The Classics Never Die
By Robert Covarrubias
As a collector I’m always on the look out for cool toys to collect, the theory is that one day I will own my own house and turn my basement into a toy museum with not just my Batman collection but with other toys and memorabilia as well, such as toys carried by Classic Toys. They offer an extensive selection of old and new toys for every budget from; military miniatures and vehicles; zoo, farm, and prehistoric animals; diecast and white metal cars; commercial and work vehicles; wild west and historical personalities and much, much more. I had the opportunity to talk with two of the greatest father and son business owners Jon and Gideon Rittich at their Greenwich Village store.
Robert: How did the name of the store come to be?
Gideon: The business began nearly 30 years ago as CWW Toys, Creative War Games Workshop, and it was focused back then…it was mainly distribution and war games design and over the years it became a distributor for a number of European toy companies and we did a lot of mail order and when it came time to open up a retail shop as the business began to expand we had to come up with a name that was catchy, had a brand name awareness that was very easy to remember Classic Toys was kind of fitting the bill.
Robert: So, your father Jon started the business 30years ago?
Gideon: There was a partner back then along with my father that began the business in Soho as a retail store in 1987 and we moved to this location at 218 Sullivan around 1992-93. When it was mail order there were some very select toy manufacturers out of Europe that were brought in but a lot of it was vintage as well so we would do the toy show circuits, the toy fairs, mailing lists and then there would be distribution from there.
Robert : Tell me about some of the items that you carry?
Gideon: Well, basically what we specialize in…what our website classictoysnyc.com is going to also specialize in…its going to represent what we have here for children and collectors and just about every level of the spectrum as far as pricing goes, someone can walk out of here with a high quality piece, either a toy a collectible a miniature something new something old so you’re figuring toy soldiers in plastic will begin about 20 cents a figure and go up to two thousand dollars. Diecast cars and trucks will begin at about a dollar and go up to a few hundred sometimes a thousand, in other words…
Jon: Military miniatures which have been literally going through a golden age for the past 20 years and the quality has become unbelievable when people talk about the good old days they mean now for some of these things.
Gideon: The main thrust that we have been focusing on is really to provide New York City and people coming in to New York from all over the world with the best possible selection of the best figures produced now. We have an extensive selection of vintage pieces but if you look through our case very little of it is actually vintage. If people want to arrange an appointment and they have specific needs we’ll see what we have to fill them but along those lines we have these plastic figurines that are pretty accurate and beautifully sculpted and these things begin at three to five bucks a pop and we have children that buy these in bulk, their parents come in every night…every Saturday they come and they buy tons of these things and they say that when the video games is done, when they’re finished up playing that for the night they always come back to these figures because a video game and these electronic toys a lot of things in the computer you’re following someone else’s imagination your not really creating stuff that is in your own mind, your not really getting a chance to express that and children use these wonderful figurines as a way to do that. It’s really terrific; as they grow older some of them do wind up collecting the big stuff.
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Robert: That’s great, so Classic Toys is kid friendly and collector friendly and won’t hurt your pocket once you leave the store and still feel good about purchasing a collectible.
Gideon: Some of the collectors that we have who collect the expensive, the very refined pieces also go after these plastics cause some of these plastics if you look at some of the ones like Papo and Schleich some of these plastics are better than the best of the metal figures produced 20 years ago, so they’ve come to a point where they’re so advanced they’re very affordable children can play with them and collect them and admire them and you don’t have to break your bank to develop a nice collection of little figures to set up and play with.
Jon: Also there are a lot of children who love real history and these things are very accurate and represent actual things that happened and they love that.
Gideon: They read up on Templars and Hospitaler’s and then there are Saracens and we’ve got them for five to six bucks.
Jon: I had a ten year old kid off the history channel asking me which could be Sioux and which could be Apache Indians, its wonderful.
Robert: So these figures also provide an educational interest as well.
Gideon: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
Jon: It does have that aspect and with the realistic handling of the soldiers people are very much keyed into the historical place that these things represent.
Robert: Now I notice in addition to the soldiers and cars we’ve been speaking of you also have buses, airplanes and robots, what is it that collectors seek more of?
Jon: well here’s the thing I really love this part of it, there’s this German company called Siku for example we do a lot of business with them Siku is a German based company and they produce some of the finest diecast cars and trucks like 1:50 scale they do a wonderful job representing these things they’re high quality and they do very well for us and they appeal to both collectors and children, I just wanted to bring that up first to knock that out of the way, the airplanes those are anywhere from three dollars to a few hundred dollars a piece. The ones that I sell the most of are between thirteen dollars and fifty dollars a piece they are these diecast metal planes in 1:400 1:500 scale. There’s a few companies out there that basically you can re-create an airport and there are collectors who come in here who literally have a methodology where they will buy components of an airport and create maybe the international airport in say Saudi Arabia, Russia, Germany or JFK and for that time or that phase in their collecting cycle they will only get the aircraft that land at that airport and they’ll do a diorama based on this. And this is very complex…these guys, its amazing what these guys could produce in such a tiny scale they’ll use fiber optic cable to do like little lighting, little tiny things …I saw a photograph of this guy who did like a Fedex shipping distribution at one of the airports and honestly its hard to tell that it’s not real.
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Robert: So, obviously you’re getting collectors who shop here and create dioramas and collect and then show you pictures.
Jon: Oh yes, and each interest could be incredibly separate even though they’re buying the same item they could be used in a totally different way.
Gideon: These airplanes that we’re talking about, the quality…the orientation towards detail and accuracy is profound and it’s beautifully done. I mean these things they perfected a printing process to deal with these angles and curves on the fuselage and the wings and the level of attention and quality control to these things is frankly amazing and again these things are like thirteen dollars to fifty dollars and for a very large scale model maybe upwards to sixty to eighty or ninety something like that.
Robert: What’s the difference between some of the lower end and the higher end models? You mentioned some could be a couple of hundred dollars why would that be because of the age or company?
Gideon: Not necessarily
Jon: Believe it or not it varies
Gideon: It very much varies, so let’s say there was some kind of an airplane produced pre-WWII and there’s a market out there that wants a representation of that airplane.
Jon: But a small market
Gideon: very small, so as with anything even with action figures or these hand made metal figures, cars and trucks and vehicles the more esoteric the vehicle the more difficult it is to produce. There will be a group of people out there who will hand make these things so when you’re dealing with something that is a limited market now what you have to deal with is how much work is done by hand and how many are produced and that dictates the price because if something is made out of a softer white metal that’s very heavy that they have to hand cast and then use photo wedge parts…those little tiny parts that are scaled down and cut by razor your dealing with something that is beautifully done executed to a degree no mass production company can match but appeals to a much smaller market. Now the things that differentiate like…these airplanes that we’re talking about, the majority of these are mass produced so they can be twelve to fifty dollars…
Jon: and still have a tremendous amount of detail.
Gideon: Exactly, you know the more of something you produce the cheaper it becomes to produce it. So as you get larger of course the price goes up, now some of these models…I mean a 1:200 scale model will have a wing span of a bout 14 inches to15 inches a fuselage can be a bout a foot, 10 inches to a foot. The models that we carry are in the sixty to eighty or ninety dollar range…they’re beautifully done very good quality but if you want to step it up to a very few hundred dollars if you look in the windows, well now you have seats, now you might actually have people sitting in those seats now you might have photo etched…
Robert: So, now we see the price going up because of all the detail.
Gideon: exactly, spun aluminum hubcaps with real rubber wheels that are now maybe a quarter the length of my fingernail…so now your dealing with something that is so precise…the workmanship is beautiful but it appeals to a lower market because of how much hand work they have to do and how much it cost to produce…but to appeal to the larger base twelve dollars to fifty dollars for these little diecast miniature airplanes is wonderful.
Jon: There are six dollar airplanes that are wonderful, it’s a series that even had the civilian planes that you rarely see and it’s a common manufacturer and they’re absolutely wonderful and they’re like six bucks.
Gideon: but on a six dollar plane you look at the landing gear it doesn’t have the details the decals, the printing some things are a little askew, it really hinges on attention to the detail.
Robert: Jon, let me ask you a question, when you started this company with your partner what was the reaction from people when you told them that you wanted to open a store that sold collectible toys?
Jon: Well we had built a nice client base, problem is being in NYC it is so prohibitive for people to come into New York that we lost most of our clientele from our mailing list and had to depend on international series collectors and people in NYC… the city has been an incredible disadvantage for people who want to come visit… this system and I’m proud to say that…I want that emphasized this, we used to go to shows after we opened the store and people would say we’d love to come but it just cost too much if we cant find parking, it costs a fortune if we end up with a parking ticket.
Gideon: That being said we have a pretty good mail order base, I mean it’s not tremendous.
Jon: he developed that through email…Gideon’s really taken us to the next steps.
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Gideon: also through eBay there’s always kind of an eventide with the recognition and knowing that a business is out…there’s an even flow to that depending on economic circumstances depending on general feeling in the country. Gasoline spikes…we have all kinds of traffic restrictions in NYC I think we lose business period, NYC is not necessarily small business friendly…with that being said we have a loyal customer base that whenever they’re in NYC and some of these people come in monthly, we’re one of their first stops. We just had a customer from Argentina, he’s an arts dealer and he came in and every year he comes here he buys a tremendous number of these Schleich farm animals and sea life and these things at five-ten dollars a piece…he buys two-three hundred dollars worth of them and he brings them back to Argentina. He can order them off the internet, there’s no way really in Argentina that sells these things…but he prefers to come here and get them from us because he can see what he’s getting but also because he knows us, he’s been coming here for a number of years. There’s a beautiful kind of a personal relationship that you can develop in a retail store and frankly this website that we’re launching is a combination yes of attracting new business but of retaining people and making it easier to purchase from us its quiet customer retention.
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Jon: We’re also a source for photographers…
Gideon: and architects
Jon: I remember this woman bought an Ertl truck for $35 that they were going to use for a Revlon ad and she said its only $35? I said I can mark it up higher for you…
Gideon: Here’s one for you, you know that rude dog on Conan O’Brien?
Robert: Oh yes, Triumph
Gideon: That was ours
Robert: Really?
Gideon: they had bought a tremendous number of them from us because we were the only company in New York that had rude dog…that had the company that did that. The company was in the latex business they since stopped the puppet production. Saturday Night Live had just bought a raccoon from us to throw at Paris Hilton when she was hosting the show…they had some kind of an obnoxious rat and they bought like a $300 re-production 1920 something car that was 16 inches long and I’m watching SNL one night and I see this arrogant rat getting out of my toy car…I mean go and figure.
Jon: One of the soap operas bought a whole bunch of large polish figures that were medieval for a kid’s toy room that they used on the set for 7 years I forget which one…
Gideon: And Law and Order SVU recently they came in and bought a whole lot of tin toys for one of their episodes which I think aired recently.
Robert: What do you think is the difference between the toys that are made today and the toys made years ago?
Gideon: One of my big complaints about the toys of today better geared for the six to teenage market is that they don’t teach they don’t show historical context they don’t promote the use of a child’s own imagination, like I said a number of the parents who come here and buy these really beautiful but accurate inexpensive plastic figures they tell me time and time again that when they put the video game down they always come back to this and they’ll pay 30 or 40 or 60 dollars for an X Box game and eventually that game is collecting dust but these figures are out on display and played with and they hold up and that’s one of the big complaints that I hear a lot…also if you have a shop like this inevitably your going to have issues…we represent many different periods in human development in history and things have happened through out history and are represented by certain companies, people who care about history and who are very interested in history tend to buy these things and display them, sometimes in chronological order. I’ve had Native Americans in the store who are very upset at southern cavalry figures…you know the crimes that were perpetrated in the Trail of Tears, we’ve had Muslims in here who have seen crusaders and gone ballistic. My father and I we’re both of Jewish descent and we’ve had other Jewish folks come in here and harang us about the Nazi display.
Jon: Let alone anything made in Germany.
Robert: How do you handle that situation?
Gideon: It’s very simple…I strongly believe in think locally act globally and the reason that that statement applies especially when it come to that is that the Jews said something after the holocaust called “never again” and they’re very protective of this thing called the holocaust and its very insulated they’re very protective of the fact that six million Jews died, never mind the Catholics, the Christians, or the Gypsies or the group of Africans who were working in Italy that they found and killed never mind those people…
Jon: We’re history buffs (laughs)…there is no army that wasn’t a villain to somebody, that’s a very important point.
Gideon: We like history… (laughs) we’re going off on a tangent, anything else?
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Jon and Gideon Rittich |
Robert: No, I guess not (laughs) thank you very much
Gideon: Thank you
Jon: Thank you
