Founder hopes museum in Frog Town has the stuff to stand on its own legs

The Frogtown Froggy Museum, on Water Street in Fort Industry Square, was stocked mostly from secondhand shops.

The Blade/Amy E. Voigt
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Amy Adler spent about six months assembling 300 or so items, including stuffed frogs, ceramic frogs, singing frogs, and the museum's newest addition, a live barking tree frog named Figaro.

Frog Town ought to have a froggy museum, realized Amy Adler last summer.

"I thought, since we were [once nicknamed] Frog Town, we need a frog museum," she said.

Six months and 300 or so items of frog paraphernalia later, she was ready to begin work on the Frogtown Froggy Museum - Toledo's only museum dedicated to the frog.

At the museum, which is at 134 Water Street downtown in Fort Industry Square, the frogs are everywhere. Stuffed frogs, plastic frogs, ceramic frogs, singing frogs, and the like occupy every conceivable surface and container.

There are even stuffed bunny rabbits in residence because, "when frogs croak, sometimes it sounds like 'rabbit, rabbit,'•" said Ms. Adler, a 55-year-old semi-retired children's librarian.

Though the majority of the museum's frogs are green and stuffed, there are frogs of every conceivable size, color, and material. In just the first room of the four-room museum, one peeps out of a frog-adorned box of Kellog's Honey Smacks, and a spectacle-bedecked frog sits besides a dictionary with a nameplate in front that reads "Daniel Webfootster."

The Frogtown Froggy Museum, on Water Street in Fort Industry Square, was stocked mostly from secondhand shops.

In the next room, the hundreds of frogs include one residing atop a froggy-green coffee maker and another lounging lazily in an empty cookie tin.

The museum even has a frog-print shower curtain and at least two pairs of child-size frog pajamas.

And the museum's newest addition, a live barking tree frog named Figaro, moved in yesterday.

Ms. Adler began collecting items for the museum last summer and estimated that none cost more than $15. Most of the froggy items came from local secondhand shops, although she said one green, tyke-sized motorcycle made of plastic was picked up off the street because it was green and it had been thrown away.

Because the museum has no admission fee and is a nonprofit entity, Ms. Adler is accepting donations. She said she has invested more than $6,000 of her own money in the museum.

"I love it. I'm personally attached to it. I just want to make enough to keep it going," she said.

In addition to its froggy figures, the museum has an activity room where visitors can play with puppets, read, color, and work on puzzles. Ideally, Ms. Adler said she would like to host a weekly reading group for school-age children at the museum.

She has not decided whether to allow children to touch Figaro.

The museum is open Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. It is also possible to schedule a visit by e-mailing frogtownfroggymuseum

@gmail.com.

Contact Florence Dethy at:

fdethy@theblade.com

or 419-724-6064.