It's easy to look at this tin beach bucket and think, um, what's the deal with making a toy out of metal that will spend its life around salty water? Didn't you maybe think about plastic?

But that's the point. Or isn't the point. You could argue it both ways.

This bucket was made by J. Chein & Company, which made stamped and lithographed tin toys from the 1930s through the 1950s. This bucket, which I can only imagine was used to makes thousands of turrets of beach sand that were inevitably vanquished by the sea's waters, is decorated with scenes of children at an amusement park.

(Tin itself doesn't rust or corrode because, well, it is tin. Only iron rusts. This bucket was made with tin mixed with harder metals to make an alloy that was strong enough to play with. Unalloyed tin is extremely squishy.)

Chein's toys -- especially the company's mechanical toys -- were widely praised for their high quality, cleverness, and whimsy. But history does not always reward quality. The company stopped making toys during WWII, turning its factories over to the war effort and when it resumed making toys, it faced unbeatable competition from cheaper toys made in Japan. And, of course, the company also faced the unstoppable post-war expansion of plastics into children's worlds, which made its toys seem old-fashioned.

After it stopped making toys, the company became a successful manufacturer of cans for food companies. It changed with changing times even as it lost its foothold as a maker of unique, wondrous toys.

You can see this as success. You can see this as failure. You could argue it both ways.