Progress & Budget
Four years, 19 shoot days, and a team that self-financed this film to get it this far. Here’s where we are and what it takes to finish.
What We’ve Done So Far
✔ Self-financed the film through Summer 2026
✔ Shot for 19 days
✔ Interviewed 13 employees of the original Tonka Company (Ron Pauly interviewed 3 times)
✔ Interviewed 22 collectors
✔ Interviewed Barry Kudrowitz, Professor of Toy Design
✔ Wise Friends donated cameras, sound, lights, and a grip truck
✔ Dan Rippl donated his time as 2nd Camera/Sound/Gaffer
✔ David Howell and Patrick Bentz have each put over 1,000 hours into this project
✔ Wise Friends donated studio time, scanning, file logging, and editing time
✔ Outline and logline drafted by our writer
✔ 3 assistant editors have organized footage and produced social content
✔ Jim Strachan set the look and feel for graphics, art cards, titles, and credits
✔ Pixel Farm contributed graphic design, editing, and graphics for our trailer, fundraising video, poster, and end tags
✔ Stephanie Bentz designed and built our website, Facebook, and GoFundMe
What We Still Need To Do
☐ Interview an expert on play and childhood development
☐ Interview an expert on the history of American manufacturing
☐ Interview heavy equipment operators, including women in the field
☐ Interview Kathy Yerich, who toured the Tonka factory as a child
☐ Interview a few more former Tonka employees
☐ Shoot a recreation of young Ron testing his Mighty Front-End Loader
☐ Bring on a writer (Tom Lemmer) to craft the full story
☐ Hire an assistant editor to organize remaining footage
☐ Engage Todd Syring as composer and music supervisor
☐ Begin offline editing with Pixel Farm
☐ Visual design, graphics, and animation with Pixel Farm
☐ Color correct all footage with Pixel Farm
☐ Online editing with Pixel Farm
☐ Final VO recording and audio mix at Pixel Farm
☐ Minnesota premiere
☐ Promotion
☐ YouTube distribution
This list is updated quarterly as donations come in.
The Budget
We're looking to modestly reimburse ourselves for out-of-pocket expenses, time, and equipment rental across the 19 shoot days we've already completed — $80,000 total, or roughly $4,210 per shoot day. We have $60,000 budgeted for the at least six shoot days still ahead, and expect more as the story leads us into new territory. Editing this film will be a heavy lift given the volume of footage and the many threads this story could follow. We would like to raise $380,000 in total to pay really talented, real humans to construct this film. No generative AI will be used in the making of this film. We will post quarterly updates on our creative and financial progress here.
Where This Goes
Our goal is to bring this story to as many people as possible: a Twin Cities premiere during the Northland Toy Show, free YouTube distribution worldwide, and — down the road — funding toward a permanent museum dedicated to the Mighty Tonka Company in Minnesota.
We want to hear your stories of how the Tonka company made your childhood a wonderful thing. Please join us on our Facebook page and share stories, photos and maybe even film that your parents took of you on your birthday, at Christmas or in the backyard sandbox. Please remember we are not using any AI generated images and we would appreciate it if you did not share those on our Facebook page. There will be more exciting things happening, so please keep checking back as the fun gets rolling!