| Toy typewriter at the "top end" |
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| This is the best toy machine. It is labeled on its top cover as COLLEGIATE, and for some reason on the front left edge of the top cover, just above the top row of keys, is also labeled "CRYSTBAN 2000" in a script style. It has no features usually found in toys, such as use of plastic in internal mechanisms, and is a full four-row single shift machine with carriage shift. But like toys, it has no margin set provision at all. It has a right margin bell, but its ringer is fixed at one point. It has no ribbon selector, but uses conventional typewriter ribbons, not special toy ribbons. It was made in Japan. |
| The most interesting feature of this machine is the large label applied to the bottom. It's a familiar one, but it's familiar to toy typewriter collectors! It indicates that this is, indeed, the "COLLEGIATE TYPEWRITER" and that it was sold and serviced by Western Stamping Corporation, 2203 W. Michigan Ave. Jackson, Michigan USA. (For those familiar, it uses ribbon no. 5600.) This is the company responsible for the TOM THUMB toy typewriters so often seen. This is, and then is NOT surprising -- maybe Western Stamping intended this machine to be its top-end model, and one which could truly be called "instructional." |
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| At right, the CITIZEN COLUMBIA XL. These are the same machines. Yes, the COLLEGIATE has a different body and keytops, and has had its margin sets deleted in favor of simple metal tabs which either limit carriage travel or ring the bell. The CITIZEN has a slightly different design regarding the actual key levers themselves, but it's an evolutionary one, not a fundamental one. Here we have exactly the same mechanical design, one model of which was sold as a 'real' typewriter, and the other very likely sold as a toy, albeit the most advanced toy of its kind. |
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| the site for collectors of portable typewriters |
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| At right is a toy typewriter which may be familiar to collectors. It is a TOM THUMB, although it isn't the machine you usually find carrying that name. It was made in England by Byron Jardine, and is identical to contemporaneous machines much more often seen with the PETITE brand name. One thing about this machine is certain; you'd never confuse this simple thing with a real, honest working typewriter. The lack of features, the three-row keyboard, use of plastic in everything, and nylon line used in the type-bar mechanism all point to this being a toy. |
| Speaking strictly about keyboard operated front strike typewriters, one might remember that the original TOM THUMB machines were much more substantial. Metal bodies, metal mechanisms -- and there are also other brands of toys which were at least using metal mechanisms housed in plastic bodies. Some had true double-shift capability as well. As we look at these, it might be natural to wonder just where the break point is between the very best toy machine and the very worst (or cheapest) actual working typewriter. Well, I have them both! |
| Western Stamping also held rights to the name "Granada" for typewriters, which was sold to Konryu Corporation in Japan. For a long time, it was thought that this might have been a dead end, but then Frans de Riviere began finding machines very like the Columbia XL in Europe carrying the Konryu name. It does seem, then that Konryu likely made all of these machines -- under contract to Western Stamping for sale as toys, and then in an updated and slightly improved version sold them again to Citizen to be used as extremely inexpensive basic working typewriters. Perhaps only in the US could this machine have been sold as a toy -- but in the US it was completely insufficient as a working typewriter as well. But we do know the breakpoint between toys and real typewriters! |