World's Largest Toy Museum and Harold Wright Museum in Branson, Missouri
Sharing one facility along Branson’s Strip, the World’s Largest Toy Museum and the Harold Bell Wright Museum are two very different experiences but both are popular with tourists who visit this part of Missouri.
Visitors of all ages love a chance to tour the World’s Largest Toy Museum. For adults, it’s a great nostalgia location, a trip down memory lane that can thrill grown-ups of all ages. For kids, it’s a chance to see one of the largest collections of toys on earth, ranging from unusual vintage tours of the 1800s to some of the most modern toys of the twenty-first century. Toys at the museum are organized to both time period and genre so each gallery is really quite varied and the museum, in general, provides for a few hours of solid fun and reminiscing, even though visitors can’t play with the toys.
Some of the kinds of toys visitors will find at the World’s Largest Toy Museum include an excellent doll display that includes a huge variety of dolls by some of the most famous manufacturers in the world, including Madame Alexander, American Girl, and other well-known doll makers. Dolls range from baby doll-types to Barbies to other popular varieties that span more than a century. Doll houses and doll house furniture are also part of the mix as well as a huge selection of doll carriages.
For boys, the museum’s selection of toy cars, trains, ships, and other vehicles is unsurpassed. These vehicles vary in style, from the wind-up kind of yesteryear to battery- or motor-operated vehicles of the twentieth century. Many are miniatures while others are much larger, including a full-size toy Rolls Royce. (There are also several large toy cars sitting outside the museum in the parking lot area.)
Other categories of toys include Teddy Bears and other stuffed animals from a variety of manufacturers, toy soldiers, guns and other toy weapons, antique bicycles, action figures from a variety of eras, old character toys, vintage board games, a large display of old lunch boxes, kaleidoscopes, and a sizeable Elvis gallery. Old die-cast models and other vintage tours are also quite popular with visitors. There is also an onsite gift shop that sells mostly re-recreations of older toys but does sell other kinds of playthings as well.
The adjacent Harold Bell Wright Museum pays homage to the minister/writer who is largely credited with putting Branson on the map. Author of the acclaimed book “The Shepherd of the Hills,” Wright was a native Missourian and a constant visitor to the Ozarks region. This museum includes some of the antiques that graced Wright’s home as well as other furniture and personal items and manuscripts from 19 of his books. Also of interest is Wright’s large collection of firearms, mostly from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The World’s Largest Toy Museum and the Harold Bell
Wright Museum are open every day year round. Guests may buy tickets for just
one of the museums or may purchase a combination ticket for the two
attractions.
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