The New Ulm Civic Center hosted 26 vendors who brought 110 tables worth of toys. Toys meant anything from farm implements, collector Hot Wheels, and vintage Star Wars memorabilia. Promoter Wendy Mealman said vendors came from Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas to showcase their wares.

This year was part of an extended homecoming for the show, as in 2022 it moved to Sleepy Eye after having been in New Ulm for decades. Mealman said heat was the biggest factor in bringing the show back.

“[The Sleepy Eye venue] didn’t have air conditioning,” she said. “It was a little hot. A lot of my vendors are older, and the heat was not good for them. It was best to come back. They were anxious to have us back and it worked out really good.”

Saturday and Sunday are the traditional days for the toy show. The schedule was changed this year, with it open Friday night from 3-7 p.m. and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mealman said this was to help the vendors with costs.

Harold Goerndt (left) and Steve Sheeley (right) discuss business and tractors during the New Ulm Toy Show Saturday.

“Hotels are very expensive,” she said “When you set up on Friday and do a Saturday-Sunday show, that’s two nights for all the vendors in a hotel. If a hotel’s 150 bucks, that’s 300 bucks on top of the other expenses they have coming to the show. This saves them a whole night.”

While a toy show may sound like kid’s fare, Mealman said the variety of items draws in people of all groups.

“There are a lot of toy collectors,” she said. “They get what their grandpa or dad drove when they were a kid, they want the first tractor they drove too. Nostalgia is a lot of it. Some people are into the collecting part of it. The kids want toys to play with.”

It wasn’t just toys on display either. Several tables held dioramas, showing off farmsteads created from the miniature farming implements and buildings they either bought or created themselves. Greg Borth created his dream home and farm, which took him over a year to complete. He has been constructing dioramas since 2011.

With all the skills he’s collected in 13 years, he built everything on his most recent diorama from scratch.

Greg Borth stands with a diorama he made of his dream house and farm, which took him a year to build.

“Some of the buildings have got styrene on them,” Borth said. “My latest ones, I’ve been doing all wood, painting them black, and then brushing on the red paint to get that weathered, older look.”

The buildings are modeled after the real things. Pictures of them were taped to the side for comparison. Borth said the aesthetic is a 1980s look, aged into 2024. For him, making dioramas is relaxing and a fun thing to do. His next step is to take the resin-molded plastic silos and replace them with all-new 3D-printed ones.