Winslow Schott (Earth-One)

We can play this two ways. I can kill you right now and restore dignity to the Toyman name -- or you and I can team up -- combine forces -- to become the greatest crime-duo the world has ever known. What do you want to be, punk? A corpse or a partner?

— Toyman I ^src

Winslow Schott is the Toyman, an enemy of Superman who uses toys as a gimmick.

History

While growing up, Winslow Percival Schott discovered that he had a knack for toy-making and took an interest in testing his own creative talents. The very first toy he ever constructed was a humble toy biplane, made from balsa wood and painted red and blue. The neighborhood bully, Chester Dunholtz, took the opportunity to abuse the sensitive Schott and stole his wooden biplane, infuriating the boy whose skills had just gone to waste. Just then, Schott began to wonder why, if Dunholtz could simply steal his beloved toys without repercussions, he could not use his toys one day to steal the treasured things from others, both for the thrill and the sense of power.^[1]

In his adulthood, Schott became a successful Metropolis toymaker, but the memory of his childhood incident still drove him to steal and break the law. In a way, it was not money or even power that Schott was after as much as the attention and the risk of a criminal lifestyle. Becoming the ingenious mastermind of crime known as the Toyman, Schott would run up against Superman on numerous occasions.

As Toyman served out his lengthy prison sentence, his name fell into obscurity and, even worse, ridicule within the criminal underworld. He eventually managed to get released on good behavior by a parole board after using his gimmicks to stop his fellow prisoners from breaking out, after which he returned to running a toystore while secretly plotting criminal activities. Toyman noticed that Superman would appear to imitate the stereotyped motions of the animatronic dolls he had created in Superman's image for sale to the public. Believing that his toys had somehow given him the power to control Superman, Toyman attempted to rob a train with "Superman's" help, only to discover too late that he was being misled by a Superman Robot and that Superman had deceived Toyman in order to catch him in the act of his next crime.^[2]

Retiring from a life of crime after finishing his sentence, Winslow Schott was angered by the appearance of a newcomer with the desire to use the Toyman identity for himself, by the name of Jack Nimball. Faking a return to a life of crime as the original Toyman, Schott furtively worked in tandem with Superman, with whom he was now on good terms, to put the new Toyman behind bars.^[3]

Some months later, Schott prepared an exhibit at an expo hall, containing the original model of every toy he had ever designed, only for it to be destroyed by a rampaging Bizarro, whom Schott mistook for Superman in his confusion. Crazed by the desire for revenge, Schott took up the Toyman mantle once again and used a mechanical toy bird to kill Jack Nimball for desecrating it. Toyman then tracked Bizarro down and promised to repair the imperfect Duplicator Ray that created all Bizarros on the condition that Bizarro help him defeat Superman.^[4] This alliance failed, and Toyman surrendered to the authorities.^[5] The Toyman and similarly gimmicked villain Prankster would next team up to pull off a complex scheme, wherein Prankster would violate a number of obsolete, no-longer-enforced laws and get his hijinks broadcast over WGBS-TV, in order to signal the location of a buried stash of loot on the prison grounds to the still-incarcerated Toyman. Superman deduced Toyman and Prankster's objective and turned the tables on the two of them, landing them both in prison.^[6]

A while afterwards, Toyman seemingly reformed himself a third time. After serving out his prison sentence, Toyman began to develop ambitions of opening a Toyman Museum, containing every toy he had ever designed and built, with the belief that such an attraction would renew his popularity and fill his coffers. Unfortunately, Toyman remembered that to genuinely attempt such a thing would be impossible, on account of the fact that Chester Dunholtz stole his first ever toy when he was still a youth. To remedy this situation, Toyman organized the broadcast of a Toyman trivia game show on television, in which all the contestants would secretly be humanlike androids programmed to give the right answers to his questions and the cash prize for victory would be enormous. This was in fact a brilliant ruse intended by Toyman to attract Chester Dunholtz to the site of the trivia game show so that he could retrieve his balsa-wood biplane from him. As all the android "finalists" acted as if they were stumped, Dunholtz, an audience member, blurted out the correct answer to Toyman's final question: What was the first toy the Toyman ever created? Knowing that only Dunholtz and himself would know the answer, Toyman tried to kidnap the identified Dunholtz on the spot, but Superman interceded and took Toyman in. As it turned out, the toy biplane was destroyed by the ravages of time and misuse by a prepubescent Dunholtz long, long ago.^[1]

After the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Toyman would be involved in one final caper. Learning that the rights to his toy designs had been legally purchased by a man named H.H. Harmon, the Toyman attacked him, but he was stopped as usual, this time by the Blue Devil.^[7]

Powers and Abilities

Abilities

Genius Level Intellect
- Mechanical Aptitude: Toyman's threat lies in his aptitude for constructing deadly, weaponized toys of his unique design.
- Robotic Engineering: Toyman's penchant for the creation of technologically sophisticated "toys" also extends to his ability to make convincingly humanlike androids.

Paraphernalia

Equipment

Various Toys: Life sized toys which impersonated various people or did his bidding, high-tech plastic lab equipment, and toys that are just toys for amusement.

Transportation

Various Toys: The Toyman has employed a wide array of vehicles to aid him in his criminal endeavors, all of which are patterned after a toy of some kind. Such vehicles include everything from toy trains to pogo-sticks.

Weapons

Various Toys: Acid spraying squirt guns, toy soldiers with live rounds, toy airplanes with machine guns, wind up tanks with miniaturized shells, exploding balls, acid gum, etc.

Notes

The Toyman first appeared in Earth-Two continuity in Action Comics #64 by Don C. Cameron and Ed Dobrotka. The Earth-One version first appeared in Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #9 by Otto Binder and Curt Swan.
This version of the Toyman, including all history and corresponding appearances, was erased from existence following the collapse of the original Multiverse in the 1985–86 Crisis on Infinite Earths event and later restored following the rebirth of the infinite Multiverse during the Dark Crisis of 2022-2023. Even though other versions of the character may have appeared, this information does not apply to those versions.
Height and weight from Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #24.

Trivia

The Toyman habitually punctuated his sentences with the rhetorical query "Don'cha know?"