Toy stove:Superior Gas Range

In the last fifty years, standards for toy safety have undergone considerable changes. This Kenton cast-iron toy stove, from about 1920, illustrates just how much these standards have evolved. The miniature, fully functioning stove has an oven and a stovetop that actually burned gas. Children could use a toy like this to cook over an open flame, mimicking the stoves their mothers used at the time. The Easy-Bake Oven, modern relative of cast-iron toy stoves, uses instead a light bulb and contains a cooking chamber, sacrificing the realism of early cast-iron toy stoves for a child's safety.