Amish Toys

By Kevin Williams

We visited an Amish store the other day and the store was clearly serving an Amish clientele.  Sure, the occasional English interloper like me comes in, but the collection of kerosene lamp globes, Amish apparel, and German language books told the tale.  This is a store for the Amish.  Interestingly, one of the things they sold was a boxed set of children’s toys.  It was an Amish play set with Amish-dressed figures, a horse-drawn buggy, and even a little bucket, sweeper,and scoop to “clean up” the poop.   My mother snapped up the boxed set thinking my daughters would enjoy playing with them and she was correct.

Beatrice and Aster love playing with the Amish toys

A boxed set of Amish figures....

Aster and Bea have loved playing with it.  But this also underscores a persistent myth about Amish culture, that Amish children only play with faceless dolls.  Absolutely not true.  Is there an Amish community somewhere that does that?  Perhaps.   In all my years, however, visiting Amish communities I’ve only seen children playing with “regular” dolls.   Some Amish make do make faceless dolls but those are usually for tourist consumption to please tourist who THINK Amish only play with faceless dolls.

Anyway, it was just interesting to see this in an Amish general store.  The boxed set was labeled simply with a single word: "Amish."

I'd love to know more of the toy's backstory, but if you are at an Amish store ever, keep an eye out for this fun toy set.....