Radio Flyer, Est 1917

Changing the company’s name to Radio Steel & Manufacturing in 1930, Pasin also introduced his first steel wagon, called the Radio Flyer. The now classic toy was named for Pasin’s love and fascination of the radio and air flight. The high quality steel coaster wagons were a huge success and allowed Pasin to increase production while lowering the price. With affordable wagons, the slogan of the company became, “For every boy. For every girl.” Thousands of children enjoyed these classic toys.

Today, Radio Flyer boasts a plethora of products, including thenewly released mini Teslafor kids and a wagon customers can trick out with various sun canopies and seat cushions. Robert’s biggest challenge has been reinventing the company, which he’s done by focusing exclusively on children’s toys, expanding product development and moving manufacturing abroad. The group began exploring ways to push their company into the 21st century. They prided themselves in the quality of the on-site stamped metal products and didn’t have the means to produce other items. At the time, they didn’t even have a product development team, according to Robert.

The company also makes bicycles and tricycles for kids, scooters, ride-on toys shaped like planes and creatures, and tiny little models of the Radio Flyer® Wagon for putting plants in, or just playing around with on a desk top. S leading wagon maker, manufacturing high-quality products for children since radio flyer wagon 1917. The makers of the original little red wagon, Radio Flyer is the only company to produce plastic, steel and wood wagons. Radio Flyer is one of the oldest remaining national toy companies still owned and operated by the founding family. It is made of plastic, which ensures strength and durability.

He explains that they only arrived at this, a workable, foldable wagon — now Radio Flyer’s best-selling variation of its red wagon — in 2016, after more than a decade of disasters. It’s not easy nowadays to pick a gift that kids will love as much as their parents do. Low-tech toys that spark creativity and imaginative play are the answer. And nothing fits the bill like Radio Flyer’s iconic red wagon. After the war, the factory went back to making wagons and developed several new models in tune with the times.

The Radio Flyer wagon was the unlikely brainchild of Antonio Pasin, the son of a cabinetmaker, who was born in Venice, Italy in 1898. In 1913, when Pasin was just 16 years old, the family sold off their cabinetmaking tools and bought passage on a ship bound for the United States. When business was slow, Pasin built pianos, dug ditches, and washed celery to earn extra money. For Emma – a 2-year-old Leukemia patient at Mercy Children’s Hospital St. Louis – riding in the Hero Wagon is her favorite way to pass the time during her hospital stays, according to both her parents and caregivers. The wagon enables her to easily tour the halls with both her toys and IV pole in tow, giving her a much-needed reprieve from the confines of her hospital room. One hospital staff member said that for kids like Emma, the Hero Wagon is a welcome distraction and can even reduce anxiety among patients awaiting treatment.

When I was a kid, you could always find the whole line of razor ride onss at the local hardware stores , we don’t really have those anymore. Mount Vernon, Washington, USA. One year old toddler girl reaching for her bottle of water, in a wooden wagon next to daffodils and tulips. Hand colored photo of young girl pulling large plush bear through a field in a little red wagon.Hand colored photo of young girl pulling large plush bear through a field in a little red wagon.

The Radio Flyer team added an IV bracket and clamp on the back so that a nurse or family member can pull the wagon without also needing to hang on to equipment poles or monitors. The handle now features a spring so that it won’t fall down when you let go. Lastly, the team included a clear plastic pouch for the exterior–a dedicated spot for kids to slip in a drawing or photo, thereby giving them a sense of ownership over their wagon. Their workshop today is a sea of wooden tables on steel legs and familiar Radio Flyer red, on toy wagons and toy cars and color swatches and every tool cabinet. There is a woodworking space , and a room for testing paints, lined with ventilation screens and colored-spattered surfaces and looking vaguely sinister.

radio flyer wagon

Littles riding along will be secure in the two five-point safety harnesses provided, while using the built-in cup holders as their parents adjust handle heights to their liking and choose whether or not to attach the canopy. Pasin says the company has come to recognize his grandfather’s red metal wagon as a blank canvas — one that still sells, but only a fraction of the 140 or so toys and wagons they also sell. His grandfather, Antonio Pasin, founded the company in after arriving from Italy three years earlier . The wagon comes with all-terrain tires that are made out of rubber. The frame is metal and the wagon is made from wood, alloy and steel.

Families fled en masse to the suburbs, where they boomed out babies who needed to be carted around their subdivisions or glide under their own power on the tricycles and scooters Radio Steel began to produce. “My niece a few years ago was diagnosed with brain cancer and she spent eight months in children’s hospital and she would sleep in the Radio Flyer wagon – she preferred to sleep in that,” Garone said. “It just made those moments when she knew she was going into more chemo, going from her bed to the treatment room… it transformed it and allowed her just to be a kid with something familiar and loved.” Starlight Radio Flyer Wagons distributed to hospitals across the country and played an integral part of a child’s pediatric care. Starlight Radio Flyer Hero Wagons provide a source of comfort and a sense of normalcy to sick kids during some of their most difficult times.

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 radio flyer wagon subsidized mortgages, allowing many to flock to the suburbs. The sale of wagons surged during the subsequent baby boom, and Radio Flyer branched out into gardening wheelbarrows to meet changing demands.