Since ancient times, children have played imagining that they are riding a horse and over the centuries the toy horse has taken on a wide variety of forms. A favourite toy for children who could already walk was a pull-along horse on wheels. Riding a stick was a way to copy adults riding a horse. The first rocking horses date to the seventeenth century. They were genuine masterpieces of workmanship for children belonging to well-to-do families.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, new materials and techniques made toy horses simpler and cheaper becoming a staple in the rooms of many children.
Ingenuity and the care for children have created a huge array of different types of toy horses in the course of time: from fine rocking horses to more rudimental ones, from merry-go-round horses to toy horses on wheels, from stick horses to small wagons.