Playskool Nok Out Bench & Rainbow Peg Pull Car Set, c. 1950s–60s View Watchlist >
Seller Accepts Credit Cards
Payment and pickup instructions will be available on your invoice (under "My Account") at the conclusion of this auction.
Lot # G695
System ID # 30581551
Start Date
End Date
4 Watching
Playskool Nok Out Bench & Rainbow Peg Pull Car Set, c. 1950s–60s
Saturday morning, somewhere around 1958: the bench is on the kitchen floor, the mallet is in a small fist, and every peg that disappears through the top reappears on the other side like a small miracle of cause and effect. Playskool introduced the Nok Out Bench in the early 1940s and refined it through the 1950s into the form seen here — a natural-pine box frame with a green-painted top, the maker's name and title stenciled across the front panel in bold green lettering alongside a small mallet graphic that doubles as the brand's logo. Six colored pegs drop into a row of holes, get hammered through, then the bench flips and it starts again. A metal-ringed socket at the left end cradles the turned wooden mallet with its green-stained handle. The companion pull car — a flat green carriage on four solid red disc wheels — carries its own six domed pegs in the full rainbow run: violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, the original braided cord pull still knotted at the front axle.
This pairing dates to the classic Playskool wooden era, well before the company's 1968 acquisition by Milton Bradley shifted production toward plastic. The all-wood, all-paint construction — pine bench, turned pegs, disc wheels with metal hub caps — is the hallmark of the Chicago-era Playskool workshop, when the toys were built to be handed down rather than replaced. The pull car carries no maker's mark of its own; attribution rests on the branded bench and the matching design language shared between the two pieces. The chalky, layered paint loss across both is the surface collectors of American wooden toys specifically seek out — evidence of a real childhood, not a shelf.
CONDITION
Good overall with honest signs of use and play across both pieces. Chipped and scuffed paint throughout, with heavy chalky loss to the pegs and peg tops on both the bench and the pull car; wheel hub labels show wear. The mallet, cord pull, and all pegs are present and accounted for.
DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS
- Bench: 4 1/2" H × 10" W × 4 1/2" D
- Pull Car with Pegs: 4" H × 3 1/2" W × 10 3/4" L
- Maker: Playskool (bench marked; pull car unmarked)
- Era: c. 1950s–early 1960s, Chicago wooden-toy production period
- Materials: Pine, turned hardwood pegs, metal hub rings, braided cord pull
