came later, when adult reality included enough automobiles to make toy versions of them desirable to children. The golden age of the toy car began with the Twenties. And along with it came, of course, the toy gasoline pump. 1/2