Sand Automata Toy with Dancing Figure and Two Musicians

Flourishing between 1880 and 1920, the mechanical toy market included everything from complex artisanal works to simple, commercially made toys. This mechanical box is made of affordable material, cardboard and print, and would have been marketed to the American middle class. The illustration inside the box depicts a Victorian-style drawing room peopled by figures. When the box is turned, a girl and her dog dance while accompanying musicians play their instruments.

The female figure is consistent with nineteenth-century representations that promoted negative stereotypes of African Americans as lazy, greedy, mischievous, or jovial. With her toothy grin and apron held out to the side, the girl is exemplary of the trope of the “dancing fool” perpetuated by the minstrel show. Such troubling representations of African Americans were common in toys marketed to white, middle class children in the Victorian era—such as this example—which served to perpetuate notions of inferiority and racial difference.