Maine Toys Different Drummer Toy Shop

Started over 25 years ago

In 1973 our family fled the “big city industrial rat race” to live in the small town of Solon, Maine, where we started the Different Drummer Workshop. We have always remained a small family wood craft business, aimed at making traditional wooden toys for kids using native Maine resources.

Our wooden toys are best known for the quality of their craftsmanship. The primary material is white pine, and every board of wood is carefully selected to show off its natural beauty and grain. The completed wooden toy is finely sanded to a satin smooth natural finish

In designing and building our toys, safety, simplicity, and durability are the main considerations. In manufacturing we make sure that all joints are solidly glued, that corners and edges are well rounded, and all surfaces are sanded smooth and feel soft and pleasant to touch. No artificial finishes are applied to our wooden toys, except to the sailboat and the “executive desk toys” and games, thus reducing concern about toxic substances going into a child’s mouth.

We believe that toys intended for children should be non-violent and simple in design, leaving the child to use his or her own imagination (instead of a battery) to fill in whatever details are needed at the time of play. Only those wooden toys aimed at older kids (adults) are designed with extra details.

Another thing for which our wooden toys are known is their durability. Now that we have been making wooden toys for more than a generation we constantly have grandparents tell us about buying a rocking horse or a choo-choo train for one of their own kids, now grown, who has just passed it down to a new grandchild. Often they’ll exclaim about how much play the toy received, perhaps through several kids, and how well it stood the test!



Our handcrafted wood toy bathtub boats are great traditional toys with which generations of kids have enjoyed taking a bath.

The 10-1/2” Wooden toy Sailboat with its 2 removable people is a super bathtub toy for the future sailor in the family. This is the only kids toy to which we apply any artificial finish, the hull being dipped in lead free varnish to give some protection from its use in water. However, if you prefer an un-varnished hull note it in the instruction box at the bottom of the order form.