American Made Toys
American made toys got harder to find starting in the late 1990s, when most of the wooden toy category and nearly all molded plastic toys shifted to Chinese manufacturing. Eleven brands below never made that move, or in a couple of cases moved back. For toddler-specific gear, see our American Made Baby Products page too. We verified each brand's manufacturing location through factory disclosures and manufacturer statements. See our full verification methodology for how we research and confirm every brand on this site. If you want to see more toys made mostly in Europe (but not China), see our companion site’s Toys Not Made in China.
| Brand | Type | Made In | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uncle Goose | Wooden blocks | Grand Rapids, MI | Hand-made alphabet blocks |
| Maple Landmark | Wooden toys | Middlebury, VT | Personalized letter trains |
| Lincoln Logs | Building sets | Burnham, ME* | Classic building toy |
| Little Tikes | Ride-ons | Hudson, OH* | Cozy Coupe and ride-on toys |
| Step2 | Playsets, ride-ons | Streetsboro/Perrysville, OH | Play kitchens and playhouses |
| American Plastic Toys | Plastic toys | Walled Lake, MI | Sand pails, wagons, play kitchens |
| Guillow's | Model airplanes | Wakefield, MA | Balsa wood model airplanes |
| Crazy Aaron's | Putty | Norristown, PA | Thinking Putty fidget toys |
| Slinky | Classic toys | Hollidaysburg, PA | The original coiled-spring toy |
| Crayola | Crayons | Easton, PA* | The classic crayon box |
| Wildflower Toys | Handmade dolls | Northern California | Handmade fairy and dollhouse dolls |
*See individual entries below for line-specific caveats.
American Made Wooden Toys
1. 🇺🇸 Uncle Goose
Uncle Goose has hand-made wooden alphabet blocks in Grand Rapids since 1983, when founder William Bultman started the company after finding no one left in the country still making them. His son Pete now runs it. The wood is basswood sourced from Michigan and left uncoated so kids can handle it safely, the ink is US-sourced and third-party tested rather than checked in-house, and even the wagon wheels on sets that include one are lathed in Maine.
The lineup runs from classic ABC sets through bilingual, holiday, and science-themed blocks. Uncle Goose describes itself as the only classic ABC block maker still 100% hand-made in the USA, a claim that's gone unchallenged for over forty years.
Best for: hand-made alphabet blocks, a genuine last-of-its-kind domestic maker
Recommended:
2. 🇺🇸 Maple Landmark
Maple Landmark has made wooden toys, games, and gifts out of its Middlebury facility since 1979, when 15-year-old founder Mike Rainville started out making cribbage boards. It's stayed family-owned and Vermont-based ever since, sourcing lumber primarily from local family-owned mills. The company says only about 1% of its budget leaves the country.
The best-known line is NameTrains, personalized wooden railway letter cars that have been in production since the early 1990s. The catalog also covers the Montgomery Schoolhouse line of rattles and early-learning toys (acquired from another Vermont maker in 2001) and Schoolhouse Naturals, launched in 2007 in direct response to that year's wave of overseas toy recalls. Everything carries a lifetime guarantee, and the Middlebury facility runs weekday factory tours.
Best for: personalized wooden letter trains and early-learning toys
Recommended:
3. 🇺🇸 Lincoln Logs
Lincoln Logs spent nearly 60 years made in China before K'NEX brought production of the wooden pieces back to the US in 2015, contracting with Pride Manufacturing, a Maine wood-products company that had been making golf tees and cigar tips in Burnham since 1930. The toy itself dates back to 1916, designed by John Lloyd Wright, son of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and named for the president whose log-cabin origins it evokes.
Best for: a century-old classic, now mostly made in the state it comes from
Recommended:
American Made Ride-On Toys and Playsets
4. 🇺🇸 Little Tikes
Little Tikes has run its rotational-molding plant in Hudson since the company's founding in 1969, and the Cozy Coupe, the red-and-yellow toy car that's outsold actual cars like the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord in individual sales years, has come off that same production line since 1979. Little Tikes pioneered rotational molding for children's products, and the Hudson campus is still the largest rotational molding plant in the world by the company's own account.
Best for: the Cozy Coupe and ride-on toys, made at the same Ohio plant since 1979
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5. 🇺🇸 Step2
Step2 was founded in 1991 by Thomas Murdough, the same person who founded Little Tikes decades earlier and left after selling that company. He built Step2 on the same rotational-molding approach and the same Ohio roots, and it's since grown into the largest American manufacturer of preschool and toddler toys, running two plants in northern Ohio. The catalog covers play kitchens, water tables, playhouses, climbers, swing sets, and ride-on toys.
Best for: play kitchens, water tables, and outdoor playsets from the largest domestic toy manufacturer in the category
Recommended:
6. 🇺🇸 American Plastic Toys
American Plastic Toys has made toys in Walled Lake since 1962 and has an explicit, on-record pledge to never offshore to China, a promise it's kept even as most of the toy industry moved production overseas in the 1980s. The company sources its plastic and colorant domestically, and less than 4% of its toy value content is imported, mostly small components like sound modules and fasteners.
The catalog runs over 125 items: sand pails, play kitchens, wagons, toy strollers, dollhouses, and ride-on cars and trucks, all priced from about $2 to $100.
Best for: affordable, genuinely all-domestic plastic toys with a decades-long no-offshoring pledge
Check prices at American Plastic ToysAmerican Made Classic Toys
7. 🇺🇸 Guillow's
Paul K. Guillow started what became Guillow's in 1926 after returning from World War I with an interest in aviation, and the company has run out of the same Wakefield facility since 1933. It makes balsa wood model aircraft kits, from simple rubber-band-powered gliders to detailed stick-and-tissue scale models of WWI and WWII fighters, still assembled by hand from laser-cut balsa sheets rather than injection-molded plastic.
The company's own president has been with Guillow's for 50 years and points out plainly that there aren't many toys left that are actually made in the US and playable by anyone from age 3 to 90.
Best for: balsa wood model airplanes, a near-century-old domestic hobby brand
Recommended:
8. 🇺🇸 Crazy Aaron's
Aaron Muderick started making Thinking Putty by hand in 1998 after experimenting with the material as a hobby; the company now runs a dedicated manufacturing plant in Norristown that's handled everything in-house since 2018. Every tin, whether it's the color-shifting Hypercolor line, the magnetic putty, or the glow-in-the-dark varieties, is made at that one facility.
Crazy Aaron's works with several Philadelphia-area vocational centers to employ people with intellectual and physical disabilities as part of its manufacturing operation, which is folded directly into how the company describes its production process rather than treated as a side initiative.
Best for: Thinking Putty and fidget toys, hand-crafted at one Pennsylvania facility
Recommended:
9. 🇺🇸 Slinky
Richard James accidentally invented the Slinky in 1943 while working at a Philadelphia shipyard, and production has run out of Hollidaysburg since the mid-1960s, on machines James built himself in 1945 that are, remarkably, still the ones in use today. The plant turns out about 3 million Slinkys a year using steel wire sourced from York, Pennsylvania, less than 100 miles away.
The factory briefly went dark in 2020 when a prior owner shut it down, but Just Play acquired the brand and reopened Hollidaysburg the same year, rehiring the original production team and keeping manufacturing in the US rather than moving it overseas.
Best for: the original coiled-spring toy, made on the same machines since 1945
Recommended:
10. 🇺🇸 Crayola
Crayola has made crayons in Easton since 1903, when Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith's company sold its first box of eight for a nickel. The Easton plant still produces every standard box sold in the US, the 8, 24, and 64-count boxes stocked in nearly every American classroom, turning out around 12 million crayons a day. Hallmark bought the company in 1984, but manufacturing stayed in Pennsylvania even as most of the crayon industry moved overseas.
Best for: the classic crayon box, still made where it's been made for over a century
Recommended:
American Made Handmade Dolls
11. 🇺🇸 Wildflower Toys
Wildflower Toys is a family business run by owner Suzanne Barker out of Northern California since 2013, making fairy dolls, dollhouse families, Waldorf-style gnomes, and wooden peg dolls entirely by hand. Each doll starts with a wire frame wrapped in cotton yarn for a posable body, topped with a wooden head, and the company also sells felt craft kits and sewing kits that let kids assemble their own bendy dolls.
Everything ships from the family's own workshop, with no outside manufacturer in the chain. It's a small-scale operation by design, more artisan maker than mass producer, which is part of what keeps the whole process genuinely domestic.
Best for: handmade fairy and dollhouse dolls from a small family workshop
Check prices at Wildflower ToysRelated: American Made Baby Products - car seats, cloth diapers, and feeding gear built in the USA
Manufacturing verified through manufacturer disclosures, official brand websites, and factory statements. Last verified: August 2026.