Construction set:Kenner Girder & Panel - International Airport

In the mid-1950s, Kenner toy company president Alfred Steiner watched the construction of a modern office building in Cincinnati, Ohio. The building's construction of curtain walls of prefabricated panels fixed to a skeleton of girders, trusses, and cantilevers inspired Steiner to develop Kenner's widely popular Girder and Panel Construction sets. The sets came with red girders made of polystyrene (later, polyethylene), exterior curtain walls, and a green Masonite foundation board on which to build. The popularity of the building sets encouraged Kenner in 1958 to develop its bridge and turnpike set with roadway sections and parts that made the bridges, turnpikes, and interchanges. A year later, a larger, combined girder and panel and bridge and turnpike set contained parts for models of buildings and roadways like a bus terminal or hotel and the ramps to lead vehicles directly into and out of the buidling. When Kenner, in 1960, offered a motorized version of its combination set, kids could assemble buildings with elevators, drawbridges, and other battery-operated structures. The Motorized Girder and Panel, Bridge and Turnpike Building Set became the company's all-time best selling set. The company's 1962 Build-A-Home sets with parts for fabricating brick or colonial-style homes complete with patios and swimming pools replicated the suburban homes rapidly appearing on the American landscape. Kenner's other sets--for building skyrail systems between buildings, futuristic buildings, and freeways, bridges, and highways continued until the company ceased production around 1968. When General Foods bought the company in 1974, it resumed production of the construction sets with larger sets of hundreds of pieces. The Sears Tower set, for instance, contained 1,100 pieces and produced a replicate of the world's tallest building that was five feet tall. Kenner ceased manufacturing its construction sets in 1979.