Construction set:American Logs Construction Set, No. 835

In the early years of the 20th century, a number of American manufacturers turned to the production of toys. Among them, brothers-in-law Hal Elliot and Sam Goss, offered simply made wooden building blocks around 1916. Combining their first names, they called the company Halsam, and it became a prominent name in the toy business. By the 1930s, the Halsam company brought out its American Logs building sets to compete with J. L. Wright's popular Lincoln Logs. Halsam's timbers, however, had squared off cross sections in place of Lincoln Logs' round ones. The Halsam timbers also featured a rough surface to better approximate the hand-hewn logs of frontier cabins of long ago. Halsam's American Logs lasted until the mid-1960s. Lincoln Logs are still sold well into the 21st century.