Three-in-one plastic wagons quickly and easily convert from two-passenger face-to-face seating to fold-down bench seating to cargo mode. The new Hero Wagon features a medical-grade, easy-to-disinfect fabric exterior, instead of the classic, but bulky, metal frame. The design is foldable, allowing hospital staff to collapse the wagon for storage and keep more on site. The Radio Flyer team added an IV bracket and clamp on the back so that a nurse or family member can pull the wagon without also needing to hang on to equipment poles or monitors.
As shown in this picture, the kids love to pull their siblings and cousins, but once the wagon gets loaded up it can get kind of heavy for the little guys. This is where the push handle and pull handle work in tandem, allowing two people to share the load. Whether you have an old wagon you’d like to restore or you’re in the market for one of these classic toys, Radio Flyer wagons have both sentimental and monetary value to kids of all ages. Take your time looking around to find the model that’s right for you. When Antonio Pasin came from Italy to the United States in 1914, he was only sixteen years old. Three years later, Antonio had saved enough money to open a small woodworking shop.
Radio Flyer Inc. was founded by Italian immigrant Antonio Pasin. Pasin’s family had been fine woodworkers for generations, specializing in furniture and cabinetry. But he longed to leave his small town outside of Venice and make a new start in the United States. His family backed his plan, selling their mule to raise money for Antonio’s ticket. Here he hoped to work as a cabinetmaker, but at first he could only find unskilled work, beginning as a water boy for a crew of sewer diggers.
Whether visitors left with a tiny wagon or not, they undoubtedly saw the impressive structure, and so couldn’t have left without some knowledge of the Radio Flyer. Fast forward to the 1950s, when Sputnik and “I Love Lucy” came on the scene. It was during this time, when fear of communism loomed, that the little red wagon cemented its status as an American icon. “Sooner or later you’ll have to buy the kids a big red coaster wagon. (This probably is a factor in their growing up to be 100% pure red-blooded American),” reads a 1953 ad in the Logansport Pharos-Tribune.
In January 2021, Evancho was hospitalized following a car accident that left her back broken in two places, and was soon diagnosed with osteoporosis. Built in 1990, 26 tons of steel and reinforced concrete, 12-foot-high, 27-foot-long razor ride ons. Spiering spent six to seven days a week for a year building the $36,000 sculpture, for which he received a $30,000 commission. Families fled en masse to the suburbs, where they boomed out babies who needed to be carted around their subdivisions or glide under their own power on the tricycles and scooters Radio Steel began to produce. The Tesla toys, both Flintstones-type “foot to floor” and electric powered, were introduced six years ago and have been good performers. “The CyberQuad—a version of Tesla’s Cybertruck—sold out in 24 hours,” Pasin said.
In the 1990s, Radio Flyer worked to expand its product line and step up its marketing to maintain its market share. It used the Radio Flyer name on toy bicycles, such as the Totally Rad Flyer Bicycle. Its name received wide press in 1992 with the release of a movie called ‘Radio Flyer,’ the story of the imaginary journeys of two boys in their frozen ride on toy. Already by the year 1930, Radio Steel was the world’s largest producer of children’s coaster wagons, and it set the standard for what a wagon should look like.
This example had peeling paint, rust, and a partially missing decal on the side. A Streak-O-Light wagon from the 1930s in very rough condition is still worth $100 to $125. Give today to razor ride ons help deliver the Hero Wagon to seriously ill kids across the country. A Hero Wagon can truly make a difference in a child’s day when they are spending days on end inside a hospital room.
From 1942 to 1945, the company shut down its production of wagons and made five-gallon steel gas cans for the war effort. As men returned home at the end of World War II, housing was short and the 1944 G.I. Bill subsidized mortgages, allowing many to flock to the suburbs. The sale of wagons surged during the subsequent baby boom, and Radio Flyer branched out into gardening wheelbarrows to meet changing demands. Today, Radio Flyer still makes those red wagons, but it also makes electric bikes and scooters, tricycles, bounce houses—and Teslas for kids. The factory on the west side of Chicago closed in 2004 (it’s the design office now), and most products are currently made in China.