The “Trixy Toy Educator” was a 1930s-era set of letters and numbers (along with a few animal shapes) for teaching children, and was manufactured by the Durrel Company of Gardner, Massachusetts.

Die cut from thick cardboard, the 40 piece set also included a rack to display the characters, presumably for little ones to practice the correct order of the alphabet and basic numerals or to spell simple words like ‘dog’ or ‘cat’.

Whomever came up with the idea, they used the most rudimentary and unusual ‘type design’ shapes in the A-Z and 0-9, but they were just odd enough to inspire a digital type version of them.

School Age JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.