by Brynna Williamson
Imagine the most wholesome, wonderful, ‘that-can’t-possibly-be-real’ thing you can think of.
What is it? A little girl picking flowers, maybe? Puppies? A peaceful babbling brook?
Try this one on for size: “The Happy Toymaker,” a Christian granddad who lives in Happy, Texas and handmakes toys for little kids.
No, I’m not kidding. Jerry Sims (The “Happy Toymaker” himself) builds the high-quality steel toys, his wife Patrice makes little animals to go with the toys, and his nearly 85-year-old mom Patricia paints most, if not all, of the equipment Sims makes.
About Jerry
I am very well aware that a toymaker who lives in literal “Happy, Texas” sounds like I’m making this up – that it kinda sounds too good to be true, like a Hallmark movie we make our husbands watch around Christmastime ‘cause the movies are so nostalgic and sweet.
But luckily, I’m not making this up. Sometimes, truth really is stranger than fiction.
Jerry Sims’ story is like that.
To anyone who’s familiar with his story, Sims is the perfect Texan Santa. Oh, it’s not just the white mustache, the quiet, humble, drawling voice, or the fact that he loves little kids and makes toys for them (okay, it is those things). It’s more, too.
For instance: want to know WHY Santa “sees you when you’re sleeping,” and “knows when you’re awake?” Why, it’s as simple as the fact that Sims, apparently, only gets 4 hours of sleep every night – literally just so that he can make more toys for your children. “I have some pretty bad habits; I stay in my shop ‘til 2 or 3 am,” says Santa… I mean, Sims. “There’s about three of four of us; most of them work about 30 or 40 hours a week, but… it just kinda takes a lot of time on my part.”
Even still, Jerry wishes that he could do more.
“If my body would go 24 hours a day, I’d probably be out there doing it,” he said matter-of-factly.
How It Started
Here’s the thing: surprisingly, the Happy Toymaker has not always been in the toymaking business. In fact, the inspiration for his business came about in 1999, when he was in the cattle processing business. His (at the time) two and three year old boys “wanted a (toy) processing chute” so they could be like their daddy, so Sims says that he built them “a chute and a tub and a snake.”
“Then,” he said, “that’s all they played with for Christmas.”
For every birthday and Christmas following, all the boys wanted were these toys that were handmade by their dad.
Then, the neighbor kids got in on asking for these handmade toys. Then, more kids started wanting them.
“It just kind of just kept growing (from there),” said Sims.
Okay, but why does he do it? Why does Sims commit to a lifestyle where, at 62 years of age, he gets home at 3 am and is back in the shop at 7 am, just 4 hours later?
It’s for the next generation, he says.
“Less than 2% of people farm and ranch, and we’re trying to keep those kids interested in the farms and ranch so we can keep everything moving,” said Sims. “I see the importance of promoting this way of life and the future of agriculture at an early age. Being a cowboy is a lifelong dream for cowkids, and it needs to be nurtured the same as any other respected career.”
It’s not just for “the next generation” in a social, clinical sort of way, either; it’s for the individual kids that The Happy Toymaker gets to help.
“My favorite part about what I do is watching the kids play at the shows,” he said. “I take that stuff, and set it out, and I mean they just get after it… they’re hauling dirt, and moving stuff around, and loading cattle, and, you know, it’s just pretty neat. Their minds are just goin’ and goin’…”
The icing on the cake is that Sims truly, truly believes in his product.
“I have a toy that nobody else in the world really has,” he said. “They’re tough, and they function, and kids learn a lot out of ‘em. You’re just not gonna find that with a lot of these other plastic toys, (which) break. They can’t really sit on ‘em and do things (like you can on mine); my stuff is tough.”
How it Works
Still not gonna believe me that Sims is Texan Santa? Well, try this on for size: every year, Sims brings in local highschoolers to help him build the toys. This win-win situation is one in which Sims teaches the highschoolers how to weld and do construction, and then they are able to get better jobs. In return, Sims gets help making the toys.
Is it just me, or did anyone else just hear the word “elves?”
I kid, but the whole deal is actually a very sweet thing. Sims lets 4-6 kids come out and learn MIG, TIG, and even laser welding, so that “they all are able to go get good jobs.”
“I just try to help the younger ones learn things… and I work with them,” he said.
But one man, handmaking the toys, accompanied by a couple of local “elves” and some family members, can’t really make that many toys in a year – right?
Wrong. Sims quietly mentioned that, in 2025, the Happy Toymaker shipped out around 10 thousand toys. And guess what? From beginning to end, each one of his toys take about 10 hours of love to make.
Here’s the simplified process. Sims starts with a big sheet of metal – 16-gauge cold sheet iron, he says, which is not about to break – and then he spends time getting “all the parts cut and bent and ready for everybody.” After that, each piece gets welded together into a truck. The truck is grinded, and then sandblasted, and then the back is painted. Each piece that’s already been painted is taped off a day later so the new paint doesn’t touch it, and then the front is painted. His wife Patrice makes and paints animals to go along with the equipment Jerry makes, and his mom Patricia helps paint and custom-design the equipment to put the customer’s name, preferred brand, and colors on them.
Sound like a lot? It is: Sims noted that, on a general pickup, he’ll come back to each truck to do something to it 117 times before it’s finished.
“It’s a very long process,” he said with a laugh.
By the end of the process, the handmade pickup truck toy weighs around 18 pounds. In other words, you’d have to be a very interesting person to figure out how to break or damage Sims’ toys.
“(My products are) toys that won’t break down and that build up your little one’s sense of purpose in this world,” affirmed Sims. “You won’t get that for a cowkid in just any toy aisle. I can promise you that.”
While the love he puts into his toys certainly counts for a lot, the real magic of Sims’ toys is that each one is an actual working model of its real-life counterpart. Some of them include moving hay forks and a wooden round bale, and others come up with attachments for utility beds, horseshoeing beds, toolboxes, and much more.
With its farm and ranch genre, and its specifically unbreakable moniker, you might think that Sims’ toys are securely put into a “little boys only” folder. But nope; Sims says that little girls totally love the stuff, too. In fact, he says, “a lot of times the girls pick up on this stuff more than the boys do.”
“The boys like to get a lot done, but the girls like to do it right!” said Sims.
Sims, who’s had experience serving as his local fire chief for 22 years, helping his wife run the town newspaper, and working as a cattle rancher, might never have dreamed that he’d be building toys for a living, or that it would be something he enjoyed doing so much. And yet, here he is, loving what he does and loving the impact it has on kids.
“I never dreamed I’d be building toys,” he said. “There’s a lot of people (who, regarding work), just dread getting there, and can’t wait to leave; (but) I can’t wait to get there and I hate to leave,” he said.
Sims won’t confirm whether he’s actually Santa or not, but he will say at least this much:
“Well, we’ve got a pretty close deal with Santa,” he said drily. “A lot of kids come up and tell me that Santa brought them this or that, you know, and it’s pretty neat that they relate getting it from Santa Claus, and it’s my stuff. You know what I mean?”
I do know. In fact, in some ways, I feel like a little kid who, one day, decided not to believe in Santa anymore, then suddenly saw him placing presents under her tree. It’s funny; but I think that, after doing this article, maybe I believe in Santa a little bit more now than I used to.
