The Liberty Gazette
November 21, 2017
Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely
Linda: How many shopping days left? Back to toy land we go! We wrote a here few weeks ago about the interesting personal and aviation history of Ole Kristiansen, the founder of LEGO, and his son, Godtfred, who created what is today the second busiest airport in Denmark, Billund Airport. LEGO also made a few airplane building kits, including a biplane in 1967. What I didn’t recall was that in my ancestry there was also a toy maker.
My sister, Diane, is the family genealogist. While visiting her in Washington recently, we reminisced about childhood toys, like the painted wood blocks packed in an old-time mail-looking bag. On the front was printed “SIFO Mailbag of Blocks.” The letters forming Sifo were drawings of people who bent into the shapes of each letter. I remember trying to figure out how a person could bend in those ways—especially the letter O, the character drawn in a backbend in full circle! The blocks saw a lot of playtime at our house.
When Diane dug into our dad’s side of the family tree, she discovered Silas Morris Ford Jr., who had a toy company in Minneapolis from 1944-1975. Si for Silas, Fo for Ford: Sifo. A second cousin twice removed, Silas was in a part of the family our dad never knew. So the fact that we had those blocks is kind of surprising. Obviously we didn’t get them from Cousin Silas.
Here I’d been curious about LEGO’s toy airplane history and hadn’t realized the existence in my own family history. A quick search—oh, what did we do before the internet—and I came upon the history of Sifo toys. The brand boasted “from the land of Hiawatha, the great teacher.”
As I searched through the 1956 Sifo Toys catalog, I found pictures of that familiar mailbag of blocks along with many other educational toys, puzzles, and building sets. Among the products for children eighteen months to ten years, I came across my pot of gold on page thirty-one. The “DC-28 Construct-A-Plane” was billed as an “immense and challenging twin-engine ‘do-it-yourself’ airplane,” suitable for children four to ten years old.
It would be neat to discover other aviators in my family history, but how unique to find a toy maker. And it’s okay that there is no such thing as a DC-28 in the real world of aviation—just a Dyson upright vacuum cleaner model. In fact, Sifo’s Construct-A-Plane looks more like a Lockheed Hudson with its twin boom tail. I suspect by naming it such, Cousin Silas didn’t have to worry about infringing on the rights of the Douglas Commercial (DC) aircraft company.
Sifo made their buildable airplane about a decade before LEGO made their first one. How cool would it be if it turned out Silas or one of his children built an airport for their community, as did LEGO’s Kristiansen family.
ElyAirLines.blogspot.com
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